1. Student Diversity: Development, Ability, and Exceptionalities
EDUC Chapter 5

2. Ability Differences

3. Intelligence Capacity to: 1) acquire and use knowledge,
2) solve problems,
3) reason in the abstract
Influenced by both heredity & environment
Once considered a singular trait; now thought of as multi-dimensional

4. 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

5. Gardner’s Dimensions of 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.

6. Gardner’s Dimensions of Intelligence
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

7. 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.

8. 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
What is your dominant learning style?

9. 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

10. 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

12. 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

13. Sample Individualized Education Program

14. 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

16. 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

17. Piaget’s Stages of Moral Development
External Morality
Rules are fixed, permanent and enforced by authority figure.
Lasts until about age 10
Can be reinforced by authoritarian parenting
Autonomous Morality
Rational idea of fairness and justice, viewed as a reciprocal process of treating others, similar to the Golden Rule
Internal control of morality
Developed through modeling, freedom, and responsibility

18. 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

19. Cheating
Between 75 and 90% of high school students admitted to cheating.
Influenced by moral development as well as situational factors
Often connected to technology use

20. Diversity in Utah Schools