Incorporating Multicultural Literature in an Elementary Language Arts Classroom

The purpose of this research is to examine how classrooms are able to incorporate multiculturalism in a classroom through the use of multicultural literature. Every day, the United States’ population is increasingly become more diverse (Morrell & Morrell, 2012) and teachers become more aware of and responsive towards this changing demographic in their classrooms. Incorporating different cultures into a curriculum helps create an atmosphere of mutual respect among students in the classroom along with allowing all students an opportunity to connect to the curriculum (Szecsi, Spillman, Vázquez-Montilla, & Mayberry, 2010). One such way to do this is by exposing students to literatures that incorporate diverse cultures. This study analyzed two volumes of a 2nd grade ELA textbook to discover what kinds of cultures students are currently being exposed to and what is missing, focusing on cultural content and traditions, language, and illustrations. This textbook reveals that, while students are being exposed to diverse cultures, these cultures they are exposed to are very limited and all given from a very “Americanized” perspective. Overall this study aims to identify the limitations of multicultural literatures that are currently being provided to teachers and allow for development of these literatures that need to be provided outside of a typical textbook