1. Chapter 3 Helping Diverse Learners Succeed in Today’s Classrooms

2. Dimensions of Diversity
Culture
Language
Gender
Ability differences
Exceptionalities

3. 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

4. Urban Schools and Diversity (continued)
Percentage of minority students predicted to increase in the future

5. Cultural Attitudes, Values, & Interaction Patterns
Learned at home and in neighborhood
Influence school success, both positively and negatively
Require both teacher sensitivity and adaptability

6. Educational Responses to Cultural Diversity
Multicultural education: salad bowl or mosaic versus melting pot
Culturally responsive teaching
Accepting and valuing cultural differences
Accommodating different cultural interaction patterns
Building on students’ cultural backgrounds

7. 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

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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

11. 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.

12. 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

13. Students with Exceptionalities
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)
Passed in 1975
Guarantees a free public education for all students with exceptionalities
Mainstreaming: moves students from segregated settings into the regular classroom

14. 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