Diverse Learners

Past Work

Diversity, particularly in terms of language and culture, has been an educational theme of SEDL’s work since the beginning. Our original focus was on intercultural education, with particular attention paid to low-income Hispanic, Black, and Cajun student populations. In 1966, we developed the nation’s first bilingual curriculum. We later conducted groundbreaking longitudinal studies on teaching reading to bilingual children and examined high-performing schools with growing numbers of culturally and linguistically diverse students. We produced educational television programming, including “Los Niños,” geared toward teaching both Spanish and English to young children, and “La Esquina,” targeted to high school students.

More recently, we updated our Bilingual Early Childhood Program curriculum package that was widely used in Texas and California during the 1970s and 1980s and retitled it the Best Start Early Childhood Program. The program emphasizes perceptual, cognitive, and language skills while seeking to develop self-awareness, self-esteem, and cultural pride among the diverse children in Head Start programs. We also developed Organizing for Diversity training in the late 1990s to help school staff understand and address cultural differences that can affect their relationships with students.