This text is designed to help preservice and in-service teachers identify pathways to productive teaching and learning for students from culturally and experientially diverse backgrounds.
To better serve an increasingly diverse population, teachers need to be competent in selecting and developing culturally responsive curricula and instructional approaches that better facilitate learning for all students. They must be able to attend to diversity within and across cultural groups, and validate students' cultural knowledge acquired outside the classroom. To provide equitable access to learning, they must be able to strategically select or develop instructional approaches that build upon their students' learning propensities, cognitive schemata, experiential backgrounds, and perceptions. The chapter authors in this text present ways of understanding ones' own thinking (metacognition), and ways of thinking about teaching and learning situations and constructing productive strategies. The reader is engaged in: