How can we transform cultural diversity into valuable resources at home?
Every student is a unique individual, but diversity can be a hindrance to education if a teacher does not know how to teach in a classroom of cultural diversity. On the other hand, diversity can be an amazing asset to education. Schools and teachers need to create a positive learning environment and learning community that is open, and the encourages collaboration, cooperation, and critical thinking. In the classroom, it is important to provide students with equal opportunities, and with chances to work together and step outside of the framework of their own mindset in order to understand their fellow classmates.
Cooperative Learning is a more specific type of collaborative learning where students are assigned to work in small groups. In those groups, they are graded on both an individual and group level. CL encourages teamwork, and makes each student value the other members in the group. It creates an environment where the group’s success is based on their ability to work together and help each other succeed. CL is important when dealing with a diverse student body because it teaches the students to appreciate each other and their different diversity orientations. It allows students to interact on a more personal level with other students who they may not have talked to before. This allows the students to share their diversity and different backgrounds with each other, creating a more comfortable learning environment.
James Banks designed a method to multicultural education that includes collaboration, cooperation, and critical thinking. Banks limits his method to multi-cultural education, however it can easily be expanded to include all sorts of different diversity orientations. The five dimensions that he lists are content integration, knowledge construction, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy, and empowering school culture. Content integration simply means using a wide variety of content from different places. Teachers should teach about different geographic regions, genders, SES levels, and learning styles as well. Knowledge construction is a type of critical thinking similar to role-playing that encourages students to think about the way that knowledge is created and influenced by people of certain diversity orientations, and how it might be different coming from a different perspective. Prejudice reduction is encouraging positive relationships among students of different diversity orientations, and can be achieved through the cooperative learning methods discussed in previous sections. Equity pedagogy is the acknowledgement that students from different backgrounds may learn in different ways. Teachers need to be aware of this in order to write lessons that maximize every student’s success. Empowering School Culture means that the school creates equal opportunities for success for all students, regardless of diversity orientation. This is similar to creating a positive learning community. Banks’ model lays out a good framework for a few specific methods of creating a classroom and school environment where all students can learn, regardless of their diversity orientation. There are a large number of differences between students that lead to a diverse student body and Banks identifies nine main differences between students: Race, gender, socio-economic status, nationality, ethnic group, abilities and disabilities, religion, and geographic region. The total sum of all of the differences that make up each individual and unique student will be referred to as the student's diversity orientation. A teacher must take into account the student's entire diversity orientation when devising a lesson plan in order to maximize each student's education.
James Banks designed a method to multicultural education that includes collaboration, cooperation, and critical thinking. Banks limits his method to multi-cultural education, however it can easily be expanded to include all sorts of different diversity orientations. The five dimensions that he lists are content integration, knowledge construction, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy, and empowering school culture. Content integration simply means using a wide variety of content from different places. Teachers should teach about different geographic regions, genders, SES levels, and learning styles as well. Knowledge construction is a type of critical thinking similar to role-playing that encourages students to think about the way that knowledge is created and influenced by people of certain diversity orientations, and how it might be different coming from a different perspective. Prejudice reduction is encouraging positive relationships among students of different diversity orientations, and can be achieved through the cooperative learning methods discussed in previous sections. Equity pedagogy is the acknowledgement that students from different backgrounds may learn in different ways. Teachers need to be aware of this in order to write lessons that maximize every student’s success. Empowering School Culture means that the school creates equal opportunities for success for all students, regardless of diversity orientation. This is similar to creating a positive learning community. Banks’ model lays out a good framework for a few specific methods of creating a classroom and school environment where all students can learn, regardless of their diversity orientation. There are a large number of differences between students that lead to a diverse student body and Banks identifies nine main differences between students: Race, gender, socio-economic status, nationality, ethnic group, abilities and disabilities, religion, and geographic region. The total sum of all of the differences that make up each individual and unique student will be referred to as the student's diversity orientation. A teacher must take into account the student's entire diversity orientation when devising a lesson plan in order to maximize each student's education.
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