Issue Of Diversity As A Part Of Your Instructional Program

Educational Leadership How to Differentiate Instruction Reconcilable Differences Standards Based Teaching and Differentiation. September 2. 00. 0 Volume 5. Number 1. How to Differentiate Instruction. Standards based instruction and differentiated learning can be compatible approaches in todays classrooms. What we call differentiation is not a recipe for teaching. It is not an instructional strategy. It is not what a teacher does when he or she has time. It is a way of thinking about teaching and learning. Issue Of Diversity As A Part Of Your Instructional Program' title='Issue Of Diversity As A Part Of Your Instructional Program' />It is a philosophy. As such, it is based on a set of beliefs Students who are the same age differ in their readiness to learn, their interests, their styles of learning, their experiences, and their life circumstances. The differences in students are significant enough to make a major impact on what students need to learn, the pace at which they need to learn it, and the support they need from teachers and others to learn it well. Students will learn best when supportive adults push them slightly beyond where they can work without assistance. Issue Of Diversity As A Part Of Your Instructional Program' title='Issue Of Diversity As A Part Of Your Instructional Program' />Students will learn best when they can make a connection between the curriculum and their interests and life experiences. Students will learn best when learning opportunities are natural. Students are more effective learners when classrooms and schools create a sense of community in which students feel significant and respected. The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student. By definition, differentiation is wary of approaches to teaching and learning that standardize. Update 8517 725pm ET Googles new Vice President of Diversity, Integrity Governance Danielle Brown has issued her own memo to Google employees in response to. This blog discusses the history of policing in America. The Clinical Training Program welcomes applicants who have completed the MS or MA degree at other accredited institutions. Please refer to the ISU Graduate Catalog. Issue Of Diversity As A Part Of Your Instructional Program' title='Issue Of Diversity As A Part Of Your Instructional Program' />Standard issue students are rare, and educational approaches that ignore academic diversity in favor of standardization are likely to be counterproductive in reaching the full range of learners. Differentiation must be a refinement of, not a substitute for, high quality curriculum and instruction. Expert or distinguished teaching focuses on the understandings and skills of a discipline, causes students to wrestle with profound ideas, calls on students to use what they learn in important ways, helps students organize and make sense of ideas and information, and aids students in connecting the classroom with a wider world Brandt, 1. Danielson, 1. 99. Schlechty, 1. 99. Wiggins Mc. Tighe, 1. Differentiationone facet of expert teachingreminds us that these things are unlikely to happen for the full range of students unless curriculum and instruction fit each individual, unless students have choices about what to learn and how, unless students take part in setting learning goals, and unless the classroom connects with the experiences and interest of the individual Tomlinson, 1. Differentiation says, Building on core teaching and learning practices that are solid, heres what you do to refine them for maximum individual growth. We first need to ask, Is a given teaching or learning approach likely to have a positive impact on the core of effective teaching and learningWhen we are content with the answer, we can ask further, What is the effect of the practice on individuals in an academically diverse population The latter question always helps us refine the effectiveness of the former but cannot substitute for it. Standards Based Teaching. For many teachers, curriculum has become a prescribed set of academic standards, instructional pacing has become a race against a clock to cover the standards, and the sole goal of teaching has been reduced to raising student test scores on a single test, the value of which has scarcely been questioned in the public forum. Teachers feel as though they are torn in opposing directions They are admonished to attend to student differences, but they must ensure that every student becomes competent in the same subject matter and can demonstrate the competencies on an assessment that is differentiated neither in form nor in time constraints. To examine the dichotomy between standards based teaching and differentiation, we must ask questions about how standards influence the quality of teaching and learning. What is the impact of standards based teaching on the quality of education in general Then we can assess ways in which standards based approaches make an impact on gifted or academically challenged students whose abilities are outside the usual norms of achievement. Do the standards reflect the knowledge, understandings, and skills valued most by experts in the disciplines that they represent Are we using standards as a curriculum, or are they reflected in the curriculumAre we slavishly covering standards at breakneck pace, or have we found ways to organize the standards within our curriculum so that students have time to make sense of ideas and skills Does our current focus on standards enliven classrooms, or does it eliminate joy, creativity, and inquiryDo standards make learning more or less relevant and alluring to students Does our use of standards remind us that we are teaching human beings, or does it cause us to forget that factIf we are satisfied that our standards based practices yield positive answers, we can look fruitfully at how to make adaptations to address the needs of academically diverse learners. If our answers are less than satisfactory, we should address the problems. Such problems inevitably point to cracks in the foundation of quality teaching and learning, and we diminish our profession by failing to attend to them. Differentiating curriculum and instruction cannot make up for ill conceived curriculum and instruction. Negative Cases. The following examples are recent and real. Buku Panduan Pramuka more. Sadly, they are not rare. They also show how good intentions can go awry. In one standards driven district, primary grade teachers attended a staff development session that they had requested and in which they had high interest. The staff developer asked them to list some concepts that they taught so that the session would be linked to what went on in their classrooms. Wheneven with coaching and examplesno one was able to name the concepts they taught, the staff developer asked for the topics they taught. More awkward silence followed. A few teachers said that they sometimes took a day or two to talk about holidays, such as Halloween, Christmas, or Kwanza, because young students were excited about special occasions. Other teachers explained that they no longer taught units or topics and certainly not concepts. Their entire curriculum had become a list of skills that students learned out of context of any meaning or utilityexcept that the test was coming, and all 6 through 8 year olds were expected to perform. A highly successful elementary school was started two decades ago to serve a student population that speaks more than 2. The librarian in the school recently remarked,This has always been the best place in the world to teach. The students have loved it. Their parents have trusted it. Our students have done well. The teachers have always been excited to come to work. Simian 2.2 Crack more. It has been a place of energy and inspired teaching. In the last two years since the inception of a standards based program and high stakes testing, Ive watched us become what we were created to avoid. We are telling instead of teaching. We fight to find time to reach out to the kids. Joy in classrooms has been replaced by fear that is first felt by the teachers and then by the students. Were trying hard to keep alive what we believe in, but Im not sure we can.