Your FREE CTEL 3 Flashcards 2026 – 200+ Cards

CTEL 3 Flashcards

Culture

The shared, learned, and dynamic system of values, beliefs, norms, behaviors, and meanings that a group uses to interpret the world and guide daily life. Culture is not biologically inherited — it is acquired through living in a community and changes over time.

Surface culture

The visible, easily observed elements of a culture — food, dress, holidays, music, dance, art, and language. These are the parts of the cultural 'iceberg' above the waterline, but they represent only a small fraction of what culture actually is.

Deep culture

The invisible elements of culture below the surface — values, beliefs, assumptions, attitudes toward time and authority, communication styles, gender roles, and concepts of fairness. Most cultural misunderstanding in classrooms comes from deep, not surface, culture.

Iceberg model of culture

A metaphor showing that observable surface culture (food, dress, holidays) is a small tip above water, while the much larger mass of deep culture (values, beliefs, norms, assumptions) lies hidden beneath the surface and drives behavior.

Cultural universals

Practices, institutions, or needs found in every human culture — such as language, family structures, food customs, rites of passage, art, and beliefs about the supernatural — even though the specific forms they take vary widely from group to group.

Cultural relativism

The principle that a culture's beliefs and practices should be understood on their own terms, from within that culture's frame of reference, rather than judged against the standards of another culture. It is the conceptual opposite of ethnocentrism.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to view one's own culture as the natural center and to judge other cultures as inferior, strange, or wrong by comparison. In teaching, it leads to deficit thinking about students whose home cultures differ from the dominant school culture.

Enculturation

The lifelong process by which a person learns the values, norms, language, and behaviors of their own first or home culture, usually beginning in childhood through family and community. It is how culture is transmitted across generations.

Acculturation

The process of cultural and psychological change that results when individuals or groups from different cultures come into sustained contact. For English learners it describes adapting to a new (school/host) culture while often retaining elements of the home culture.

Assimilation

A form of acculturation in which an individual or group gradually absorbs the dominant culture and gives up the distinctive features of the home culture and language. Subtractive when it means losing the first language and cultural identity.

Accommodation (cultural)

An acculturation outcome in which a person adapts to and participates in the dominant culture while still maintaining their home culture and language. It supports a bicultural identity rather than replacing one culture with another.

Biculturalism

The ability to function competently in two cultures, drawing on the values, language, and behaviors of each as appropriate. A bicultural student can navigate both home and school cultures without abandoning either, an asset additive schooling tries to build.

Additive acculturation

A pattern in which a new culture and language are added to the student's existing home culture and language, so both are retained and valued. It is associated with stronger identity, well-being, and academic outcomes for English learners.

Subtractive acculturation

A pattern in which the home language and culture are lost or replaced as the new culture is adopted, often under social pressure. It is linked to identity conflict, family communication loss, and poorer long-term academic outcomes.

Integration (acculturation strategy)

In Berry's model, the strategy in which an individual maintains their home culture while also participating in the larger society. Integration is generally associated with the best psychological and academic adjustment among newcomers.

Marginalization (acculturation strategy)

In Berry's acculturation model, the outcome in which a person neither maintains the home culture nor connects with the host culture, often due to exclusion or discrimination. It is linked to the poorest adjustment and well-being.

Separation (acculturation strategy)

In Berry's model, the strategy in which an individual maintains the home culture but avoids contact with or participation in the dominant society, sometimes as a response to rejection or discrimination.

Culture shock

The disorientation, anxiety, and stress a person feels when immersed in an unfamiliar culture with different norms, language, and expectations. Newcomer English learners commonly experience it, which can temporarily affect learning and behavior.

Stages of cultural adjustment

The typical phases newcomers move through: the honeymoon (excitement), culture shock/crisis (frustration and disorientation), gradual recovery/adjustment (learning to cope), and adaptation (functioning comfortably in the new culture).

Cultural identity

The sense of belonging a person derives from membership in a cultural group, shaped by ethnicity, language, religion, values, and shared history. For English learners, a secure cultural identity supports confidence, motivation, and engagement.

Identity development

The evolving process by which individuals form a sense of who they are, including their ethnic and cultural self. For adolescent English learners it often involves negotiating between home culture and the surrounding mainstream culture.

Ethnic identity

The part of a person's self-concept tied to membership in an ethnic group — including shared ancestry, language, traditions, and a sense of belonging. A strong, positive ethnic identity is protective for the well-being of immigrant-origin youth.

Individualism (cultural dimension)

A cultural orientation that prioritizes individual goals, personal achievement, independence, and self-expression. Many U.S. school practices — individual grading, raising your hand, standing out — reflect an individualist orientation.

Collectivism (cultural dimension)

A cultural orientation that prioritizes group harmony, interdependence, family and community obligations, and shared achievement over individual recognition. Students from collectivist cultures may prefer cooperation over competition.

High-context culture

A communication style in which much meaning is carried implicitly — through shared background, relationships, nonverbal cues, and situation — rather than stated directly in words. Indirectness and reading between the lines are valued.

Low-context culture

A communication style in which meaning is conveyed explicitly and directly through words, with little reliance on shared context. Mainstream U.S. classroom discourse tends toward low-context, explicit communication.

Power distance

A cultural dimension describing how much a society accepts unequal distribution of power and authority. In high-power-distance cultures, students may show great deference to teachers and rarely question or make eye contact with authority figures.

Cultural capital

Bourdieu's term for the knowledge, language, behaviors, and credentials valued by the dominant institutions of a society (including schools). Students whose home cultural capital matches the school's are often advantaged; mismatch can disadvantage others.

Funds of knowledge

The accumulated bodies of knowledge, skills, and practices that exist in students' households and communities (e.g., farming, trades, caregiving, multilingual brokering). Moll and colleagues argue teachers should tap these assets in instruction.

Community cultural wealth

Yosso's asset-based framework identifying the cultural strengths communities of color bring to school — including aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant capital — countering deficit views of cultural capital.

Stereotype

An oversimplified, fixed, and overgeneralized belief about all members of a group. Even 'positive' stereotypes are harmful because they erase individual differences and can shape how teachers perceive and treat English learners.

Prejudice

A negative attitude or prejudgment toward a person or group based on their membership in that group rather than on knowledge of the individual. Prejudice is the attitude; discrimination is the behavior that acts on it.

Discrimination

Unfair treatment or denial of opportunity directed at individuals because of their group membership (race, ethnicity, language, national origin). In schools it can appear as lowered expectations, exclusion, or inequitable access to programs.

Bias

A tendency, often unconscious, to favor or disfavor people or groups in ways that affect judgment. Teacher bias can show up in expectations, discipline, grading, and which students are referred to gifted or special education.

Implicit bias

Attitudes or stereotypes that operate automatically and unconsciously, influencing perception and behavior without intention or awareness. Because it is unconscious, it requires deliberate reflection and structures to counteract in teaching.

Microaggression

A brief, everyday slight, insult, or invalidation — often unintentional — that communicates a hostile or demeaning message to members of a marginalized group, such as praising an English learner's English as 'surprisingly good.'

Deficit view (deficit thinking)

The belief that students from non-dominant cultural or linguistic backgrounds are lacking — that their home language, culture, or family is a deficiency to overcome. It locates failure in the student rather than in inequitable schooling.

Asset-based view

The stance that students' home languages, cultures, and experiences are resources and strengths to build on rather than problems to fix. It is the foundation of culturally responsive and additive approaches to educating English learners.

Schema (cultural)

Mental frameworks of prior knowledge and experience that people use to interpret new information. Because schemas are culturally shaped, a text or task assuming mainstream U.S. background knowledge can disadvantage students with different schemas.

Cultural mismatch (cultural discontinuity)

A gap between the cultural norms, communication styles, and expectations of a student's home and those of the school. Unaddressed mismatch can cause misunderstanding, disengagement, and lowered achievement among English learners.

Wait time and cultural norms

The pause a teacher allows after asking a question. Norms about pausing, overlapping speech, and silence vary by culture; too short a wait time can disadvantage students from cultures that value reflection before responding.

Participation structures

The culturally shaped rules for how to take part in classroom talk — when to speak, how to get a turn, how to address the teacher. Mismatch between home and school participation structures can be misread as disengagement or rudeness.

Proxemics

The culturally governed use of personal and interpersonal space. Comfortable conversational distance, the meaning of touch, and crowding norms differ across cultures and can cause misreadings in cross-cultural classroom interactions.

Kinesics

The study of body language — gestures, posture, facial expression, and eye contact — as communication. Because their meanings are culture-specific, gestures or eye-contact norms can be misinterpreted between teacher and student.

Eye contact (cultural variation)

Norms for eye contact vary by culture: in some, direct eye contact with an adult or authority figure shows respect; in others, avoiding it does. A teacher who misreads lowered eyes as defiance is applying an ethnocentric norm.

Immigration / migration experience

The journey and adjustment of moving to a new country, which shapes students' identities, schooling history, and well-being. Factors include reason for migrating, conditions of departure, family separation, and reception in the new society.

Voluntary vs. involuntary minorities (Ogbu)

Ogbu's distinction between immigrants who came by choice seeking opportunity (voluntary) and groups incorporated through conquest, slavery, or colonization (involuntary). He argued the two relate to schooling and the dominant culture differently.

Refugee students

Students who fled their home country due to war, persecution, or disaster. They may have interrupted formal education, experienced trauma, and have urgent social-emotional as well as academic and language needs upon arriving at school.

Generational status

A student's place in the immigration timeline — first generation (foreign-born), second generation (U.S.-born to immigrant parents), and beyond. It affects language proficiency, cultural orientation, and relationship to schooling.

Students with interrupted formal education (SIFE/SLIFE)

English learners whose schooling was disrupted or limited before arriving, leaving gaps in literacy and content knowledge. They need targeted foundational instruction alongside language development, not placement based on age alone.

Generation 1.5

Students who immigrated as children or were born to immigrants and grew up bridging two cultures and languages. They often have strong oral English but gaps in academic literacy, falling between newcomer and native-English profiles.

Intergroup relations

The patterns of contact, attitude, and interaction between members of different cultural, ethnic, or linguistic groups. Improving them in schools reduces prejudice and builds the inclusive climate English learners need to thrive.

Contact hypothesis (Allport)

The theory that prejudice between groups decreases when members interact under favorable conditions: equal status, common goals, cooperation, and institutional support. It underlies cooperative, mixed-group strategies for reducing bias.

In-group / out-group

The distinction between the group a person identifies with (in-group) and groups they see as outside it (out-group). The tendency to favor the in-group and stereotype the out-group fuels prejudice and exclusion in classrooms.

Acculturative stress

The psychological strain that arises from the demands of adapting to a new culture — language barriers, discrimination, identity conflict, and family role changes. It can affect students' concentration, behavior, and academic performance.

Heritage language

The language of a student's family and cultural community, often a home language other than English. Maintaining it supports identity, family connection, cognitive benefits, and, through transfer, English and academic development.

Language loss / language shift

The gradual decline or replacement of the home language as a community or individual adopts the dominant language, often across generations. It can weaken family communication and a student's connection to cultural identity.

Identity and language for English learners

The close link between a student's home language and their sense of self. When school devalues the home language, students may feel pressure to choose between identity and success; valuing it supports both belonging and learning.

Cultural values and academic achievement

The way home cultural values — about effort, cooperation, authority, time, and the purpose of school — interact with classroom expectations. Alignment supports engagement; unrecognized differences can be misread as low ability or motivation.

Prior knowledge and culture

The culturally specific experiences and background knowledge students bring to learning. Effective teachers activate and build on students' prior knowledge rather than assuming a single mainstream set of experiences.

Cultural pluralism

A view of society in which diverse cultural groups maintain their distinct identities while participating in a shared larger community — often pictured as a 'salad bowl' or 'mosaic' rather than a melting pot.

Melting pot

The assimilationist metaphor that immigrants should blend into a single homogeneous national culture, shedding distinct languages and traditions. It contrasts with cultural pluralism, which values maintained diversity.

Race vs. ethnicity vs. culture

Race is a socially constructed category based on perceived physical traits; ethnicity is shared ancestry, language, and traditions; culture is the learned system of meanings a group shares. The three overlap but are not the same.

Intersectionality

Crenshaw's concept that social identities — race, ethnicity, language, gender, class, immigration status — overlap and interact, creating compounded and distinct experiences of advantage or disadvantage that cannot be understood one factor at a time.

Cultural diversity

The presence and coexistence of multiple cultural, ethnic, and linguistic groups within a setting such as a classroom, school, or community. CTEL treats this diversity as a resource for learning rather than an obstacle.

Worldview

The overarching, culturally shaped framework of assumptions through which a group interprets reality — including ideas about nature, time, relationships, and the self. Differing worldviews shape how students approach learning and knowledge.

Cultural norms

The shared, often unspoken rules and expectations that guide acceptable behavior within a culture — covering greetings, gender roles, respect, and time. Classroom expectations are themselves cultural norms, not neutral universals.

Time orientation (monochronic vs. polychronic)

A cultural dimension of how time is used: monochronic cultures value punctuality and doing one thing at a time; polychronic cultures treat time more flexibly and prioritize relationships, which can shape views of deadlines and schedules.

Acculturation gap (intergenerational)

The difference in acculturation rates between immigrant children, who often adapt quickly, and their parents, who adapt more slowly. The gap can strain family relationships and shift roles, affecting students' home support and well-being.

Language brokering

When children of immigrant families translate and interpret for parents in interactions with schools, doctors, and agencies. It builds skills but can also place adult responsibilities on students and affect their schooling and stress.

Cultural socialization

The process by which families teach children about their heritage, traditions, and ethnic pride. Positive cultural socialization is linked to stronger ethnic identity and better adjustment for children of immigrants.

Hidden curriculum

The unstated cultural norms, values, and expectations that schools transmit alongside the formal curriculum — such as competition, individualism, and particular communication styles. Students unfamiliar with these implicit rules can be disadvantaged.

Color-blindness (color-blind ideology)

The stance of claiming not to 'see' race or culture in the name of equal treatment. Though well-intentioned, it ignores real inequities and the importance of students' identities, undermining culturally responsive teaching.

Model minority myth

The stereotype that a particular ethnic group (often Asian Americans) is uniformly high-achieving. It masks within-group diversity and need, pressures students, and is used to dismiss the structural barriers other groups face.

Cultural broker (teacher as)

A teacher who helps students bridge home and school cultures — interpreting expectations in both directions and validating the home culture. Acting as a cultural broker reduces cultural discontinuity for English learners.

Self-concept and culture

How a student's sense of self and self-esteem are shaped by cultural belonging and by how school treats their culture. Affirming the home culture supports a positive self-concept; devaluing it can undermine confidence and engagement.

Cultural congruence

The degree of fit between the culture of the home and the culture of the school. Greater congruence — achieved by drawing home culture into instruction — supports comfort, participation, and achievement for diverse learners.

Ethnic and cultural pride

A positive sense of value and belonging connected to one's ethnic and cultural group. Fostered through affirmation and representation, it is protective for the identity and resilience of immigrant and minority students.

Norms vs. values

Values are a culture's deeply held beliefs about what is good and important; norms are the specific rules of behavior that express those values. Understanding both helps teachers interpret student behavior without ethnocentric judgment.

Symbolic culture

The system of symbols — language, gestures, rituals, art, and objects — through which a group communicates meaning and identity. Recognizing the symbols meaningful to students helps teachers honor and connect to their cultures.

Cultural adaptation (long-term)

The ongoing, longer-term process by which newcomers find a stable, comfortable way of living in a new culture after the initial shock — whether through assimilation, integration, separation, or some blend over time.

Stereotype threat

Steele's finding that awareness of a negative stereotype about one's group can, by itself, depress performance on a task in that domain. Anxiety about confirming the stereotype consumes working memory and lowers achievement.

Institutional / systemic discrimination

Inequity built into the policies, structures, and routine practices of institutions like schools — such as tracking, inequitable funding, or biased referral patterns — rather than the act of any single individual.

Cultural relativism vs. moral universals

The tension between understanding practices within their cultural context and upholding universal standards (e.g., child safety). Cultural relativism guides empathy in teaching but does not override students' rights and safety.

Family structure (cultural variation)

The culturally varied makeup of families — nuclear, extended, multigenerational, or community-based — and who holds authority and caregiving roles. Recognizing diverse family structures helps teachers communicate and engage families effectively.

Religion and culture in schooling

The role religious beliefs and practices play in students' cultural identity, daily routines, holidays, dress, and dietary needs. Culturally aware teachers accommodate and respect these within school policy and the law.

Acculturation and academic achievement

The link between how students adapt culturally and how they perform: additive, integrated paths that retain home culture are associated with better achievement, while subtractive or marginalized paths are linked to poorer outcomes.

Cultural identity development models

Stage models (e.g., Phinney's ethnic identity stages) describing how youth move from an unexamined identity, through exploration, to an achieved, secure sense of their ethnic and cultural self — relevant to adolescent English learners.

Communication style (direct vs. indirect)

A culturally shaped dimension of how people convey messages — stating things plainly versus implying them to preserve harmony or save face. Misreading an indirect style as evasive (or a direct one as rude) creates classroom friction.

Saving face

Acting to protect one's own or another's dignity and social standing, valued strongly in many cultures. A student from such a culture may be reluctant to admit confusion or be corrected publicly, which teachers should handle sensitively.

Culturally shaped learning preferences

Tendencies in how students prefer to learn — for example cooperative versus competitive, or relational versus task-focused — that are influenced by home culture. Teachers vary methods rather than assuming one 'normal' style.

Demographics of California's English learners

The makeup of the state's English learner population, the large majority of whom speak Spanish, with many other languages represented. Understanding this diversity informs culturally and linguistically responsive teaching.

Newcomer

A recently arrived immigrant student in the early stages of learning English and adjusting to U.S. schooling. Newcomers have distinctive academic, linguistic, cultural, and social-emotional needs in their first years.

Cultural identity vs. national identity

The distinction between belonging to a cultural or ethnic group and identifying with a nation-state. Students can hold multiple, layered identities at once, and schooling should not force a choice between heritage and new-country belonging.

Discrimination's effect on achievement

The documented way that experiencing prejudice and discrimination — from peers, teachers, or systems — harms students' motivation, sense of belonging, mental health, and academic performance over time.

Cultural transmission

The passing of cultural knowledge, values, and practices from one generation or member to another, through families, communities, and schools. Schools are powerful agents of cultural transmission, including of dominant-culture norms.

Multiple cultural memberships

The reality that every person belongs simultaneously to many overlapping cultural groups — national, ethnic, regional, religious, generational, and more — so no student can be fully understood through a single group label.

Dominant culture

The culture whose language, values, and norms are treated as standard and built into a society's institutions, including schools. Recognizing the dominant culture as one culture among many is key to avoiding ethnocentric teaching.

Cultural dynamic nature

The principle that culture is not fixed but constantly changes through contact, generation, technology, and individual variation. Treating any culture as static and uniform leads to stereotyping rather than understanding.

Within-group variation

The wide diversity that exists among members of any single cultural or ethnic group, due to region, class, generation, religion, and individual experience. It cautions teachers against assuming all members of a group are alike.

Culturally responsive teaching (Gay)

Geneva Gay's framework of using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and frames of reference of diverse students to make learning more relevant and effective. It is validating, comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory.

Culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings)

Gloria Ladson-Billings's framework resting on three pillars: high academic success for all students, cultural competence (affirming students' home cultures), and sociopolitical/critical consciousness to identify and challenge inequity.

Culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris)

Django Paris's extension of culturally relevant pedagogy that aims not just to draw on but to sustain and foster students' cultural and linguistic pluralism as a valued goal of schooling, rather than a bridge to the dominant culture.

Cultural competence (teaching)

The ability of educators to understand, respect, and work effectively across cultures — including awareness of one's own cultural lens and bias. It is the second pillar of culturally relevant pedagogy and a foundation for inclusive teaching.

Sociopolitical consciousness (critical consciousness)

Ladson-Billings's third pillar: helping students recognize, question, and act on the social and political inequities affecting their communities. It positions students as agents of change, not just recipients of content.

Validating and affirming home cultures

Instructional practices that treat students' home languages, traditions, and experiences as legitimate and valuable in the classroom — through curriculum, materials, and interaction — building belonging and engagement for English learners.

Asset-based pedagogy

Teaching that begins from what students bring — their languages, cultures, and funds of knowledge — and builds on those strengths, in contrast to deficit approaches that focus on what students are presumed to lack.

Funds of knowledge in instruction

Designing lessons that draw on the household and community knowledge students bring, often discovered through home visits or family interviews, to connect academic content to students' real experiences and expertise.

Family engagement (English learner families)

Building genuine, two-way relationships with the families of English learners that respect their culture and language, welcome their input, and treat them as partners — not just recipients of information — in their children's education.

Home-school partnership

A collaborative, reciprocal relationship between families and the school built on mutual respect and shared responsibility for student learning, going beyond one-way reporting to genuine participation in decisions.

Community as a resource

Treating the local community — its members, organizations, languages, and knowledge — as an asset for instruction, through partnerships, guest experts, service learning, and culturally relevant materials.

Inclusive classroom climate

A learning environment in which every student feels safe, respected, represented, and valued regardless of culture or language. It is a precondition for the risk-taking and participation that language learning requires.

Equity vs. equality

Equality gives everyone the same resources; equity gives each student what they specifically need to reach the same opportunity. Inclusive teaching of English learners requires equity — differentiated supports — not identical treatment.

Anti-bias education

An approach that actively helps students recognize and challenge prejudice, stereotyping, and unfairness, and that builds positive identity and respect for diversity. It addresses bias directly rather than hoping it disappears on its own.

Cross-cultural communication

Communicating effectively and respectfully across cultural differences in language, nonverbal cues, and norms. Teachers build it by learning students' communication styles, checking assumptions, and clarifying expectations explicitly.

Differentiation for diverse learners

Adjusting content, process, product, and learning environment to meet the varied cultural, linguistic, and readiness needs of students. For English learners it includes scaffolds, multiple means of expression, and culturally relevant examples.

Addressing bias in instructional materials

Critically evaluating textbooks, readings, and media for stereotypes, omissions, and a single dominant perspective, then supplementing or replacing them so the curriculum reflects and respects students' diverse backgrounds.

Curriculum representation (windows and mirrors)

Bishop's idea that curriculum should offer 'mirrors' reflecting students' own cultures and 'windows' into the lives of others. Diverse representation affirms identity and broadens understanding across the classroom.

Multicultural education (Banks)

James Banks's framework for reforming schooling so all students have equal opportunity, organized around content integration, knowledge construction, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy, and an empowering school culture.

Banks's levels of curriculum integration

Banks's four approaches to multicultural content: contributions (heroes and holidays), additive (adding content without restructuring), transformation (changing perspective), and social action (students act on issues). Higher levels are deeper.

Heroes-and-holidays approach (tourist curriculum)

A surface-level multicultural approach that addresses diversity only through occasional celebrations, foods, and famous figures. It risks trivializing cultures and is the weakest level of integration in Banks's model.

Advocacy for English learners

The teacher's professional responsibility to promote equitable access, appropriate services, and fair treatment for English learners within the school and system — speaking up against inequitable policies and practices.

Sociopolitical context of EL education

The historical, legal, and political conditions — laws, policies, public attitudes, and power relations — that shape how English learners are educated. Teachers must understand this context to teach and advocate effectively.

Lau v. Nichols (1974)

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling that providing identical instruction to students who do not understand English denies them a meaningful, equal education, requiring schools to take steps to address English learners' language needs.

Castañeda v. Pickard (1981)

The federal case establishing a three-part test for EL programs: they must be based on sound educational theory, implemented effectively with adequate resources, and evaluated and adjusted to actually overcome language barriers.

Equal Educational Opportunities Act (1974)

Federal law requiring states and districts to take 'appropriate action' to overcome language barriers that impede students' equal participation in instructional programs — a key legal basis for serving English learners.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (1964)

Federal law prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs receiving federal funds. It underlies the obligation to provide English learners meaningful access to education (basis for Lau v. Nichols).

Proposition 227 (California, 1998)

A California initiative that largely restricted bilingual education in favor of structured English immersion. It shaped EL program models in the state for years before being effectively reversed by later policy.

Proposition 58 (California, 2016)

A California measure that repealed most of Proposition 227's restrictions, restoring local flexibility to offer bilingual and dual-language programs and reflecting a more additive, multilingual policy stance.

California EL Roadmap

California's state policy framework affirming that English learners' home languages and cultures are assets, calling for intellectually rich, asset-oriented, and systemic support across the system to help ELs thrive.

Program models for English learners

The range of approaches to educating ELs — structured English immersion, transitional bilingual, maintenance/developmental bilingual, and dual-language immersion — differing in how much they use and sustain the home language.

Dual-language immersion

A program in which students learn academic content in two languages, often including both English learners and English speakers, aiming for bilingualism, biliteracy, and cross-cultural competence — an additive, asset-based model.

Translanguaging

An instructional stance and practice that lets multilingual students draw flexibly on their full linguistic repertoire — including the home language — to make meaning and learn, rather than keeping languages strictly separate.

Scaffolding for English learners

Temporary, targeted supports — visuals, sentence frames, graphic organizers, modeling, primary-language resources — that let ELs access grade-level content and language, then are gradually removed as students gain independence.

Comprehensible input in instruction

Making content understandable to ELs through context, visuals, gestures, simplified language, and connection to prior knowledge, so students can learn academic material while their English is still developing.

Cooperative learning (cultural fit)

Structured group work in which students work interdependently toward shared goals. It aligns with collectivist cultural values, lowers the affective filter, and provides ELs with peer language models and practice.

Culturally relevant materials

Texts, examples, images, and tasks that reflect students' cultures, languages, and experiences. They increase engagement and comprehension and signal that students' identities belong in the academic content.

High expectations for all students

Holding and communicating the belief that every student, including English learners, can achieve rigorous academic goals with the right support. It is the first pillar of culturally relevant pedagogy and counters deficit thinking.

Caring and relationship-building

Establishing warm, respectful, trusting relationships with students and families as the foundation for learning. In culturally responsive teaching, authentic care ('warm demander') combines high expectations with strong support.

Warm demander

A teacher who pairs genuine caring and cultural respect with consistently high expectations and active support — insisting that students can and will succeed while providing the scaffolding to get there.

Cultural mediation in the classroom

Bridging between the cultural expectations of the school and those of students' homes — explaining classroom norms explicitly while honoring home norms — so students can participate without being asked to abandon their culture.

Two-way communication with families

Engaging families as partners by both sharing information and genuinely seeking their knowledge, goals, and concerns — using interpreters, accessible formats, and home languages to make participation real.

Overcoming barriers to family involvement

Recognizing and reducing obstacles families of ELs face — language, work schedules, transportation, unfamiliarity with U.S. school norms, or past negative experiences — through flexible, welcoming, culturally responsive outreach.

Home visits

A family-engagement practice in which educators visit students' homes to build relationships, learn families' funds of knowledge, and understand students' lives, fostering trust and informing culturally relevant instruction.

Interpreters and translated communication

Providing qualified interpreters and translated materials so families with limited English can fully understand and participate in their child's education — a legal and ethical element of equitable family engagement.

Culturally responsive classroom management

Managing behavior in ways that account for cultural differences in communication, movement, and participation — building relationships and clear, co-constructed expectations rather than applying one cultural standard as universal.

Disproportionality (special education referral)

The over- or under-representation of certain cultural, racial, or linguistic groups in special education or discipline. Culturally responsive practice and careful assessment help distinguish language acquisition from genuine disability.

Distinguishing language difference from disability

The need to determine whether an EL's academic struggle stems from normal second-language development or from an actual learning disability, using appropriate, culturally and linguistically fair assessment before referral.

Bias in assessment

When tests or grading systematically disadvantage students because of cultural or linguistic background rather than measuring true knowledge. Inclusive teaching uses fair, multiple, and culturally aware forms of assessment.

Authentic and multiple assessments

Using varied, performance-based ways for students to demonstrate learning — projects, portfolios, observations — rather than relying on a single language-heavy test, giving ELs fairer chances to show what they know.

Building on prior knowledge

Beginning instruction by activating and connecting to what students already know from their cultural and personal experiences, making new academic content meaningful and accessible to diverse learners.

Culturally responsive curriculum design

Planning units and lessons that integrate diverse perspectives, draw on students' funds of knowledge, and address real issues relevant to students' communities, rather than a single dominant-culture narrative.

Empowering school culture

Banks's dimension calling for examining and reshaping school-wide practices — grouping, discipline, participation, and staff interactions — so they promote equity and belonging for students from all groups.

Prejudice reduction (in teaching)

Banks's dimension focused on lessons and activities that help students develop positive attitudes toward different cultural groups, often through structured, cooperative intergroup contact and accurate, humanizing content.

Knowledge construction (Banks)

Banks's dimension of helping students understand how the cultural assumptions and perspectives of knowledge-makers shape what counts as knowledge — teaching them to examine bias and viewpoint within the disciplines.

Content integration (Banks)

Banks's dimension of drawing on examples, content, and contributions from a range of cultures to illustrate key concepts in a subject — done substantively rather than as token add-ons.

Equity pedagogy (Banks)

Banks's dimension of adapting teaching methods so that students from diverse racial, cultural, and language groups all have a fair chance to achieve — matching instruction to students' learning needs and strengths.

Sheltered instruction (SDAIE)

Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English: teaching grade-level content to ELs using scaffolds, visuals, and language supports so they learn the subject matter and academic English at the same time.

Affirming bilingualism / biliteracy

Treating students' ability in two languages as an academic and cognitive asset to be developed, not a problem — encouraging home-language use and literacy alongside English in an additive approach.

Culturally responsive feedback

Giving feedback in ways sensitive to cultural norms around correction, face, and public versus private interaction, so that students experience it as supportive rather than shaming.

Student voice and agency

Inviting students to share perspectives, make choices, and shape their learning. Honoring student voice — especially from groups historically marginalized — supports engagement, identity, and the empowerment goals of equitable teaching.

Critical literacy

Teaching students to read texts actively for whose perspectives are included or missing, what assumptions are made, and how power operates — connecting literacy to the sociopolitical awareness of culturally relevant pedagogy.

Service learning and civic engagement

Connecting classroom learning to action that addresses real community needs or issues, embodying the social-action level of multicultural education and developing students' sense of agency and belonging.

Welcoming environment for newcomers

Deliberate practices — buddies, visuals, primary-language signage, predictable routines, and warmth — that help newly arrived English learners feel safe and oriented, easing culture shock and supporting early learning.

Reflecting on one's own cultural lens

The educator's ongoing self-examination of how their own culture, assumptions, and biases shape expectations and interactions — a starting point for becoming culturally competent and responsive.

Intergroup relations in instruction

Designing classroom interaction — mixed cooperative groups, shared goals, equal-status roles — to build positive relationships across cultural and linguistic groups and reduce prejudice, applying the contact hypothesis.

Culturally responsive use of grouping

Arranging student groupings to mix backgrounds, support language development, and avoid resegregation or stigmatizing ELs, while giving every student equal-status roles and access to rigorous content.

Respecting religious and cultural practices

Accommodating students' religious and cultural needs — dietary restrictions, holidays, prayer, dress — within school policy, signaling respect and supporting belonging for diverse learners.

Building background knowledge

Deliberately providing the cultural and content schema a text or task assumes, so English learners are not penalized for lacking mainstream background knowledge unrelated to the skill being taught.

Inclusive language and labeling

Using respectful, accurate, self-chosen terms for students' identities and avoiding labels that stigmatize or essentialize. Language choices shape climate and signal whether students' identities are valued.

Culturally responsive lesson example

Connecting an academic concept to students' lived cultural experiences — for instance using local community practices, family stories, or home-language cognates — to make abstract content concrete and relevant.

Equitable access to rigorous curriculum

Ensuring English learners are not relegated to remedial or low-track classes but have access to grade-level, college-preparatory content with appropriate language support — a core equity commitment.

Parent and community advocacy

Encouraging and equipping families and communities to advocate for English learners, and partnering with them — recognizing families as powerful allies in securing equitable, high-quality education.

Cultural broker and liaison roles

Using staff, community members, or bilingual liaisons who bridge home and school cultures to build trust with families, interpret expectations both ways, and strengthen home-school partnerships.

Responding to bias incidents

Addressing slurs, stereotypes, and exclusion in the classroom directly and consistently — naming the harm, supporting the targeted student, and using the moment to teach respect — rather than ignoring it.

Affirming identity in the classroom

Practices that signal students' cultures and languages belong — displaying diverse images and texts, learning to pronounce names correctly, and inviting students to share their backgrounds — strengthening belonging and engagement.

Correct name pronunciation

Learning and consistently using the accurate pronunciation of each student's name as a small but powerful act of respect that affirms identity, in contrast to anglicizing or avoiding names.

Sociocultural theory in teaching (Vygotsky)

The view that learning is fundamentally social and mediated by culture and language. It supports scaffolding within the zone of proximal development and collaborative, culturally grounded instruction for English learners.

Culturally responsive technology and media

Selecting and creating digital and print media that represent diverse cultures accurately and avoid stereotypes, while ensuring equitable access to technology for all English learners.

Connecting school to community

Bringing community members, languages, and resources into instruction and taking learning into the community, so school and students' worlds reinforce rather than separate from one another.

Inclusive grading and assessment practices

Designing grading that measures content learning fairly for ELs — separating language errors from content mastery where appropriate, allowing multiple ways to demonstrate knowledge, and avoiding cultural or linguistic bias.

Respecting communication norms in instruction

Adapting classroom discourse to students' cultural communication styles — adjusting wait time, allowing varied participation structures, and not misreading silence or indirectness — to invite fuller engagement.

Asset-based vs. deficit-based instruction

The contrast between teaching that builds on students' cultural and linguistic strengths (asset-based) and teaching that frames their differences as gaps to remediate (deficit-based). CTEL strongly favors asset-based practice.

Co-constructing classroom norms

Building classroom rules and routines together with students so they reflect multiple cultural perspectives and shared ownership, increasing buy-in and reducing cultural mismatch in behavioral expectations.

Culturally responsive social-emotional support

Attending to students' social-emotional needs — including acculturative stress, trauma, and identity — in culturally aware ways, recognizing that well-being underlies the capacity to learn.

Newcomer programs

Specialized programs that give recently arrived English learners intensive English, content, and acculturation support in a welcoming setting before or alongside transition into mainstream classes.

Equitable participation strategies

Techniques — randomized calling, think-pair-share, response signals, structured turns — that ensure all students, including reticent ELs, participate, rather than letting a few confident students dominate.

Validating the home language

Communicating through practice and policy that students' home languages are valued and useful in school — encouraging their use as a learning resource rather than discouraging or banning them.

Multicultural curriculum (substantive)

A curriculum that integrates diverse perspectives, histories, and contributions deeply across subjects and the year — moving beyond tokenism to transform what and whose knowledge is taught.

Linking instruction to students' lives

Designing learning that explicitly connects academic content to students' cultural backgrounds, communities, and real-world concerns, increasing relevance, motivation, and comprehension for diverse learners.

Recognizing teacher privilege and positionality

An educator's awareness of how their own social position, culture, and advantages shape their perspective and relationships with students — a step toward equitable, humble, culturally responsive practice.

Strengths-based family conferences

Conducting parent-teacher conferences that begin with the student's strengths and the family's goals and knowledge, in the family's preferred language, fostering partnership rather than one-way problem reporting.

Addressing stereotype threat in instruction

Reducing conditions that trigger stereotype threat — affirming belonging and ability, framing tasks as learning rather than proving, and providing role models — so anxiety does not depress ELs' performance.

Culturally inclusive classroom environment

A physical and social space — displays, materials, language, routines, and interactions — designed so students from every culture see themselves represented, respected, and able to participate fully.

Promoting cross-cultural understanding among students

Facilitating activities that help students learn about, appreciate, and respect one another's cultures and languages, building empathy and reducing prejudice within the classroom community.

Teacher as advocate within systems

Acting beyond the classroom to influence policies, placement decisions, and resource allocation so English learners receive equitable services — part of the professional and ethical role CTEL emphasizes.

Drawing on bilingual peers and mentors

Using bilingual classmates, older students, or community mentors as language and cultural bridges that support newcomers academically and socially while affirming the value of the home language.

Culturally responsive professional growth

An educator's ongoing learning about students' cultures, languages, and effective inclusive practices — through study, community engagement, and reflection — recognizing cultural responsiveness as a developing competency.

Inclusive school-wide systems

Coordinated school-level structures — welcoming enrollment, family liaisons, equitable placement, and respectful discipline — that make inclusion a systemic commitment rather than the work of individual teachers alone.

Transformative and emancipatory teaching

Teaching that, in Gay's and Ladson-Billings's terms, empowers students to value their own and others' cultures, succeed academically, and critically engage and change inequitable conditions in their lives and communities.