Bicultural Literacy Curriculum英文文献资料.docVIP

Creative Education 2012. Vol.3, No.2, 251-255 Published Online April 2012 in SciRes (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ce) /10.4236/ce.2012.32039 Bicultural Literacy Curriculum Yer J. Thao Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Graduate School of Education, Portland State University, Portland, USA Email: thaoy@ Received August 24 , 2011; revised October 4 , 2011; accepted October 30 , 2011 th th th This article examines the literacy issues in public school in the United States, and points out that current programs do not have a meaningful cultural connection to bicultural and bilingual students. The findings indicate that literacy must become part of bicultural and bilingual students’ reality in order to empower them. The pedagogical content of literacy must acknowledge bicultural and bilingual students’ culture so they can make connections to learning literacy. In order to help bicultural and bilingual students acquire the necessary academic skills to succeed on high-stakes tests that are demanded by No Child Left Behind Law, public schools need to infuse home culture literacy as part of literacy programs and practices. Keywords: Language Education; Multicultural Education; Cultural Literacy; Literacy Empowerment; Bicultural and Bilingual Education Literacy becomes a meaningful construct to the degree that it is viewed as a set of practices that functions to either power or disempower people (Freire Macedo, 1987: p. 141). Critical literacy theorist Cadiero-Kaplan (2004) states, “The curriculum of cultural literacy reflects an ideology based in the Western traditions and as such attempts to control not only the spaces where knowledge is produced, but to make a certain core knowledge legitimate” (p. 8). The purpose of this article is to discuss issues in literacy in public s