Home-School Connections in a Multicultural Society : Learning from and With Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families

Educators everywhere confront critical issues related to families, schooling, and teaching in diverse settings. Directly addressing this reality, Home-School Connections in a Multicultural Society shows pre-service and practicing teachers how to recognize and build on the rich resources for enhancing school learning that exist within culturally and linguistically diverse families.

Combining engaging cases and relevant key concepts with thought-provoking pedagogical features, this valuable resource for educators at all levels:

• Provides detailed portraits of diverse families that highlight their unique cultural practices related to schooling and the challenges that their children face in school settings
• Introduces key sociocultural and ethnographic concepts, in ways that are both accessible and challenging, and applies these concepts as lenses through which to examine the portraits
• Shows how teachers and researchers have worked with diverse families to build positive relationships and develop learning activities that incorporate children’s unique experiences and resources

Disrupting deficit assumptions about the experiences and knowledge that culturally and linguistically diverse children acquire in their homes and communities, this book engages readers in grappling deeply and personally with the chapters’ meanings and implications, and in envisioning their own practical ways to learn from and with families and children.

Maria Luiza Dantas is Educational Consultant and Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Patrick C. Manyak is Associate Professor of Literacy Education, Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education, University of Wyoming.