ABSTRACT
For ma ny years, the low literacy levels attained by language-minority students have been explained in the context of a deficit theory or cultural deprivation (Bartolome, 1994; Delgado-Gaitán, 1987). Often, these students’ failures to achieve higher levels of educational achievement were attributed to a mismatch between their home and community and the discourse and socio-cultural patterns of interaction in the classroom (McCollum, 1991; Moll & Greenberg, 1990). More recently, some
investigators argued that ethnolinguistic minorities fail to attain higher literacy levels because they often do not receive enough explicit instruction to allow them to master the “register of the mainstream” (Delpit, 1995; Reyes, 1992). Other investigations, specifically concerned with the low literacy levels attained by many Latina or Latino students, pointed out that, while the cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds of this group are different from those of the majority population, these students have available rich funds of knowledge and possess vast linguistic, cultural, and intellectual resources to fully support their literacy learning (Moll, 1992).
