Multiliteracy and Language Arts for Multicultural Classrooms

By: Howard Leslie Smith and Kalpana Mukunda Iyengar

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Synopsis: As schools receive increasing numbers of children from diverse backgrounds, teachers are challenged to offer meaningful instruction to scaffold their reading and writing development. The chapters in this volume feature asset-based approaches to literacy instruction. Readers will discover chapters informed by critical frameworks: The Community Cultural Wealth model (Yosso, 2005), the findings from the Funds of Knowledge (Moll, et al., 1992), and the contributions of Multicultural Children's Literature (Iwai, 2019) for culturally efficacious instruction and cultural preservation (Iyengar & Smith, 2016). Irrespective of content area, all educators contribute to the literacy development of all students. However, not all teachers are equally skilled in appropriate (i.e., asset-based) instructional delivery for linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms. Literacy instruction that embraces multiple perspectives should not be limited to the Language Arts curriculum. Culturally efficacious literacy practices (Flores, et al., 2018) benefit all students in all subject areas. Whether a mainstream, multilingual, bilingual, Dual Language, or ESL classroom, opportunities for literacy explorations from divergent perspectives can be embedded throughout the curriculum if the teacher actively embraces diversity.