Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching: A Literature Review

Over 200,000 individuals are studying to be educators in the United States in higher education programs, generally aimed at preparing educators to instruct monolingual, middle-class students (Cochran-Smith et al., 2020; Zhang-Wu, 2021). Coincidentally, in the last 30 years, the United States school system has experienced an 80% increase in students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds as English Language Learners (ELL), representing 10% of school enrollment or roughly 5 million students (Faltis & Valdés, 2016; Zhang-Wu, 2021). Despite this growth in student diversity, new educators are unprepared to teach the increasing CLD population (Zhang-Wu, 2021). The existing literature on CLD instruction can be divided into three themes: (a) perception of teaching ELLs, (b) preparation and motivation of educators to teach culturally diverse linguistic students (CLDS), and (c) acceptance of multilinguistic education. Thus, the researchers sought to conduct a literature review evaluating studies that investigated the effects of educators’ perception, preparation and motivation, and acceptance on the academic outcomes of students from CLD backgrounds.