The Literacy Curriculum and Bilingual Education

Book excerpt: This book focuses on how ideologies of literacy influence literacy instruction and bilingual education policies. While classroom teachers in both English and other languages are given a wealth of curriculum guides and texts and are coached and trained as to how to best teach their subjects, issues of policy, ideology, or politics are rarely engaged or explored. The Literacy Curriculum and Bilingual Education offers a critical look at how literacy is defined, by whom, and for what purposes - illustrating not only how ideology influences policy and curriculum, but how our own ideologies relate to curriculum and teaching. Utilizing critical theory, this book demonstrates how functional, cultural, progressive, and critical ideologies - informed by particular social, political, and historical contexts - develop and situate policies for literacy programs and bilingual education.