Ch. 7 Students as Diverse Learners: Variables that affect how students learn Flashcards
Variables that affect how students learn
There are a number of variables that affect how students learn, including learning style, gender, culture, socioeconomic status, prior knowledge and experiences, motivation, self-confidence, self-esteem, cognitive development, and maturity and language development or acquisition.
Learning Style
What are the 3 learning styles to be familiar with for classroom success?
Learning Styles:
- auditory learner: process info. through listening. They learn through lectures, discussions, listening to audio files, repeating information, and reading aloud.
- Kinesthetic or tactile learner: process info. through moving, touching, and doing. They learn through acting out scenes, using manipulatives, putting on plays, etc.
- Visual learner: process info. through seeing. They learn through visual displays, films, illustrated books, handouts, graphic organizers, bulletin boards, and so on.
Gender
How does gender affect students in a classroom?
Males: tend to read less for pleasure than females. Are more likely to have difficulty with handwriting, reading, and stuttering. Males tend to have strength in visual-spatial reasoning. Prefer to show us than tell u. Are more likely to engage in an argument than females.
Females: tend to have stronger verbal skills. Prefer to tell us about something than show us.
Culture
Hidalgo’s three levels of culture -concrete, behavioral, and spiritual -can be discussed to build a sense of relatedness and respect in he classroom.
Making positive connections between school work and life can support students’ success.
Acculturation is a process of learning and adopting the customs and values of another culture.
Communicating with families, knowing the school community, and appreciating the differences and similarities of family cultures will help teachers offer instruction that meets the needs of all children.
Motivation
Ways teachers can enhance student motivation:
- arrange classroom to minimize disruptions and maximize student attention.
- use authoritative teaching techniques while giving students choices and sense of self-determination.
- establish and promote a sense of community and belongingness for all students.
- establish rules and procedures that are clear and meaningful.
- enforce classroom rules equitably and consistently.
- organize for simultaneous management of activities and smooth transitions.
- engage students in meaningful, authentic, and productive work that deemphasizes grades and highlights students’ strengths.
- monitor class activities continually, providing meaningful, authentic feedback.
Socioeconomic Status (SES)
Children from low-SES households and communities develop academic skills more slowly. School systems in low-SES communities often are under-resourced, which negatively affects students’ academic progress. They tend to suffer from the effects of their families’ unemployment, a high level of migration of the best qualified teachers in their schools, and the effects of limited access to healthcare.
Schools show gains when they focus on improving teaching and learning, create an information-rich environment, build learning communities, provide continuous professional development, involve parents and caregivers, and increase funding and resources.
Prior Knowledge and Experiences
Teachers must understand their students’ physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development. Student progress is seen on a developmental continuum, and growth, or lack of progress toward age-appropriate growth, must be recorded and reported to parents.
A student whose knowledge or behavior is outside the norm for the age group may need differentiated instruction or other supports.
Self-Concept and Self-Esteem
As Maslow’s theory reminds us, students whose most fundamental needs (nutrition, emotional care, and so on) are not met may experience social or emotional issues in school until those needs are met.
Differences in SES among students and between the teacher and the students can lead to misunderstandings about students’ social and emotional needs.
Collaborating with families and colleagues who know the child’s needs can help the teacher create a successful learning environment for the student.
Students who have low self-esteem, have anxiety, or are easily distractible also may present social or emotional behavioral issues in school.
Cognitive Development
Students create or construct meaning in a variety of ways. According to Piaget’s theory, children move from the preoperational to the concrete operational and then the formal operational stage during their school years. One student can make sense more easily through listening, while another prefers visual information. Successful teachers understand their students’ thinking styles and plan lessons to accommodate a wide variety of ways to make meaning.
Cognitive Development
What are the cognitive develop stages and what do they each involve?
Cognitive Development stages:
- Concrete operational stage: 7-11. think in logical terms, not abstract. Require hands-on experiences.
- Formal operational stage: 11-15. Develop hypothetical and abstract thinking. Use logical operations to work abstract problems.
- Preoperational stage: 2-6 or 7. Children are able to make mental representations of unseen objects, but cannot use deductive reasoning. In other words, the child is unable to draw conclusions from a set of premises or use logic to solve problems.
- Sensorimotor stage thinker: birth-2. Involves making sense of the world through the senses. Do not understand that once an object is hidden, the object is still there, just hidden; this is known as the concept of object permanence.
Language Development and Acquisition
Many students’ first language is not English; furthermore, students within the same school district may speak in various dialects. Students whose first language is not English or who use a dialect that is not standard American English (SAE) benefit when a teacher views these differences as sources of enrichment in the classroom.
