Student Learning in Diverse Classrooms

1. Student Learning in Diverse Classrooms Perspective and Overview

2. Twentieth Century Schools • Most students were of Western European heritage and spoke English. • Only a small portion of children/youth attended school.

3. Immigrant and farm children were expected to work or help their families. • Children who were physically disabled and those with severe learning problems either stayed home or were taught in special schools.

4. Girls, until post World War II era, were not expected to finish High School or go to college. • Assumed that learning potential was genetically and culturally derived

5. Teachers were relatively powerless to do anything about these conditions and • Society could tolerate low levels of achievement by some students.

6. Today, this has all changed. • All children are expected to be in school. • These children/youth bring with them a wide range of cultural backgrounds, talents, and needs.

7. Many come from homes where supportand encouragementare in short supply. • Some students are learning disabled. • Other students are gifted.

8. It is no longer acceptable • to allow some students to be placed in special classrooms • to let others drop out and • to allow others to pass from grade to grade without having mastered basic literacy and numeracy skills • Schools belong to all children, and the learning potential of each child must be realized.

9. Diversity in classrooms is no longer a question of policy, values, or personal preferences. • It is a fact! • Recognizing the diversity among students and understanding how students learn are among the most important challenges you will face as a teacher.

10. The primary goal of this chapter is to help you understand how students learn in today’s diverse classrooms so that you can meet the diversity challenge.

11. The third section describes differences found at both ends of the spectrum of those students labeled as exceptional (students who have learning disabilities as well as those who have exceptional talents.

12. Later sections describe other kinds of differences found in classrooms: in race, ethnicity, and culture; languagediversity; and gender and social classdifferences.

13. Each of these sections will present the best scientific knowledge about the differences that exist and provide guidelines for teaching and working with diverse groups of students.

14. The chapter concludes with a very important discussion pointing out how teachers themselves cannot solve all the problems alone and how school wide reform is required.

15. Finally, it is important to learn how to use the right language when you discuss diversity and when you refer to racial groups or to students with special needs. • It is very important to use “African American” when referring to students whose parents have African heritage and to use correct language in describing students with Hispanic or Asianbackgrounds.

16. Most people today believe that it is not appropriate to refer to someone as “handicapped,” because of the term’s evolution. • At one time, according to Friend and Bursuck (2002),people with disabilities had to resort to begging and were referred to as “cap in handers.”

17. Later they were called “hand in cappers,”a term similar to the termhandicapped. • Some also prefer the term challenged or differently abledinstead of the disability when referring to students with special needs.

18. For example, a person who cannot walk might be said to be “physically challenged.” • A learning disabled student could be referred to as “cognitively challenged.”

19. Some hold this preference because the term challenge communicates an obstacle that can be overcome, whereas disability seems to convey a condition that is permanent. • The term disability, however, remains acceptable and you will find it in most textbooks.

20. Equity • Schools that ensure impartial, fair, just and equal conditions for all students exhibit equity. • Teachers in schools attended by minority students too often focus on basic skill instruction instead of developing inquiry and problem-solving skills

21. Historically, equitable conditions have not existed in our schools. • Minority students do less well in school than do students from European backgrounds.

22. Poverty is another problem. • The United States and other parts of the world experienced great economic prosperity in the 1990s. However, all individuals and groups did not advance equally. The overall poverty rate has been increasing and the middle class is shrinking.

23. Homelessness is another troubling equity issue. • Families now account for one-third of the homeless; as many as half a million children in this country are homeless.

24. Although beliefs about rugged individualism incline us to blame individuals for their distressing situations, • Studies indicate that economic achievement is best predicted by educational achievement, which in turn, depends primarily on family socioeconomic status.

25. This means that if you are poor, the educational and economic deck is stacked against you, making success much more difficult to attain. • It is incumbent on us as citizens to work toward ensuring that every young person gets equal opportunities to learn.

26. The assumption is that educated people are equipped with the tools to escape from poverty and to participate fully in our economic and political systems. • It is partly our responsibility to help them accomplish their escape.

27. Differential Treatment of Students • One body of research has documented the inequities that exist in education as a whole. • Another has documented the differential treatment of students by teachers within classrooms.

28. Differential Treatment occurs partially because teachers, consciously or unconsciously, have different expectations for some students as contrasted to others.

29. Pygmalion in the Classroom • (1968, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson) • Simply put, when teachers expect students to do well and show intellectual growth, they do; • When teachers do not have such expectations, performance and growth are not so encouraged and may in fact be discouraged in a variety of ways.

30. In the famous Oak School experiment, teachers were led to believe that certain students selected at random were likely to be showing signs of a spurt in intellectual growth and development.

31. At the end of the year, the students of whom the teachers had these expectations showed significantly greater gains in intellectual growth than did those in the control group. • This was especially pronounced in first and second graders and in fifth and sixth graders, though less so in third and fourth grade students.

32. Without becoming inundated by a sea of numbers, we can see from one example the degree of significance found. • First graders in the control group showed a gain of 12.0 IQ points; • Students in the experimental group showed a gain of 27.4 IQ points.

33. Overall, taking the students from the first through the sixth grades, the experimental group showed a 12.22 point gain versus an 8.42 gain for the control group. • In short, the group of whom more was expected did significantly better.

34. Studies conducted in higher education settings (see Dov Eden's Pygmalion in Management, D.C. Heath: 1990, for citations) show an equally significant "expectancy advantage" for those for whom instructors maintain higher expectations.

35. A Moral Conclusion • For the moment Rosenthal will venture only one conclusion of a prescriptive nature from his decades of research: • "Superb teachers can teach the "unteachable"; we know that.

36. So, what I think this research shows is that there's a moral obligation for a teacher: • If the teacher knows that certain students can't learn, that teacher should get out of that classroom."

37. Teacher Expectations • Rosenthal and Jacobson’s study, although faulted because of its methodological weaknesses (see Brophy & Good, 1974; Claiborn, 1969, aroused the interest of the research community about the effects of teacher expectations on student achievement.

38. Teacher expectations create a cyclical pattern of behaviors on the part of both teachers and students. • There are two important questions to ask about this process: • How are expectations created in the first place? • How do they get communicated to students?

39. The discussion up to this point has focused on expectations in situations where teachers hold inaccurate beliefs about particular students. • There is actually a second expectation effect that is call the sustaining expectation effect.

40. This effect exists when a teacher accurately reads a student’s ability and behaves accordingly toward the student but does not alter the expectation when the student improves or regresses over time.

41. Cyclical Process of Teacher Expectations (Figure 2.1)

42. Tracking and Ability • Tracking (formal or informal) limits educational opportunities for students placed in the lower tracks. • Low socio-economic status (SES) and minority students are disproportionately placed in low ability groups and low-track classes.

43. The criteria used to guide placement decisions are often standardized aptitude test scores (the type administered in large groups, deemed least valid by test developers) and teachers’ judgments.

44. Unfortunately, teachers’ judgments are influenced by race and class, and even when ability and teacher recommendations are equivalent, race and class are often the most likely determining factors in placing children.

45. General Intelligence Traditional theories have held that individuals have specific mental abilities as measured by performance on particular cognitivetasks-such as analyzing word associations, doing mathematical problems, and solving certain kinds of riddles.

46. Psychologists such as Alfred Binet in France and Lewis Terman in the United Statesdeveloped the first tests aimed at measuring human intelligence and abilities. • These theorists saw intelligence as being mainly a single ability.

47. Out of Binet’s work came the idea of mental age. • A child could pass the same number of test items as passed by other children in the child’s age group would have the mental age of that age group.

48. The concept of intelligence quotient (IQ), according to Woolfolk (9002), was added after Binet’s test was brought to the United States.

49. An IQ scorebecame the computation of a person’s mental agedivided by his or herchronological age and multiplied by 100. Intelligence Quotient