TEACHING TO DIVERSE LEARNERS

Teaching to Diverse Learners in Classroom

Teaching to Diverse Learners in Classroom

Introduction

Teaching diverse learners starts with the observation of what is 'diverse'. How does this occur? How should this occur? Should a teacher use scientific instruments to ensure objectivity? If 'getting to know students' is an interpersonal enterprise, how can such an enterprise be objective? In this chapter, the perspectives of teachers on the observation of students are described and compared with the literature on how observation should occur (Oakes & Lipton, 1998). In analyzing the concept of objectivity and criticizing the traditional view of it, a theory on objectivity (based on current epistemological insights) is developed that shows how an interpersonal enterprise can yet be objective.

The theory on teacher expectations and its reviews

Concerning the quality of teachers' observations, researchers are generally worried. Oakes & Lipton (1998) indicate the complexity of the task. Kagan (1992) is aware that teachers who use observation might size up students incorrectly. Oakes & Lipton (1998), while acknowledging that informal assessments such as observations are an essential part of teaching, are afraid that teachers are not sufficiently aware of how their observations are distorted by their initial impressions.

Concerns about the quality of observations have been coloured by the bulk of research on teacher expectations. This theory states that teachers' expectations of students are not based on adequate observations but on prejudices that teachers impose on students, which causes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the study Pygmalion in the Classroom, it was suggested that expectations for individual pupils influenced their actual achievement (Fensham, Gunstone & White, 1994). This notion has been combined with ideas on the educational reproduction of social inequality (Oakes & Lipton, 1998). Generally, it is believed that low expectancy children, typically thought to be children of minority groups or of low social status, are being harmed by teachers acting on their low expectations of these children. Much of the teacher expectations literature concludes that teachers use their own value systems to select both favoured and unfavoured students and, thus, are responsible for wide variation in achievement. Some authors even stated that student intelligence is affected by teacher expectations. Oakes & Lipton (1998) went as far as to question the wisdom of special programmes to overcome the educational handicaps of disadvantaged children, arguing that such programs rested on the assumption that disadvantaged children had some problem or deficit, which these authors believed to be misguided. The notion of the self-fulfilling prophecy emerged as the common coin of educational research. According to Oakes & Lipton (1998), few ideas have influenced educational research and practice as much as this notion.

Very few authors concentrated on how observation should occur. Cochran-Smith (1991), in the study explains how teachers should conduct observational activities. They explain that what “we think we see is not congruent with reality. Teachers on occasion react not to what they physically hear but to their interpretation of what the student said. Their past experiences with a student often influence their interpretation of what ...