The cultured word: Cultural background. bilingualism, and the school library

Abstract

Research indicates that cultural background creates a framework through which people view, interpret, and assign meaning to texts. This article presents the major research related to, and the major issues underlying, cultural background as a framework for textual meaning-making, bilingualism, and literacy development. This article also considers why these issues are important to school librarians and offers suggestions for making multicultural materials central aspects of school library collections and curricula.