Helping Diverse Learners Succeed in Today’s Classrooms

Helping Diverse Learners Succeed in Today’s Classrooms ED 1010

Why learn about student development now? • Help you decide if teaching is for you • If it is, understanding student development will help you to know at what level you should teach. • Understanding of students will increase your ability to adapt your instruction

Cognitive Development • Changes in students’ thinking as they grow and acquire experiences • Young children- dominated by perceptions • With maturity thinking becomes logical and systematic

Moral Development • External morality • Preconventional ethics • Conventional ethics • Autonomous morality • Postconventional ethics

Personal & Social Development • Personal Development- changes in our personalities and our ability to manage feelings, behavior • Influences interactions with physical and social environment • Social Development- changes in time as to the ways we relate to others

Influences on Personal & Social Development • Parents and other adults • Parenting styles • Authoritative • Authoritarian • Permissive • Uninvolved • Peers

Learner Development • Elementary • Concrete experiences • Rules and procedures • Practice perspective taking & social problem solving • Middle School • Still concrete experiences • Firm but empathetic teachers

Promotion of student responsibility is critical • Peer group is extremely important at this age • High School • Personal responsibility is a necessity • Real life applications, valuable • Discussions, small-group work, focused writing • Abstract thinking depends on prior knowledge

What is Intelligence? Traditionally thought of as the ability to acquire and use knowledge, solve problems, and reason abstractly

Ability Differences Average 68% Above Average 13.5% Below Average 13.5% Intellectually Disabled 2% Gifted 2%

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

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.

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

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.

Learning Styles • Describes students’ personal approaches to learning • Popular with educators, viewed skeptically by researchers, and difficult to implement

Implications for teachers • Vary the way you teach • Increases your sensitivity to differences in your students • Encourage students to think metacognitively- become aware of how they learn most effectively

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

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

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

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

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

Helping Diverse Learners Succeed in Today’s Classrooms