Culture Studies
Culture Studies is an asset-based instructional approach in which students read, discuss, and analyze cultural perspectives, practices, and texts, including those drawn from their own home and community cultures and from cultures different from their own. Grounded in culturally relevant and culturally responsive pedagogy, it treats students' cultural and linguistic knowledge as intellectual resources for learning rather than obstacles. Teachers curate culturally relevant texts and structured inquiry tasks so that emergent bilingual (EB) students build reading comprehension and academic oral language while developing cultural competence and critical perspective. The strategy intentionally develops both academic content learning and students' fluency in their own and at least one other culture.
How it’s typically applied
- 1Learn students' funds of knowledge: through conversations, family input, and interest surveys, identify the cultural practices, languages, histories, and community knowledge students already bring, and treat these as curricular assets.
- 2Curate culturally relevant and diverse texts: gather print and multimedia texts that mirror students' cultures and offer windows into other cultures, vetting them for authenticity and to avoid stereotype, and pairing them with the grade-level academic topic.
- 3Frame an inquiry question: pose a question that invites students to explore a cultural perspective or practice (for example, how families mark important milestones, or how a tradition is portrayed across two texts).
- 4Build background and pre-teach key vocabulary: activate prior knowledge, connect to students' lived experience, and front-load academic and cultural vocabulary so the text is comprehensible.
- 5Read and analyze with scaffolds: have students read or interact with the text supported by visuals, sentence stems, graphic organizers, and peer discussion, comparing the cultural perspective in the text to their own and to others.
- 6Structure academic talk: use partner and small-group protocols (think-pair-share, structured discussion roles) so students speak about the cultural content using targeted language frames, honoring contributions in students' home languages where possible.
- 7Produce and reflect: students create a culminating response (oral presentation, illustrated explanation, comparison chart, or short writing) and reflect on what they learned about their own culture and another, with teachers giving feedback on both content and language.
Why it works for emergent bilingual students
Culture Studies positions EB students' home languages, cultural practices, and community knowledge as funds of knowledge that strengthen, rather than slow, learning (Moll et al., 1992). When texts and tasks reflect students' cultural backgrounds, comprehension and engagement rise because new English input is anchored to familiar background knowledge, which makes the input more comprehensible and lowers the affective filter that can block acquisition (Echevarría et al., 2017; Krashen, 1982). Cummins's (1979) linguistic interdependence principle explains why this works across languages: the concepts, background knowledge, and academic reasoning students develop in their home language transfer to English through a common underlying proficiency, so engaging students' cultural knowledge is not a detour from English development but a foundation for it. Culturally relevant pedagogy further frames the goal as simultaneous academic success and cultural competence, holding EB students to high expectations while affirming their identities (Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995). The result is an additive, asset-based environment in which EB students read more, comprehend better with culturally relevant texts, and use academic English to talk about ideas they already care about.
Adapting it across proficiency levels
Pre-Production
At Pre-Production, lean on the home language and the nonverbal. Use culturally familiar images, realia, wordless or bilingual picture books, and labeled visuals so students can access cultural content with minimal English demand. Accept pointing, drawing, matching, and gestures as valid responses, and welcome talk and labels in the home language. The goal is to build comprehension and a sense of belonging, not to require English output yet.
Beginning
At Beginning, pair rich cultural visuals with short, high-frequency English. Provide sentence stems and word banks (for example, In my family we..., This text shows...) so students can name cultural practices in one or two words or short phrases. Use bilingual texts and cognates, allow home-language brainstorming before English sharing, and use total-response tasks (sort, label, sequence cultural artifacts) that let students show understanding while producing simple English.
Intermediate
At Intermediate, students compare cultural perspectives in short connected text. Use graphic organizers (for example, a two-column compare chart of my culture and another culture) and discussion frames so students can explain and contrast practices in several sentences. Provide academic vocabulary support and structured partner talk, encouraging students to ask and answer questions about the texts and to draw on home-language sources to deepen their English explanations.
High Intermediate / Advanced
At High Intermediate and Advanced, students analyze and critique cultural perspectives across multiple texts. Expect them to summarize, interpret author viewpoint, support claims with text evidence, and lead or sustain academic discussions with reduced scaffolding. Invite critical-consciousness work (whose perspective is centered, what is missing) and longer oral or written products. Continue to validate biliteracy by inviting comparison of sources across both languages, while expecting grade-level academic English in the final response.
In the classroom
In a fourth-grade unit on community and tradition, the teacher builds a text set on celebrations, including a book on Día de los Muertos, one on Lunar New Year, and a short article on a holiday unfamiliar to the class. EB students at Pre-Production sort and label celebration artifacts using picture cards and home-language labels; Beginning students complete the stem In my family we celebrate ___ by ___; Intermediate students fill a compare chart contrasting two celebrations and explain it to a partner using discussion frames; and High Intermediate and Advanced students lead a small-group discussion analyzing how each author portrays the meaning of the celebration, citing the texts. The unit closes with each student presenting one tradition from their own culture and one from another, in their growing English, while drawing on family knowledge as an expert source.
Research basis
Culturally relevant pedagogy rests on three criteria, academic success, cultural competence, and critical consciousness, and requires teachers to help students maintain their own culture while gaining access to a broader culture.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465-491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465 [link]
Students' household and community knowledge constitute funds of knowledge that teachers can connect to classroom instruction as intellectual resources, an explicitly asset-based stance toward bilingual learners.
Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory Into Practice, 31(2), 132-141. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849209543534 [link]
Academic knowledge and proficiency transfer across a bilingual learner's languages through a common underlying proficiency, so developing concepts and background in the home language supports second-language academic development.
Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research, 49(2), 222-251. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543049002222 [link]
Comprehensible input, anchored to familiar background knowledge and delivered in a low-anxiety environment that lowers the affective filter, supports second-language acquisition.
Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Pergamon Press.
Culturally responsive teaching filters instruction through students' cultural frames of reference to make learning more relevant, engaging, and effective for students of color and multilingual learners.
Gay, G. (2018). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press.
Building background that connects content to students' experiences, pre-teaching vocabulary, and scaffolding comprehensible input make grade-level academic content and texts accessible to English learners.
Echevarría, J., Vogt, M. E., & Short, D. J. (2017). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model (5th ed.). Pearson.
The newly adopted Texas English Language Proficiency Standards describe emergent bilingual language acquisition across five proficiency levels, Pre-Production, Beginning, Intermediate, High Intermediate, and Advanced, with classroom implementation beginning in 2026-2027.
Texas Education Agency. (2024). English language proficiency standards (19 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 120). https://www.txel.org/elps [link]
Sources reviewed by an independent second-language-acquisition specialist and an adversarial citation audit.
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