Bridging the Cultural Gap by Teaching Multicultural Literature

As multicultural literature has made its way into the English curriculum, it has challenged teachers' thinking about curriculum and instruction and urged them to expand their teaching repertoire to include a cultural-response approach to literature instruction. This article reports on a group of secondary English teachers' exploration and reflection on their learning and teaching of multicultural literature. The author argues that teachers must increase their own cultural knowledge and develop their sensitivity and teaching skills to promote cross-cultural understanding and use multicultural literature to validate expressions of cultural knowledge, perspectives, and differences.