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Language, culture and teaching: Critical perspectives for a new century
By Sonia Nieto
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002. Paperback $29.95. ISBN 0-8058-3738-8
Against a backdrop of a large jump in immigration to the United States over the past 25 years, resulting in an influx of 'diverse' students, Sonia Nieto starts from the point that teachers' good intentions alone are insufficient for successfully educating a wide range of students. Although aimed primarily at the United States context, the issues of racism, culture, language, and multiculturalism that she identifies apply to any country with diverse students. For many immigrants, total assimilation is no longer the goal it was at other times. Instead, modern transportation and communications networks have enabled some immigrants to maintain closer contact than previously with their home countries. Cultural maintenance has thus become important and contested ground, contributing to a shift in the way the United States sees itself-- with metaphors changing from `melting pot' to 'salad' to 'tapestry'.
Nieto's gracefully written book is designed mainly for pre- and in-service teachers, who are mostly white women from working and lower-middle class backgrounds with little experience with racial minorities. Her admirable objective is to pull together theoretical notions about language, culture, diversity, and pedagogy with practical approaches to teaching a variety of students. Nieto carefully constructs a case for the value of multicultural education for all students-including white middle-class students-and for all teachers through the process of identifying their own culture and the privilege that their skin colour, gender, social class and sexual orientation may give them.
The book comprises four sections, three of which are aimed at teachers, and one at teacher educators. Each section consists of an introduction to the previously published pieces that Nieto adapted for this collection. Each chapter is supported by a set of critical questions; classroom activities; community-based activities and ideas for advocacy; and an annotated bibliography for further reading. These enriching heuristics will help teacher educators frame for their students the important issues Nieto covers.
Nieto grounds her approach in sociocultural learning theory, pointing out that Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development is an inherently social notion, not simply a relationship between one student and teacher. In Chapter 1 she links sociocultural theory to the critical pedagogy advocated...