Helping Diverse Learners Succeed in Today’s Classrooms

1. Helping Diverse Learners Succeed in Today’s Classrooms ED 1010

2. Dimensions of Diversity • Culture • Language • Gender • Ability differences • Exceptionalities Add a Word Activity

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

5. 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

6. Diversity in Utah Schools • Student Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity, 2008-2009

7. 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”

8. Educational Responses to Cultural Diversity Culturally Responsive Teaching video • 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 • Discrimination • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8gCJ4K4tnE&feature=related

9. 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

10. 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?

11. ESL Programs • English as a Second Language • ESL endorsement • Alternative Language Services (ALS) • English Language Learners (ELL) • Limited English Proficiency (LEP)

12. 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

13. Ability Differences Scenario: p. 91 Average 68% Above Average 13.5% Below Average 13.5% Intellectually Disabled 2% Gifted 2%

14. Multiple Intelligences • Gardner’s 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

15. Gardner’s 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.

16. 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

17. 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?

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. 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 Categories of Disabilities under IDEA

23. 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

25. 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