Educational Discussions: Inviting All Students to Learn

                In the most recent Edition of Educational Leadership, I came across an article co-authored by Hilary Dack and Carol Ann Tomlinson. I have been a Tomlinson disciple for years. The following are some of the highlights from this article.

                A non-Inuit speech-language pathologist who was conducting research in an Inuit school in Canada asked the principal, who was not Inuit, to give her the names of students who had language or speech problems. She received a list that comprised about 1/3 of the student body. The researcher questioned the Inuit teacher about student performance. The teacher responded that well-raised Inuit children learn by looking and listening, and thus they do not talk in class.

                The principal did not see individual students’ learning patterns as manifestations of cultural expectations or recognize that her own beliefs about student speech reflected different cultural tendencies than those of the community in which she worked.

                All people are shaped by the culture in which they live. Educators need to become better attuned to cultural variance and help all students build positive productive lives. Four suggestions:
1.  Recognize and Appreciate Cultural Variance – Excellent teachers have always been students of their students, understanding that they cannot teach well unless they know their students. Seek knowledge about the cultures students bring to your classroom.

2.    Learn About and Look for Culturally Influenced Learning Patterns – The educator’s job includes welcoming every student who walks through the door. Increasingly, these students come from backgrounds different from our own. The process of learning about cultural patterns is both fascinating and instructive.

3.  Look Beyond Cultural Patterns to See Individuals – It’s also essential to understand that no pattern in a culture applies to all individuals within that culture. Any student’s learning will be shaped not only by that student’s culture, but also by his or her readiness needs, home context, personal talents and interests, cognitive development, and a host of other factors.

4. Plan Inviting Curriculum and Instruction – Teachers who seek to maximize learning for all their students invest heavily in creating a curriculum that both engages students and guides them to understand what they study. A teacher who looks at students as individuals, no matter what their cultural experiences are, will attend to their varied points of readiness, their interests, their exceptionalities, their status among peers, and so on when planning curriculum and instruction. We need to plan for a range of approaches that reflect a variety of points on these spectrums, rather than favoring only those approaches that are familiar and comfortable for the teacher.

John Hattie (2012) suggest that teachers who issue the invitation to learning by demonstrating respect (every student is valuable, able, and responsible); trust (fostering student collaboration that makes every student a contributor to the learning process); optimism (sending a clear message that each student has the potential to learn what is necessary for success); and intentionality (making evident that every step in the lesson was specifically designed to invite each student to learn). Teachers can achieve this in a variety of ways. Teachers who issue invitations for all students to learn systematically educate themselves about and value cultural distinctions, see students as unique individuals, and plan teaching and learning in ways likely to connect each student with important content, with one another, and with success.