Culturally sustaining disciplinary language and literacy instruction for Hmong-American children

Among the many approaches proposed for closing opportunity and achievement gaps is supporting student's academic language development. Often, however, instructional approaches that are more familiar to teachers, such as helping students learn new vocabulary, are prioritized over more complex and less familiar explorations into disciplinary language, such as analyzing how a whole text is organized or identifying grammatical boundaries within sentences and connecting these analyses to disciplinary learning goals. In addition, the cultural and linguistic assets students bring to the classroom, valuable resources for learning, are often neglected in school, depriving students an opportunity to leverage and expand such resources. This article argues for an instructional approach that integrates disciplinary language and literacy teaching with culturally sustaining pedagogy. We synthesize research and theories on the approach and provide illustrative examples with elementary grades Hmong-American children.