Pages: 232 Price: $24.95 ISBN: 0-8058-4401-5
Multicultural Issues and Literacy Achievement is a sequel to Literacy Instruction in Multicultural Settings (1993) and is a must-read book for teachers who have students of diverse backgrounds in their classrooms and for undergraduate and graduate students who are currently studying in teacher education programs. Many such teachers and students tend to de-emphasize teaching high-level thinking skills and instead emphasize teaching low-level literacy skills. Au, however, postulates that teachers should maintain high expectations of students from diverse backgrounds because the literacy achievement gap between those students and mainstream students stems from teachers'negative innate social beliefs and attitudes. Maintaining high expectations toward such students, understanding their learning styles and cultures, and replacing teachers' negative perspectives toward them with positive ones should be an essential goal for educators. Such methods will allow diverse students to diminish their literacy achievement gap and succeed in mainstream academic settings.
One of the strengths of this book is that Au examines the literacy achievement gap experienced by students of varying racial and ethnic backgrounds from different perspectives: community, classroom, and school. Au believes that social communities often attempt to evaluate the academic success and failure of such students based on stigmatizing beliefs and overgeneralizations. Many people believe that schools should uphold only one form of literacy in mainstream society. As a result, the mainstream language becomes dominant, while the primary languages, family values, and cultural backgrounds of students are often devalued. In this paradigm, which Au calls the Autonomous Model, students of diverse backgrounds are often tested on their cognitive skills and literacy proficiency based on mainstream ideas that are as yet unfamiliar to them. Therefore, these students have difficulty developing a sense of ownership in the process of learning. The Autonomous Model does not teach students how to celebrate and respect differences in the processes of their literacy development. However, Au argues, not being proficient in one form of literacy do not mean that students are incapable of learning, because literacy development is the results of a process of social construction. Teaching students to value differences should be a fundamental emphasis in classrooms. She calls the concept of acknowledging multiple types of literacy the Ideological Model.
Au provides more specific examples of the Ideological Model within the classroom regarding the variations of English. She does not minimize the significance of students of diverse backgrounds learning Standard American English in order to participate as responsible citizens in our pluralistic society. However, being proficient in Standard American English and trying to conform to the language and behavior of the dominant culture do not lead students of diverse backgrounds to successful lives in the authentic society. Rather, according to Au, African-American Vernacular (AAVE) and non-mainstream English such as Hawaii Creole English (HCE) should be valued as alternate and acceptable forms of English, and should be infused into the literacy curricula by teachers in order to create culturally responsive learning environments.
In the latter part of her book, Au shifts the focus from classrooms to schools. According to her philosophy, shaping more culturally responsive learning environments requires changing school curricula. She argues that merely adopting and utilizing a packaged program as a new curriculum does not help provide students of diverse backgrounds with effective instruction. Instead, school curricula should be based on literacy instruction adapted to each individual student’s academic needs, while at the same time being consistent in quality. The desirable shape of the learning process is a spiral or a staircase, with some students learning at a narrower, more fundamental level, and others learning at a higher and broader plane. If all school personnel are fully involved in this new type of curriculum, the result will be a true ownership of educational reform. Students of diverse backgrounds will benefit from this ownership, and their literacy achievement will be dramatically enhanced.
Au, unlike some educators, does not unfairly blame students' failure to learn on preservice and inservice teachers who are not yet familiar with literacy instruction in multicultural classroom settings. Instead, her book is replete with practical advice and instructional ideas based on theory and recent research regarding literacy and multicultural education. This book is a significant addition to the core literature to teachers who attempt to practice culturally responsive literacy instruction with the goal of narrowing the literacy achievement gap manifested by students of diverse backgrounds.
References
Au, K.H. (1993). Literacy Instruction in Multicultural Settings. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.
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