Envisioning a Pedagogy of Cultural Reciprocity

About the session

Shaped by the growing transnational migration, students in K-12 schools in Canada are becoming increasingly diverse in their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. These superdiverse groups of students are also reported to be most at risk academically, suggesting the need to envision new approaches to address the unique needs of these students. Building on my research with multilingual learners' home and school learning experiences, I argue for the need to sensitize teachers to the importance of addressing cultural and linguistic diversity and the growing transnationalism present in their classrooms and propose a pedagogy of cultural reciprocity that enables teachers to gain knowledge, strategies, and pedagogical skills to address these realities. This pedagogy entails mutual appreciation of cultures, languages, and values between mainstream schools and multilingual learners and families that will enable teachers to create supportive learning environments, capitalize on multilingual learners' transnational/transcultural resources, and build reciprocal partnerships with families and communities.

About Dr. Guofang Li

Dr. Guofang Li is a professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Transnational/Global Perspectives of Language and Literacy Education of Children and Youth in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, UBC. Her program of research aims to improve the life success of immigrant and minority students by addressing the cultural, linguistic, instructional, and structural barriers in their literacy learning and academic achievement both in school, at home, and in the communities. Her recent research interests span longitudinal studies of immigrant children's bicultural and bi-literacy development through school, children and youth's new literacies practices in and out of school, technology-enhanced language teaching in primary and secondary schools, pre- and in-service TESOL teacher education, and current language and educational policy and practice in globalized contexts. Her work and contribution has been recognized by numerous national and international awards from American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the Literary Research Association (LRA).