Best Practices for Community Colleges and US-LM Students - Part One

Kibler, Amanda K., George C. Bunch, and Ann K. Endris.  “Community College Practices for U.S-Educated Language-Minority Students: A Resource-Oriented Framework.”  Bilingual Research Journal 34.2 (2011): 201-222.

Brief  Summary

In this article, Kibler et al. call for community colleges to rethink the way they work with US-educated linguistic minority students—moving from a deficit model to a resource approach that builds on the language and literacy knowledge students already have and focuses on integration versus separation, “creating the kinds of opportunities that students need to further expand their academic language and literacy repertoires, acknowledging that these repertoires are developed in the authentic contexts in which they are used” (205).  They outline four areas that colleges need to address in order to create a “resource-oriented” framework:

• Supporting academic transitions into community colleges.
• Integrating language and academic content.
• Providing accelerated access to college-level, mainstream academic curriculum.
• Promoting informed student decision-making.
• (206)

Kibler et al. discuss the principles behind addressing each of these areas from a “resource” perspective and give examples of innovative ways community colleges could and do attempt to tackle these issues in order to more effectively meet the needs of US LM students.