Diversity, cultural understanding and global awareness are part and parcel of the vital senses of any human being. In his article “Failure is not an option”, Dave L Edyburn looks to David Wiley’s Model of Human Performance Technology and synthesizes seven key components – organization systems, incentives (which are intangibles external to the student), cognitive support, tools and physical environment (which are tangible resources) and skills/knowledge and inherent ability (which are internal to the student). It amazes me that, to this day, the education establishment still values the latter two seemingly most of all – the knowledge (“measured” in state testing) and the inherent ability (“she’s just naturally good at Math!”). As Edyburn (2006) says: “Education places a premium on knowledge that is contained in one’s head” (pg 22). To that point, as Richardson (2012) says, " The reality is that, despite having talked about personalized learning for more than a decade, most schools and teachers have been slow to discover it's potential through the use of web, interactive games and mobile devices". (pg 23)
Therefore, it is no surprise that students’ for whom English is not their first language, or from different cultural backgrounds based on ethic, socio-economic or even other countries seem to lag behind in the American system and fall into the “achievement gap”. As instruction takes place in the primary language of the country, English as a Second Language (ESL) students have the extra layer of translation to cope with in their developing brain – as well as stigma to overcome. While many of our institutions roll out professional development that speaks to Universal Design (UD) for Learning and differentiated Instruction, it’s often more tricky to show this adeptly in crowded classrooms where even the furniture often does not fit the rapidly developing learner. I always consider a great little You Tube video that I show when training teachers about Middle Years Programme (MYP) called “How Youth Learn - Ned’s GRT 8”, which articulates beautifully the major things that need to be considered with approaching any kind of learning with a developing brain – right down even to whether the child is hungry or insecure.
The Internet has so many resources for developing the diverse learner. I teach in a school where have over ninety-five different student countries represented – and there are over thirty in the faculty! Diversity is in the International School nature – and is part of the International Baccalaureate (IB) state of mind. IB even have a name for it - “International Mindedness” and as I prepare to fly to Den Haag to IB world headquarters in a couple of weeks to be part of a working group on this very topic, it’s pertinent that I am getting to think deeply about it in my blogging for this course.
While IB states that “Our world needs thinkers, innovators, collaborators and communicators” as part of their core mission, the compound of International Mindedness (with minded being “disposed, intending or inclined to do and international pertaining to relations between nations), the three attributes of IM, according to Castro, Lundgren, Woodin (2013) are “multilingualism, intercultural understanding and global engagement” (pg 4).
Multilingualism is always a challenge in the diverse classroom. A couple of years ago, I had two students arrive in my Year 1 (6th Grade) classroom with little English from China. There was little time to get support – even the children’s names had been Anglicized for ease of faculty pronunciation. Students with English as a second (or even third) language are not unusual in our school. But in mainstream social studies classes this was new. The reason was the schedule – these students could not have their ESL class in the regular slot so this was the only way.
Technology became my savior. The students came armed to class with digital translators, which they used constantly. I started to use Dragon Diction so that they could speak their answers and the computer would type (although the student pronunciation was so tricky with the limited phonics that natural Mandarin has!). We got through that first year and had a steep learning curve. Our schedule has continued to drive this differentiation and as I teach one of these students now in Year 3 (8th Grade) I note that his skills in using the technology is now finely honed – but his independent knowledge in a test is still something that he struggles with. Fortunately, we are a school that does incorporate project, constructivist and collaborative learning into every Unit of Inquiry in the MYP. So he achieves across the assessment criteria and is not left languishing in the achievement gap. He falls into the second of Samuel Jackson’s two knowledge types as articulated in Edyburn (2006), “Knowledge is two types; the kind you know and the kind you know how to find (pg. 22).
The latter matters! In their article about “Results That Matter: 21st Century Skills and High School Reform,” Partnership for 21st Century Schools articulated that, “There are results that matter for high school graduates in the 21st century — and these results are different from and go beyond traditional metrics. Even if every student in the country satisfied traditional metrics, they still would remain woefully under-prepared for 21st century success beyond high school.” (pg 5) So even if these students pass the “test” – they are still not prepared for what is beyond, which eight years after Edyburn’s groundbreaking article, is still an issue in our classrooms today.
Implicitly, therefore, access to the Internet increases students’ cultural understanding and global awareness, right? While there is a wealth of resources to help with this (a couple of my favorites being National Geographic’s “My Wonderful World” (I even own the t-shirt with the logo posted above!) and of course, the still evolving “Dissolving Boundaries”), it’s how the students interact using the knowledge that is critical. I walk into schools as an IB accreditation visitor and many will espouse their wonderful Internationally Minded programme that goes no further than the “Five F’s” – Flags, Food, Folklore, Festivals and Fashion. Cultural understanding and global awareness must go deeper than that. The Flat Classroom Project actually allows students to not only study the culture but to talk and interact on common curricular resources across the planet (a worldwide scale of Dissolving Boundaries concept!).
Add into that the ability to blog not only locally and globally with many stakeholders (parents, peers, wider community) and the recipe for engaging diverse learners is one that can be tweaked in many ways with delicious outcomes. When we used Web-Crossing in the late 90’s, this was a forum where students from the twinned schools could type messages and questions on common texts of curriculum studied in their two geographical locations in Ireland and pose questions that they later answered on videoconference and reflected on in the closed and protected Web-Crossing environment. We even went wider on St. Patrick’s Day and had Irish schools conference with Florida Online Schools to look at the real reason for St. Patrick’s Day and the assumption from the American perspective. Ground breaking – at the time we did not realize it as a team – but yes! I’ve continued with this in my classroom with students often reaching out to other classrooms via their blogs and Skype conferences. As my students are about to embark on a Flat Classroom Project with a school in Ireland, we consider this not out of the ordinary any more – it’s just good educational practice!
Richardson, W. (2012, February). Preparing Students to Learn without Us. Educational Leadership, ASCD, 22-26.
Paloma Castro, Ulla Lundgren and Jane Woodin (August, 2013). Research Report: Conceptualizing and Assessing International Mindedness (IM): An Exploratory Study. Retrieved from http://occ.ibo.org/ibis/occ/Utils/getFile2.cfm?source=/ibis/occ/spec/cntm.cfm&filename=general/g_0_iboxx_amo_1310_1_e.pdf
Partnership for 21st Century Schools (August 2013) Results That Matter: 21st Century Skills and High School Reform. Retrieved from: http://www.p21.org/news-events/press-releases/202-high-schools-must-integrate-framework-for-21st-century-learning-to-produce-effective-citizens-in-a-global-economy
L Hilt. (2011, Oct 26). Creating Global Classrooms, The How of 21st Century Teaching, Voices, Web Tools That Deepen Learning. (5 comments). Retrieved from http://plpnetwork.com/2011/10/26/the-case-for-cultivating-cultural-awareness/