Helping Diverse Learners Succeed in Todays Classrooms

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Helping Diverse Learners Succeed in Todays
Classrooms
ED 1010 January 27-29, 2008
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Dimensions of Diversity

• Culture
• Language
• Gender
• Ability differences
• Exceptionalities

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• Culture
• The knowledge, attitudes, values, customs, and
  behavior patterns that characterize a social
  group.
• Cultural Diversity
• The different cultures that youll encounter in
  classrooms and how these cultural differences
  influence learning.

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Urban Schools and Diversity

• Cultural minorities
• Are majorities in 48 of 100 largest U.S. cities
• Are majorities in 6 states
• Comprise 90 of students in
• Chicago
• Detroit
• Houston
• Los Angeles
• District of Columbia
• Percentage of minority students predicted to
  increase in the future

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Cultural Attitudes, Values, Interaction Patterns

• Learned at home and in neighborhood
• Influence school success, both positively and
  negatively
• Require both teacher sensitivity and adaptability

Cultural Synchronization
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Educational Responses to Cultural Diversity

• Multicultural education a variety of strategies
  schools use to accommodate cultural differences
  in teaching and learning
• salad bowl or mosaic versus melting pot
• Culturally responsive teaching Instruction that
  acknowledges and accommodates cultural diversity
• Accepting and valuing cultural differences
• Accommodating different cultural interaction
  patterns
• Building on students cultural backgrounds

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Language Diversity

• Maintenance language programs use and sustain
  the first language
• Immersion programs emphasize rapid transition to
  English
• English as a Second Language (ESL) programs
  focus on English in academic subjects
• Transition programs maintain first language
  while students learn English

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Bilingual Education

• Controversial because critics fear the loss of
  English as U.S. language
• 26 states have official English language
  legislation
• De-emphasized by No Child Left Behind
• Proponents claim it is effective, humane, and
  practical.
• Critics claim it is divisive, ineffective, and
  inefficient.

What do you think?
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ESL Programs

• English as a Second Language
• ESL endorsement
• Alternative Language Services (ASL)
• English Language Learners (ELL)
• Limited English Proficiency (LEP)

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Gender

• Gender influences career choices.
• Gender-role identity creates differences in
  expectations and beliefs about appropriate roles
  and behaviors.
• Stereotypes create rigid and simplistic
  caricatures of groups of people.
• Single-gender classrooms and schools separate
  male and female students.

Brainstorm Gender Stereotypes
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Ability Differences
Scenario p. 91
Average 68
Above Average 13.5
Below Average 13.5
Intellectually Disabled 2
Gifted 2
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Multiple Intelligences

• Gardners theory
• Suggests that intelligence is not unitary but
  multidimensional
• Suggests that classrooms should attempt to
  develop different kinds of intelligence
• While accepted by teachers, is controversial
  because of a lack of a firm research base

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Gardners Multiple Intelligence

• Linguistic intelligence a sensitivity to the
  meaning and order of words.
• Logical-mathematical intelligence ability in
  mathematics and other complex logical systems.
• Musical intelligence the ability to understand
  and create music. Musicians, composers and
  dancers show a heightened musical intelligence.
• Spatial intelligence the ability to "think in
  pictures," to perceive the visual world
  accurately, and recreate (or alter) it in the
  mind or on paper. Spatial intelligence is highly
  developed in artists, architects, designers and
  sculptors.

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Multiple Intelligences continued

• Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence the ability to
  use one's body in a skilled way, for
  self-expression or toward a goal. Mimes, dancers,
  basketball players, and actors are among those
  who display bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.
• Interpersonal intelligence an ability to
  perceive and understand other individuals --
  their moods, desires, and motivations. Political
  and religious leaders, skilled parents and
  teachers, and therapists use this intelligence.
• Intrapersonal intelligence an understanding of
  one's own emotions. Some novelists and or
  counselors use their own experience to guide
  others.
• Naturalist intelligence an ability to recognize
  similarities and differences in the natural world

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Responses to Differences in Ability

• Ability Grouping
• Places students of similar aptitude and
  achievement together for instruction
• Between-class ability grouping divides students
  for all subjects.
• Within-class ability grouping divides students
  only in certain subjects, such as math and
  reading.
• Tracking
• At the secondary level, divides students across
  the curriculum.

What do you think? What does the research say?
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Learning Styles

• Describes students personal approaches to
  learning
• Popular with educators, viewed skeptically by
  researchers, and difficult to implement
• Suggests we should develop metacognition
  students awareness of how they learn most
  effectively

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Students with Exceptionalities

• Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
  (IDEA)
• Passed in 1975
• Guarantees a free, appropriate, public education
  (FAPE) for all students with exceptionalities
• Mainstreaming moves students from segregated
  settings into the regular classroom

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Students with Exceptionalities (continued)

• Inclusion more recent and more comprehensive
  approach, advocates a total, systematic, and
  coordinated school-wide system of services
• Least restrictive environment (LRE) places
  students in as normal an education setting as
  possible
• Individualized Education Program (IEP)
  individually prescribed instructional plan
  created and implemented by multiple stakeholders

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Categories of Disabilities under IDEA

• Specific learning disability
• Communication disorder
• Intellectual disability
• Emotional (behavioral) disturbance
• Other health impaired
• Autism

• Multiple disabilities
• Hearing impairment
• Orthopedic impairment
• Developmental delay
• Visual impairment
• Traumatic brain injury
• Deaf-blindness

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Students who are Gifted and Talented

• Students who are at the upper end of the ability
  continuum who need special services to reach
  their full potential.
• Controversy about Gifted and Talented programs in
  the era of NCLB

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Exceptionalities Implications for Teachers

• Collaboration working with other educational
  professionals to create an optimal learning
  environment for students with exceptionalities
• Your role
• Aid in identification process
• Collaborate on IEPs
• Adapt instruction
• Maintain communication