Valuing diversity in the classroom
In the last step you watched teachers talking about what diversity means to them.
The British Council Equal Opportunity and Diversity Handbook for Teachers describes diversity as visible or invisible differences. Harnessing them and accepting the potential that they bring.
In reality, every class is diverse because it’s made up of unique individuals. Even a monolingual class will have different learning preferences, skills, gender and racial balance and so on, just as we discussed in Week 1. In addition to these differences, some learners might have special educational needs like dyslexia or another specific learning difficulty, or perhaps they are particularly gifted learners.
In an inclusive classroom, both teacher and learners value each individual equally, and classroom practices should not exclude any learners. This includes recognising and responding to learner differences, as well as noticing what learners have in common.
Over to you
Using the image below as inspiration, consider the questions and write your comment below:
- How are your learners different? How are they the same?
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