ERIC Number: EJ875225
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2010
Pages: 24
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1542-7587
EISSN: N/A
Teachers as Cultural Mediators: A Comparison of the Accountability Era to the Assimilation Era
Eick, Caroline; Valli, Linda
Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, v7 n1 p54-77 2010
This article examines teachers' relationships with foreign students during eras marked by large waves of immigration to the United States and by policies that shifted from cultural assimilation (1900-1920) to present-day accountability. We compare teachers' understandings of and instructional practices regarding foreign-born English language learners (ELL). Unlike their turn of the twentieth century counterparts whose straightforward task was assimilation, today's teachers are called upon to embrace contradictory aims of teaching to diversity and to standardized tests rooted in white middle-class norms. We consider strengths and weaknesses of each era and the implications of teachers' roles as cultural mediators for the shaping of citizen identity. (Contains 6 footnotes.)
Descriptors: Standardized Tests, Second Language Learning, Accountability, English (Second Language), Teaching Methods, Teacher Student Relationship, Immigration, Acculturation, Educational History, Comparative Analysis, Teacher Role, Immigrants, Cultural Pluralism, Ethnography, Federal Legislation
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: Teachers
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Laws, Policies, & Programs: No Child Left Behind Act 2001
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A