Cultural Brokerage: A New Age in Literacy Instruction
Location
Hamilton A
Proposal Track
Research Project
Session Format
Presentation
Abstract
In the face of growing diversification of the student population in the nation’s public schools, research continues to highlight that teacher education programs are not fully preparing candidates to meet the lingual and literacy needs of students who come from diverse backgrounds and communities (Downey & Cobbs, 2007; Gay, 2002). Additionally, programmatic tensions exist as Professional Development Schools (PDS) seek to find common ground in trying to meet content accreditation standards set by the state, nation, and external accrediting agencies while also working to recruit diverse groups of prospective students in a social, political and economic era that disparages the teaching profession. Needed are more educators who are trained to be, not only content specialists, but who can also serve confidently as cultural brokers (Bass, 2012). Bass describes a cultural broker as an educator who, “uses language and other multimodal skills to mediate learning and communication in a variety of contexts and with a variety of people” (p,1). This presentation will discuss what it means to be a literacy and language arts cultural broker at the P-12 and graduate levels.
Keywords
language arts, cultural broker, diversity
Recommended Citation
Scott-Simmons, Wynnetta, "Cultural Brokerage: A New Age in Literacy Instruction" (2016). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 19.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2016/2016/19
Cultural Brokerage: A New Age in Literacy Instruction
Hamilton A
In the face of growing diversification of the student population in the nation’s public schools, research continues to highlight that teacher education programs are not fully preparing candidates to meet the lingual and literacy needs of students who come from diverse backgrounds and communities (Downey & Cobbs, 2007; Gay, 2002). Additionally, programmatic tensions exist as Professional Development Schools (PDS) seek to find common ground in trying to meet content accreditation standards set by the state, nation, and external accrediting agencies while also working to recruit diverse groups of prospective students in a social, political and economic era that disparages the teaching profession. Needed are more educators who are trained to be, not only content specialists, but who can also serve confidently as cultural brokers (Bass, 2012). Bass describes a cultural broker as an educator who, “uses language and other multimodal skills to mediate learning and communication in a variety of contexts and with a variety of people” (p,1). This presentation will discuss what it means to be a literacy and language arts cultural broker at the P-12 and graduate levels.
