DIVERSITY IN THE CLASSROOM

Diversity in the Classroom

Diversity in the Classroom

Introduction

The primary goal of culturally responsive education is to help all students become respectful of the multitudes of cultures and people that they'll interact with once they exit the educational setting. This can be a daunting task for the educator, given that the world at large is infinitely more complex and diverse than the microcosmic environment that the student inhabits. In typical educational and social settings there is a marked tendency for students to exhibit classic in-group/out-group behaviors.

In general, most students are comfortable interacting with people, behaviors, and ideas that they are familiar with but react with fear and apprehension when faced with the unfamiliar. Among its other goals, culturally responsive instruction aims to teach students that differences in viewpoint and culture are to be cherished and appreciated rather than judged and feared.

Discussion and Analysis

In addition to tailoring classroom activities and lessons toward multicultural appreciation, it is critical that the educator provide students with a culturally responsive learning environment. Wall spaces can be used to display posters depicting cultural groups in a non-stereotypical fashion, students can mark the countries from which their ancestors immigrated from on a world map, and classroom signs can be hung in several languages.

Psychoanalytic Child Development Theories

As the child development theory presented by Freud describes that it is a series of 'psychosexual stages. Freud also outlined these stages as anal, phallic, genital, and oral and latency. Every stage of child development needs the satisfaction of libidinal desires and more often they can play a role in building better adult personality.

The ecological theory, believes that the interaction of genes affecting a child's personality and biological characteristics of the environment as a child grows and develops. It goes without saying that this theory believe that a further promotion and nurturing environment will have a positive effect on the child's development.

Racial Discrimination in Early Childhood Programs

Between 3 and 6 years, children experience an extraordinary development of their skills and motivation to think about what they do, predict the outcome of their actions, language and recall their experiences showing that the experiences acquired in the preschool are significant for their integral growth (Kendra, 2010).

Meanwhile, questions are beginning to be raised about the value of mainstays of anti-discrimination strategies such as affirmative action or quota systems. In my many years of working on racial discrimination in the workplace I have never seen affirmative action work. The impact of affirmative action programs in achieving their objectives is still being debated.

Thus, in African culture, early education has not been giving much importance in the previous year. The African education system needs to focus on building motor skills in young children, enhancing their psychosocial abilities, reading abilities and improving their conversation power. Particularly, in Mozambique, they focusing on children between 3 and 5 years old,” said Heather Simpson, senior director of education and child development for Save the Children.

Cultural Self-Assessment

The cultural self-assessment process, schools and the program staff better needs to understand ...