Marcy Roberts

1. Chapter 17

2. Chapter 17
Audience Research
 Teachers  Advocates for all students
 Teacher educators across ethnicities
 Administrators  Includes literacy research
and research from other
 Researchers
disciplines (curriculum
studies, gender studies, law,
psychology and sociology)
published between 2000 to
2010

3. Author’s PurPose
 Provides a cross-disciplinary view of
research that examines the impact,
challenges and tensions diversity has on
literacy development.
 Identifies common categories of
diversity: ethnicity, socioeconomic
status, gender, language, race,
geographic area, religion,
exceptionalities, and sexual orientation

4. Student Diversity and Literacy
“Messy, Dynamic, Fluid”
 29 million foreign-born residents in the United
States (US census bureau 2007)
 55 million students enrolled in public and
private schools
 3.3 million teachers(most are English
monolingual) informed by their own national
traditions who must educate students with an
array of traditions and backgrounds
“…it is inconceivable that any approach to education that
fails to account for cultural, historical, linguistic,
sociological and psychological factors of the students
will be effective.”

5. Honoring Diversity:
Challenges and Tensions
 Socioeconomic status
 High mobility due to community
gentrification or urban dislocation
 Cultural/religious diversity
 Multiple languages
 Wide range of academic abilities
 Standardized tests
 No Child Left Behind Act
 Debates in the legal and political spheres

6. Diversity and Literacy:
Recommendations for Teachers
 Make connections between instruction and
children’s experiences
 Provide research-based cognitive strategy
instruction
 Link disciplinary and everyday knowledge
 Create opportunities for student autonomy, and
group students strategically
 Diversify texts
 Understand diagnostic tools to interpret date in
order to offer differentiated instruction

7. Honoring Diversity:
Recommendations for Teacher Educators
 Assign teacher candidates in field placements that serve
diverse populations.
 Provide better quality formal training around teaching in
diverse settings.
 Provide opportunities for teacher candidates to tutor
struggling readers as a way to learn to differentiate
instruction.
 Connect course content to real experiences in schools.
 Diversify faculty

8. Honoring Diversity:
Recommendations for Administrators
 Link schools to the community they serve.
 Establish a school vision.
 Assess curricular decisions.
 Use data inquiry as a starting point to lead to various
kinds of change.
 Nurture respectful collaboration with families and
communities.
 Address the moral and educational dilemmas created
by the competing pressures of school finance,
corporate relations, and education.
 Model transformative and intellectual leadership.
 Diversify faculty.
 Diversify texts.

9. Six converging guideposts for honoring
diversity:
 Value Diversity
 Examine ideologies that inform pedagogical, curricular,
policy and research orientations
 Avoid essentializing students
 Take proactive stances on issues of Diversity
 View classrooms as spaces in which identities are not
settled
 Expand notions of what counts as reading and writing

10. Creating Safe Spaces: Uncovering ways to
create safe spaces and pathways for all
students
“…safe spaces must be created in our hearts and national
imagination.”
Questions to ponder when making curriculum decisions:
 Will students be underserved by this text?
 What makes this text essential or useful?
 Out of all the texts in the world, why this one for these students
in this time and space?
 Will I love to rush in to teach this text?
 What is the appropriate starting point for this text?
 Is this a considerate and challenging text?
 Does this text lend itself to academic excellence and identity
development?
 Will this restore confidence in literacy instruction?
 Does this text serve as a writing and language coach?

11. Reflection Questions
1. How can students, teachers, administrators,
teacher educators, and researchers align their
efforts to offer literacy instruction that students
consider meaningful?
2. How can we, as educators, advance literacy
instruction and honor diversity?
3. Is my literacy instruction broad enough and deep
enough for today’s diverse landscape?