Identity Matters: Incorporating CLD Students' Identities into the Secondary Classroom

The number of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in American public schools has increased in recent years and is only predicted to continue growing. This deserves attention because CLD students all too often experience inequitable classroom contexts that limit their access to curriculum as well as opportunities to have their identities validated in school spaces, both of which research contends is essential for adolescent students’ academic and social development. The three studies presented here address the possibilities and tensions present in classroom spaces when instructional practices and curriculum are more or less responsive to the need to incorporate CLD students’ varied identities in the classroom. They inform a new understanding of ways in which teachers can foster equitable, constructive, and inclusive classroom communities and in turn make general education curriculum more accessible to these students in the processes of their learning.