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Preparing Teachers for Dialectally Diverse Classrooms

The Department of Instruction and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, 5111 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15260; agodley{at}pitt.edu. A former middle and high school teacher, she now researches linguistics-based grammar and language instruction, literacy and identity, and literacy and gender in urban high school English classrooms

Julie Sweetland, Research Specialist

The Center for Inspired Teaching, 1436 U Street, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20009; julie{at}inspiredteaching.org. She has several years’ experience as a classroom teacher in urban contexts and a background in curriculum design. Her research interests include applied socio-linguistics, language variation, elementary education, language arts instruction, and teacher preparation

Rebecca S. Wheeler, Associate Professor of Language and Literacy

The Department of English, Christopher Newport University, 201 Ratcliff Hall, One University Place, Newport News, VA 23606; rwheeler{at}cnu.edu. Her research interests relate to language varieties in educational settings, teachers’ and students’ attitudes toward linguistic diversity, and sociolinguistic techniques for teaching Standard English in dialectally diverse class-rooms

Angela Minnici, Senior Research Associate

The Center on Education Policy, 1001 Connecticut Avenue NW, Suite 522, Washington, DC 20036; angela.minnici{at}cep-dc.org. Her research interests include educational policy, educational equity, and teacher education reform

Brian D. Carpenter, Teaching Fellow and doctoral student in English Education

The Department of Instruction and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, 5500 Wesley W. Posvar Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15260; brc10{at}pitt.edu. His current research interests include issues of language and power, and sociocultural theory

Scholarship on dialect diversity in classrooms has yielded two seemingly incompatible lines of research. Although numerous pedagogical approaches have been shown to provide productive alternatives to traditional responses to stigmatized dialects, research on public perceptions and teachers’ attitudes suggests that negative beliefs about stigmatized dialects and the students who speak them are deeply entrenched in U.S. society. The authors argue that teacher preparation grounded in socio-linguistic understandings of dialect diversity can help teachers develop productive pedagogical responses to students’ language choices. Drawing on previous research and their own work with teachers, the authors present a framework for preparing teachers for dialectally diverse classrooms. Recommendations include anticipating resistance, addressing issues of identity and power, and emphasizing pedagogical applications of sociolinguistic research.

Educational Researcher, Vol. 35, No. 8, 30-37 (2006)
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X035008030


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