Keywords
Cultural narratives; Culturally relevant pedagogy; English language — Study and teaching — Foreign speakers; Pre-service teachers; Student teachers; TESOL education
Abstract
Due to increasing globalization and immigration, there has been an increase in culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) student population in the U.S. public school. Educating teacher candidates to become culturally aware, sensitive, and competent in order to meet the needs of this diverse population has been a concern of teacher education programs. As a result, various teaching methods and strategies are being implemented in teacher education programs. The purpose of this study was to explore the use of cultural narratives (CNs) as an instructional strategy in TESOL education. In this article, we share an example of how one teacher educator incorporates her own CNs into a classroom instruction in educating early childhood-6 (EC-6) pre-service teachers to work with CLD students. CNs have great potential as an effective instructional strategy in educating teacher candidates on issues related to language, culture, identity, and diversity. We provide practical classroom strategies for P-16 teacher educators and practitioners on ways to incorporate their own CNs into their instruction for teaching and learning of CLD students.
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