Preparing teachers to teach literacy in responsive ways that capitalize on students' cultural and linguistic backgrounds through weblog technology

Although teacher educators have worked on improving pre‐service teachers' diversity awareness, researchers still face the challenge of pursuing a better approach to achieve the goal. In an era when educators are calling for evidence‐based practice, the purpose of this paper is to explore various ways in which both teacher‐education programs and general schools can integrate diversity issues into literacy teaching and learning. The paper undertakes this exploration on the basis of Gollnick and Chinn's cultural‐identity model and of weblog‐technology use.

The participants of this paper are 27 pre‐service teachers. The researchers set up a private group blog and invited all participants to be blog authors. The blog enabled the instructor to archive and categorize all posts and to continue to invite cohorts of pre‐service teachers to join the blog. Pre‐service teachers are placed in culturally and linguistically diverse classroom settings and are required to post their weekly reflections on the weblog. The researchers adopte mixed methodology to collect both qualitative data (field observation reports, discussion content on the blog, case studies, and focus groups) and quantitative data (pre‐post surveys).

The pre‐service teachers in this paper possessed positive and open‐minded attitudes toward English language learners. According to the pre‐ and post‐survey, pre‐service teachers are confident that they could resolve issues related to diversity in the classroom after participating in the paper. According to the results of the case‐scenario analysis, the instructor should use reading contexts to address diversity issues, especially those pertaining to exceptionality, geography, class, and gender. The pre‐service teachers' discussions and interactions on the blog were rich. Pre‐service teachers felt motivation to expand their diversity‐themed discussions from the classroom to the blog.

With the assistance of weblogs, the instructor can extend the in‐class discussion. In the paper, group blogs became a tool that helped the instructor and the pre‐service teachers not only link the in‐class discussion to their field observations but also share personal experiences and resources. For introverted pre‐service teachers, a group blog can serve as a channel through which the pre‐service teachers can comfortably express carefully organized opinions. In general, the commenting feature of the blog enriches interaction among pre‐service teachers and widens their discussion in a way in which limited class time cannot.