Abstract
Teachers serving racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse communities of learners often struggle to enact instruction that is responsive to their unique backgrounds and lived experiences. This paper introduces Biography-Driven Instruction as an instructional framework for advancing enactment of culturally and linguistically responsive/sustaining teaching. It offers the biopsychosocial history of the learner as construct to support deeper understanding of factors that can influence classroom engagement and student wellbeing. It also explores the sociocultural, linguistic, cognitive, and academic dimensions of the culturally and linguistically diverse student biography, which supports teachers to identify assets and strengths that they can leverage to differentiate instruction and support language development and conceptual understanding. The authors provide an array of student biography cards used by teachers in ESL and EFL contexts to illustrate the flexible and adaptable nature of the tool for gathering insights into students’ multifaceted identities to inform lesson planning and delivery.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Holmes, Melissa A.; Fabre-Merchán, Paolo; and Herrera, Socorro G. (2025) "Beginning with Biography Cards: Unlocking Student Potential in Diverse Classrooms," The Advocate: Vol. 30: No. 2.
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Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Elementary Education Commons, Higher Education and Teaching Commons, Junior High, Intermediate, Middle School Education and Teaching Commons, Language and Literacy Education Commons, Other Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons, Pre-Elementary, Early Childhood, Kindergarten Teacher Education Commons, Secondary Education and Teaching Commons
