Cognitive Development, Global Learning, and Academic Progress: Promoting Teacher Readiness for CLD Students and Families

Abstract

Despite over two decades of steady growth in the school-age population of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students, recent analyses indicate that classroom teachers remain inadequately prepared for the differential needs and assets of these students. Increasingly, the accommodation readiness spiral (ARS) provides a useful heuristic for the prioritization of teacher capacity building for classroom diversity (Herrera & Murry, 2011). The ARS highlights the fundamental importance of teachers’ readiness to maximize school-family connections (especially sociocultural/culture-bound contexts and scripts for learning) to improve students’ cognitive development and academic achievement in the classroom. The ecocultural approach offers a promising line of research for the optimization of these sociocultural routines in school-based and classroom activities that target new learning. Already this approach offers a variety of ecocultural strategies for teachers and teacher educators, three of which are detailed in this article: family support networks, communities of mothers, and family spaces for educative and decisive participation.