Toward Preservice Teacher Critical Literacy and Cultural Competency With Culturally Relevant Mentor Texts

• In Event: 33.078 - Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: 33.078-5 - Reflections on Cultural Competence and Culturally Responsive Teaching

Abstract

The continuing concern that cultural competence is lacking along with responsiveness to Latino students (Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation, 2004) accounts for the need to expose pre-service teachers to culturally relevant texts that promote critical literacy. Few studies portray Latina/o pre-service teachers as emerging competent professionals in scholarly work, our qualitative study investigated the underlying premise that improvement of teacher’s competencies would make a difference in the ways that the bilingual pre-service teachers visualize instructional delivery for the increasing enrollment of Latino students in U.S. schools. The study was guided by the research question: What difference does the exposure to culturally specific multicultural children’s literature make to the development of social, cultural, and academic competencies among bilingual pre-service teachers?

Authors

• Brenda Ayala Lewis, University of Texas - Austin

• Maria E. Franquiz, University of Utah