AFFIRMING DIVERSITY

Affirming Diversity



Affirming Diversity

Aren't the practices of grouping or differentiation within a class or even individualization (a student receiving tutoring in a certain subject by a resource teacher or specialist) a type of tracking? Why or why not?

Equity is a noble goal, but not at the expense of students who lie on either end of the normal curve, especially in these days of political rhetoric and a heightened concern for educational accountability. But ability grouping is neither the fiend nor the foe that it has been labeled. In the past, ability grouping has been equated with tracking, a permanent and now unacceptable approach in which students are assessed based on prior achievement of measured intelligence and placed into streams or tracks from which they never escape, a situation that has created problems for advocates of equity and equality. The present and future of ability grouping lies in the flexible use of grouping, either between or within classrooms. However, ability grouping alone will not lead to significant improvement in students' achievement unless it is combined with curricula that have been created based on students' learning styles, interests, and abilities. When ability grouping is utilized in a flexible and temporary manner, with appropriate curricular adjustment, significant achievement gains can be realized. (Nieto 2000)

A great deal of research indicates that moderate gains occur in students' academic achievement when teachers adopt practices from gifted education pedagogy, such as ability grouping, curriculum modification, differentiation, strategies to enhance higher level thinking skills, concept-based instruction, problem-based learning, and constructivist pedagogy, to improve student achievement. Because it is unlikely that one strategy operating in isolation is as effective as multiple interventions, it is recommended that school personnel investigate the combined effects of grouping practices and differentiated curriculum.

Agree or disagree with the following statement and tell why: The learning theory of constructivism works against students who have had fewer life experiences to draw on than those students who have had many experiences. Use the basis here for disagree.

The purpose of learning is for an individual to construct his or her own meaning, not just memorize the "right" answers and regurgitate someone else's meaning. Since education is inherently interdisciplinary, the only valuable way to measure learning is to make the assessment part of the learning process, ensuring it provides students with information on the quality of their learning.

In the classroom, the constructivist view of learning can point towards a number of different teaching practices. In the most general sense, it usually means encouraging students to use active techniques (experiments, real-world problem solving) to create more knowledge and then to reflect on and talk about what they are doing and how their understanding is changing. The teacher makes sure she understands the students' preexisting conceptions, and guides the activity to address them and then build on them. About one-third of the NG administrators stated that they encouraged their teachers to incorporate their students' prior life experience as well as their prior academic knowledge in their daily ...