Adult learners, including immigrants, refugees, and multilingual learners of English, are diverse in age, ethnicity, nationality, educational and employment background, and ability. Their perspectives, assumptions, values, beliefs, and experiences collectively influence their cultures. In the same way, culture is embedded in educators’ assumptions, values, and beliefs. This means the backgrounds of learners and educators can inform educational and community experiences, which exist within a greater systemic and societal context.
This spotlight outlines the continuum of cultural proficiency, describes examples of how adult education programs have applied essential elements demonstrating cultural proficiency, offers supportive frameworks to build culturally responsive practices in classrooms, and provides additional resources to learn more about valuing the diverse assets of our learners.
The Enhancing Access for Refugees and New Americans (EARN) project aims to support adult educators in developing and delivering high quality Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education (IELCE) / Integrated Education and Training (IET) programming in alignment with an immigrant integration approach. EARN Spotlights describe and provide examples of specific aspects of IELCE/IET implementation.
World Education strives to build lasting relationships with partners across diverse geographic regions and technical sectors to produce better education outcomes for all.
