Los poetas

Abstract

Research on language and literacy development for English language learners has provided extensive data and theoretical frameworks to suggest different practices—nonprescriptive or homogenous—to effectively engage these students in success-ful literacy learning experiences. Among the most relevant to this chapter are sociocultural theories that look at the connections among language, literacy, and cul-ture (Huerta-Macías, 1998; Pérez et al., 1998; Soto, 1997; Trueba, 1990) and the critical role of honoring and welcoming the students’ home language and culture into the learning process to develop inclusive and culturally democratic biliteracy spaces (Darder, 1997). Related to this notion of home, language, and cultural democracy is also the idea that students from diverse linguistic backgrounds come to the schooling process with valuable information and experiences from their home and their communities or “funds of knowledge” (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & González, 1992) that should be considered in the development of a relevant cur-riculum that allows for the students’ voices and experiences to be heard and be pre-sent (Martínez-Roldán, 2003).