It ain't what you say, it's how you say it: linguistic and cultural diversity in the classroom.

Abstract

The disparity between the cultural and linguistic diversity of the teaching population and the student population continues to grow as teacher education programs enroll and graduate primarily white teacher candidates (83.7%). At the same time, the diversity of the K-12 student body has increased with 65% of public school students being from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (National Center for Education Statistics, 2007). This chasm between the diversity of the teaching force and student population is of concern as many teachers report that they do not have the cultural knowledge and experience of working or living in diverse environments, yet will be faced with teaching a very diverse student population. Hence, the need for teacher candidates and current teachers to be explicitly taught the skills needed to successfully teach diverse student populations is urgent. In this article, we explore the following phenomena: how linguistic and cultural diversity is regarded in teacher education programs, as well as teacher candidates' and current K-12 teachers' dispositions towards students who do not share their cultural backgrounds or language (including those who vary in their dialects). Finally, we will present strategies that teacher educators can use to embrace and empower culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) teacher candidates, as well as prepare teacher candidates to teach diverse student populations.