Inquiry Question # 4

How do cultural attitudes towards literacy affect learning and teaching?

A lot of cultures believe that learning should focus on skills and that academic knowledge is a set of facts to be memorized. North American teachers, however, often support an emergent literacy development model, in which children explore and construct their own meaning in the environment where risk-taking is encouraged. It is important for teachers who have ELL students in their classrooms to understand that this perspective on developing literacy is not universal. All cultural groups have a unique way of transferring knowledge from generation to generation, and therefore, different ways of teaching and learning.

Anderson and Gunderson compare American approach and approaches in different cultures in regards to various aspects of learning. During early stages of literacy development, learners are expected to be making errors. Approximation is not frown upon, and creativity is, in fact, encouraged. This view is not shared by many cultures, where accuracy and precision are expected from day one. Many parents in other cultures will discourage their children from early reading, because "it's not real reading." Also within emergent literacy perspective, children are seen as constructing their own literacy. The teacher is just a facilitator fo learning. But in other cultures teacher is viewed as a source of information which students need to learn and retain. The learners role is to listen and remember. The process of acquiring knowledge often equals just memorization. In many cultures assessment in literacy is limited to comprehension questions at the end of each story, and other forms of assessment can be viewed as "unnecessary talking."

The educators' task is to recognize these incongruencies that exist across cultures and take steps to address them. Parent workshops and individual conferences with the parents of primary-grades learners should be conducted on a regular basis.  Parental involvement in the classroom is also a great way to broaden their views on learning and teaching pratices. Teachers can also provide a wide range of literacy activities, including some that are considered more traditional and that parents are more comfortable with. TEachers strive for providing the best literacy instruction possible, but they should not ignore students' out-of-school literacy experiences.


Anderson, J. & Gunderson, L. (1997). Literacy Learning Outside the Classroom.

                   The Reading Teacher. 50, 514-516.