The Caribbean is a region that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands, and the surrounding coasts. The region is southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and the North American mainland, east of Central America, and north of South America. The Caribbean, long referred to as the West Indies, includes more than 7,000 islands; of those, 13 are independent island countries. In geographical terms the Caribbean area includes the Caribbean Sea and all of the islands located to the southeast of the Gulf of Mexico, east of Central America and Mexico, and to the north of South America.
Published in Chapter:
Exploring the Interstices of Literate, Linguistic, and Cultural Diversity
Patriann Smith (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) and Alex Kumi-Yeboah (University at Albany – State University of New York, USA)
Copyright: © 2015
|Pages: 23
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8668-7.ch010
Abstract
In this chapter, we examine an English-speaking Caribbean multilingual teacher's response to linguistic diversity by exploring his linguistic and literate experiences and responses to language in various geographical and social contexts. Through in-depth semi-structured topical interviews, we identified three distinct recursive “pathways” representative of the teacher's experiences. These pathways constituted his processes of attitude transformation, strategy use, and identity formation. The findings highlight the need for further exploration of multilingual teachers' linguistic diversity and indicate the need to examine teachers' capacity to respond to linguistic and cultural diversity based on their personal experiences.