DİFFERENCES

Students do differ in a multitude of ways, both individually and

because of memberships in families, communities or cultural groups.

Sometimes the differences can make classroom-style teaching more

challenging, but other times, they simply enrich classroom life.

To teach students well, we need to understand the important ways

that they differ among themselves, and when or how the differences
really matter for their education.
 INDİVİDUAL STYLES OF
LEARNİNG AND THİNKİNG

• All of us have preferred ways of learning and we often refer

to these differences as learning styles.

• Students, do differ in how they habitually think. These

differences are more specific than learning styles or
preferences, and psychologists sometimes call them
cognitive styles, meaning typical ways of perceiving and
remembering information, and typical ways of solving
problems and making decisions (Zhang & Sternberg, 2006).
• In a style of thinking called field dependence,
individuals perceive patterns as a whole rather than
focus on the parts of the pattern separately.

• In a complementary tendency, called field

independence, individuals are more inclined to
analyze overall patterns into their parts.
• Another cognitive style is impulsivity as compared to reflectivity.
As the names imply, an impulsive cognitive style is one in which a
person reacts quickly, but as a result makes comparatively more
errors.

• A reflective style is the opposite: the person reacts more slowly

and therefore makes fewer errors. As you might expect, the
reflective style would seem better suited to many academic
demands of school.

• Research has found that this is indeed the case for academic skills that clearly
benefit from reflection, such as mathematical problem solving or certain
reading tasks (Evans, 2004).
 MULTİPLE İNTELLİGENCES

• Intelligence is a single broad ability that allows a person to

solve or complete many sorts of tasks, or at least many
academic tasks like reading, knowledge of vocabulary, and the
solving of logical problems (Garlick, 2002).

• But there are also problems with defining intelligence as one

general ability.

• It’s assumed that intelligence has multiple forms, whether the

forms are subparts of a single broader ability or are multiple
“intelligences” in their own right.
 HOWARD GARDNER’S THEORY
OF MULTİPLE İNTELLİGENCES
Examples of activities using the
Form of intelligence
intelligence
 
Linguistic: verbal skill; ability to use • verbal persuasion
language well  • writing a term paper skillfully

 
Musical: ability to create and • singing, playing a musical instrument
understand music  • composing a tune

   
Logical: Mathematical: logical skill; • solving mathematical problems easily
ability to reason, often using and accurately
mathematics • developing and testing hypotheses
   
Spatial: ability to imagine and manipulate • completing a difficult jigsaw puzzle
the arrangement of objects in the • assembling a complex appliance (e.g. a
environment bicycle)
   
Bodily: kinesthetic: sense of balance; • dancing
 coordination in use of one's body  • gymnastics

Interpersonal: ability to discern others'  • sensing when to be tactful

nonverbal feelings and thoughts  • sensing a “subtext” or implied message in a
person's statements

 Intrapersonal: sensitivity to one's own • noticing complex of ambivalent feelings in

thoughts and feelings oneself
• identifying true motives for an action in
oneself

 Naturalist: sensitivity to subtle differences • identifying examples of species of plants or

and patterns found in the natural animals
environment • noticing relationships among species and
natural processes in the environment
 GİFTED AND TALENTED
STUDENTS

• Traditionally, the term gifted referred only to students with

unusually high verbal skills. Their skills were
demonstrated especially well, for example, on standardized
tests of general ability or of school achievement.

• More recently, however, the meaning of gifted has

broadened to include unusual talents in a range of
activities, such as music, creative writing, or the arts (G.
Davis & Rimm, 2004).
 QUALİTİES OF THE
GİFTED AND TALENTED

• They learn more quickly and independently than most students

their own age.

• They often have well-developed vocabulary, as well as

advanced reading and writing skills.

• They are very motivated, especially on tasks that are

challenging or difficult.

• They hold themselves to higher than usual standards of

achievement.
• Contrary to a common impression, students who are gifted or
talented are not necessarily awkward socially, less healthy, or
narrow in their interests—in fact, quite the contrary (Steiner &
Carr, 2003). They also come from all economic and cultural
groups.

• Ironically, in spite of their obvious strengths as learners, such

students often languish in school unless teachers can provide
them with more than the challenges of the usual curriculum.

A kindergarten child who is precociously advanced in reading, for example, may

make little further progress at reading if her teachers do not recognize and
develop her skill; her talent may effectively disappear from view as her peers
gradually catch up to her initial level.
 SUPPORTİNG STUDENTS WHO
ARE GİFTED AND TALENTED

• Supporting the gifted and talented usually involves a

mixture of acceleration and enrichment of the usual
curriculum (Schiever & Maker, 2003).
 ACCELERATİON
• Acceleration involves either a child's skipping a grade, or else
the teacher's redesigning the curriculum within a particular
grade or classroom so that more material is covered faster.

• Either strategy works, but only up to a point: children who have

skipped a grade usually function well in the higher grade, both
academically and socially.

• Unfortunately skipping grades cannot happen repeatedly unless

teacher, parents, and the students themselves are prepared to
live with large age and maturity differences within single
classrooms.
 ENRİCHMENT

Enrichment involves providing additional or different

instruction added on to the usual curriculum goals and
activities.

•Instead of books at more advanced reading levels, for example, a

student might read a wider variety of types of literature at the student's
current reading level, or try writing additional types of literature
himself.

•Instead of moving ahead to more difficult kinds of math programs, the

student might work on unusual logic problems not assigned to the rest
of the class.
 GENDER DİFFERENCES İN
THE CLASSROOM

• Gender roles are the patterns of behaviors, attitudes,

and expectations associated with a particular sex—
with being either male or female.

• For clarity, psychologists sometimes distinguish

gender differences, which are related to social roles,
from sex differences, which are related only to
physiology and anatomy.
 PHYSİCAL DİFFERENCES
İN GENDER ROLES

• Physically, boys tend to be more active than girls, and by the

same token more restless if they have to sit for long periods.
They are also more prone than girls to rely on physical
aggression if they are frustrated (Espelage & Swearer, 2004).

• Both tendencies are inconsistent with the usual demands of

classroom life.

• In thinking about these differences, keep in mind that they refer

to average trends and that there are numerous individual
exceptions.
 SOCİAL DİFFERENCES İN
GENDER ROLES
• Boys more often gravitate to large groups.

• Girls, for their part, are more likely to seek and maintain one or two
close friends and to share more intimate information and feelings with
these individuals.

• Boys, on average, are more likely to speak up during a class discussion

—sometimes even if not called on, or even if they do not know as
much about the topic as others in the class (Sadker, 2002). When
working on a project in a small co-ed group, furthermore they have a
tendency to ignore girls’ comments and contributions to the group.
 ACADEMİC AND COGNİTİVE
DİFFERENCES İN GENDER

On average, girls are more motivated than boys to perform well in school, at
least during elementary school. By the time girls reach high school, some may
try to down play their own academic ability in order make themselves more
likeable by both sexes (Davies, 2005).

Even if this occurs, though, it does not affect their grades: from kindergarten
through twelfth grade, girls earn slightly higher average grades than boys
(Freeman, 2004).
 DİFFERENCES İN CULTURAL
EXPECTATİONS AND STYLES

• A culture is the system of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that

constitute the distinctive way of life of a people.

• Culture has elements that are obvious, like unique holidays or

customs, but also features that are subtle or easy for outsiders to
overlook, like beliefs about the nature of intelligence or about
the proper way to tell a story.

• When a classroom draws students from many cultures or ethnic

groups, therefore, the students bring to it considerable diversity.
 BİLİNGUALİSM: LANGUAGE
DİFFERENCES İN THE CLASSROOM

• Although monolingual speakers often do not realize

it, the majority of children around the world are
bilingual, meaning that they understand and use two
languages (Meyers-Scotton, 2005).

• The student who speaks both languages fluently has a

definite cognitive advantage.
• Unfortunately, the bilingualism of many students is
“unbalanced” in the sense that they are either still
learning English, or else they have lost some earlier
ability to use their original, heritage language—or
occasionally a bit of both.

• Other kind of imbalance, is that, a student is

acquiring English but losing ability with the student’s
home or heritage language.
 CULTURAL DİFFERENCES
İN LANGUAGE USE

• Cultures and ethnic groups differ not only in languages, but

also in how languages are used. Since some of the patterns
differ from those typical of modern classrooms, they can
create misunderstandings between teachers and students
(Torres- Guzman, 1998).

• Eye contact varies by culture.

• Social distance varies by culture.
• Wait time varies by culture.
 CULTURAL DİFFERENCES İN
ATTİTUDES AND BELİEFS

• For teachers, the most important ones center on beliefs about

identity, or the sense of self, or of “who you are”. A number of
other cultural beliefs and practices can be understood as
resulting from how members of a culture think about personal
identity.

• As teachers, furthermore, most of us subscribe to the idea that

all students are unique, even if we cannot implement this idea
fully in teaching because of the constraints of large classes.
Whatever the circumstances, teachers tend to believe in an
independent self.