The Field Of Engaging Diverse Students

They were interviewed at the beginning and end of the school year. The interviews were coded for quanitative analysis. The participants were practicing science teachers from a large urban school district in the western United States. The district’s student population was ethnically diverse Participants were recruited by an email to all high school Earth science teachers. Benchmark exams that measure student progress on important Earth science concepts at the beginning and end of each school year to provide a standard of focus.

Science is a great way to begin encouraging children to learn observational skills because one needs to be focused. Getting our youth exposed earlier in the education process could potentially open up minds to a greater understanding. Critical thinking is important in all aspects of life. It is critical to science because science only progresses, in the simplest terms, by uncovering the patterns underlying the materials and processes of nature. Loosely speaking, critical thinking requires one to drop biases, prejudices and assumptions for the simple reason that these can all lead one to the wrong conclusion. If a wrong conclusion is reached it is more difficult to face reality. Acquiring these critical thinking skills will allow students to see our society from a variety of perspectives which is how we begin to make change.

Poverty is a serious issue which our society and children faces every day. It is a constant struggle that shouldn’t be ignored. UNICEF states “The study of OECD countries in 2007, over fourteen percent of Australian children under the age of eighteen are currently living in households who are defined as poor or with incomes less than half of the median national income”. The increase in the number and percentage of children living in poverty within our society has contributed to making today's classrooms more diverse than ever it has been. This highlights and makes both teaching and learning more challenging. Diversity exists in the students who are living in poverty and the education assistant and teachers must provide the concept of diversity

The process skills approach to teaching is defined as the educator helping children develop science skills and processes to confidently undertake their own investigations (Campbell, 2012). These skills are developed through: communicating, science language, asking questions, making sense of phenomena, predicting, modelling, conducting investigations, planning, testing, observing, reasoning, and drawing conclusions of science concepts (Campbell, 2012). When the educator assist children’s learning, it is important to put the emphasis on the nature of science and scientific concepts. Guided discovery approach to teaching requires the educator to ask effective questions that encourage children to explore and extend their investigations throughout science learning (Campbell, 2012). This can be developed through play experiences as children explore their world around them. An interactive approach to teaching children is based on questions that lead explorations and the educators to provide essential resources to guide these explorations (Campbell, 2012). It is the educators’ responsibility to support children’s development, ideas, questions, ways of thinking, and develop scientific thinking. Furthermore, an inquiry approach to teaching relates to children investigating the answers to their own

There have been few studies focusing on the impact that reading comprehension has in the science curriculum on students ' science comprehension. Random students were selected to participate in either inquiry-based science only or inquiry-based science plus reading conditions. The results showed that students that performed in an inquiry-science based plus reading significantly outperformed the inquiry-based science only students. In the state of Georgia students must pass the state

Students have their own best way in effectively learning the lesson. With the diversity of students, the problem is each student has a preferred learning style. It becomes undeniably one of the reasons that make it difficult to achieve the best expected outcome out of teachers’ effort. However, teachers try to incorporate various teaching techniques to make every learning opportunity become productive, meaningful, and relevant for the learners.

The most memorable time when I was impacted educationally by diversity would be my freshman year in High School. I had gone to a private Christian school from Kindergarten through 8th grade. My mom thought that it would be a great idea to send me to public school for my freshman year. Mind you, I lived in Dallas, TX at the time and public school is quite different than private school there. I was not only the minority in school, but I was one of five Caucasian kids in the entire school. I was made fun of for being white, coming from private school, and for being smart. Just like the article, Helping Diverse Learners Succeed, I had to learn about my new environment. I didn’t understand why the kids were mean to me and why

The author of White Teacher is Vivian Gussin Paley. The book is about her experience of teaching her kindergarten class. She shares her experiences of teaching in a school with integrated classes in a time when racism was a major part of society in the outside world. Mrs. Paley’s main focus was to be the best teacher she could be to all of her students, but was not sure how to go about dealing with the racial differences in her classroom. She was told she should ignore the subject of race in the classroom and pay more attention to the behavior and success of her students. Mrs. Paley quickly realized that this was not the solution and that ignoring this subject did not help the students. It conveyed the wrong message to all of the students, even the white ones. Mrs. Paley started to bring the subject to her students and this also helped with her own struggles with racial stereotypes in and outside of the classroom environment. This book gives an inside look of the struggles that teachers face when trying to address the issues of race and it gives some insight on some of the solutions teachers can use to effectively deal with this very fragile subject.

The article, Teaching Strategies for Diverse Learners in FCS Classrooms, describes the changes in the ethnical make-up of today’s classroom and the challenges teachers face as they aim to teach children from different cultures. In addition, the article points out the different needs of multicultural learners in the classroom. Finally, the article also describes research based strategies and techniques teachers can use that prove to be effective for the diverse learner.

Scientific-based instruction is something that teachers use all the time in their classroom. Teachers are consistently assessing and evaluating students’ performance, creating and amending individual education plans, lesson plans, and reflecting on their practices. As teachers, we should be doing rigorous research and building hypothesis to base further teaching practices on.

Within the core of many educational institutions, diversity is a commercial tacit. While every institution cannot offer the same kind of diversity, the endorsement of such exists through various definitions. The Western Association of Schools and Colleges define diversity through the various classes: race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, disability, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and age (“Statement on Diversity”)

There is no denying the benefit of art (creative thinking) in the science classrooms, without it scientific problems may never get solved. But the art of writing has always been a tenant of STEM and PBL. Consider the following Definition of Scientific Inquiry, an integral part of STEM learning, from the National Research Council;

As of July 1, 2011, there are 36, 708, 083 people in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2017a). 1.2% higher than the population last year, which was 36, 264, 604 people of all ages and both sexes (Statistics Canada, 2017b). The growth of population in Canada, which in this case powered largely by immigration, increases not only the human capital, but the diversity in every province as well. Hence, as diversity expands, there is also a rampant growth in religion. In 2011, there are 108 religions observed in Canada (Statistics Canada, 2011) - Christianity, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu – to name a few. These demographics have connotations on how diversity in school is also evident.

Although the inquiry- and design-based instruction methodology can be traced back to John Dewey, an American philosopher of education reform, it has never been practiced on a wide scale in an American STEM classroom. The impact of the nCase program poses conditions for inquiry; therefore, the primary question being

A way that teachers can assess to see higher learning outcomes in the scientific context is to check to see if students can answer open ended questions. Open ended questions encourage teachers to see what students can pursue on how the world works. With this being done teachers must make sure that