Chapter 6: Best Approaches to Literacy Instruction to English Language Learners: Cultural Conflicts and Compromises

Growing immigration in North America is causing many mainstream teachers to become English as a second language (ESL) teachers by default. Increasingly, they struggle with not only effective pedagogical approaches of helping students acquire a new language while mastering academic content, but also with challenges of dealing with different cultural understandings, assumptions, and expectations about their instructional practices from parents who are of culturally and linguistically different backgrounds. Such different cultural understandings, assumptions, and expectations, if not addressed, often result in school–home mismatch and become a risk factor for immigrant and minority students’ learning (Au, 1998; Goldenberg & Gallimore, 1995; Heath, 1983; Ogbu, 1982; Valdés, 1996).