DIVERSITY OF LEARNERS

Diversity of Learners

Over the years, we have seen state and district accountability systems swing from traditional
reliance on norm-referenced, standardized tests to an emphasis on alternative measures that more
accurately gauge student performance. In realization, standardized tests, covering easily measurable
skills in multiple choice, and short answer formats don’t actually tell us about what students are capable
of and therefore resulting to limited value in guiding a teacher’s daily instruction. How can we actually
say that a student is intelligent or brilliant? Do students have the same learning preferences and styles?
Do they have the same thinking capacity? Or are they actually diverse in varying ways? And how do
these diversities affect student’s learning?

Diversity, or the differences among students have placed greater demands to teachers in today’s
schools. Students may differ in race which is commonly indicated by the color of the skin. They may
belong to different ethnic or religious groups and speak different languages. In most public schools,
students came from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds. Meaning to say, student populations
are diverse. It includes students from various culture; with varied abilities, interests, experiential
backgrounds, and even language use (Basham, Meyer, and Perry, 2010, p. 340). It may also be defined
as the increasing number of children who come from families that are plagued by poverty,
unemployment, frequent relocation, limited access to high quality medical and social services and
perhaps crime ridden neighborhoods. It occurs at many different levels and displayed in many different
forms in the modern classroom.

The issue of cultural majority and minority in the classroom has posed a challenge to teachers,
where girls are more than the boys, the natives are more than those immigrants, the rich are less than
the poor and many other divides that greatly influence how the teacher would accommodate
differences and commonalities. Added to this, is the fact that sometimes, the teacher come from a
culture that is different from where their students belong. The teachers themselves are unaware of the
cultural norms that exist in the diverse culture, which often times interfere with teaching and learning. It
is extremely important to support and protect diversity because by valuing individuals and groups free
from prejudice and by fostering a climate where equity and mutual respect are intrinsic, we will create a
success-oriented, cooperative, and caring community that draws intellectual strength and produces
innovative solutions from the synergy of its people. Diversity means more than just acknowledging
and/or tolerating difference.

Here are the different diversity of the learners:

1. Socio-economic background
- it refers to the way or how students live. It is represented by the level of education and is analyzed
using socio-economic gradients that are summarized by education level, slope, and strength of
relationship. As we observe in the society today, the lives of the poor differ from that of the riches.
Some do not even have the opportunity to study and go to school. Their social status deprives or
prevent them from having the education that is part of their rights as human beings.

2. Cultural Background

-It includes the customs, language, traditions, religion, education, social, and economic factors that
shape individuals and their sense of belonging in a specific society. Since diversity is common in
classrooms, mostly visible in public schools, students will have to interact with one another and find out
that there are things that are very different from what they had lived or used.

3. Gender Differences

-How are different or how similar boys and girls are within the teaching environment?

4. Learning Aptitude/ Exceptionalities

-This refer to learners who are different in some way from the normal or average. Most of these learners
require a lot of understanding and patience as well as special education and related services if they are
to reach their full potential and development. It refers to the children or students with exceptional
abilities or special needs.

• Gifted and Talented Learners and Underachievers

• Handicapped or challenged Children

• Communication Disorders: Speech, Language and Hearing, Visual

- Learning disabilities

• Emotional and behavioral Disorders

5. Interest

- Learners perform differently according to their interests, motivations and cultural background. There
are students who only listen well, participate and engage themselves during discussion whenever the
lesson is about something that they enjoy, and there are also some who choose to be silent because the
topic isn’t into their liking.

6. Sexual Preference

- Adolescent gays and lesbians suffer the rejection and stigmatization from their close ones and even the
physical abuse, as well as name calling from their class or schoolmates, ending in a higher risk of failure
and even suicide. Before, or even at this moment, there are still some people who disregards LGBTQIA+
members. Their perspectives and opinions differ from one another and as a result, their insights or
voices are not taken into consideration.

7. Developmental Differences
-each student varies from the others based on their age group, as well as within that range. There are
psychosocial, cognitive and moral differences.

8. Personality

- it refers to the way how a person thinks, behave and react which are influenced by the people and
events in the student’s lives.

This combines into 3 types of temperament types:

• Easy or flexible children

• Difficult, active or feisty children

• Slow to warm up or cautious children

9. Learning Style

- refer to the preferred way and individual processes information. What might be effective to many
might not be good to others.

• Sensory Preferences- individuals tend to gravitate toward one or two types of sensory inputs
and maintain a dominance in one of the following types:

A.) Visual Learners

-may think in pictures and learn best from visual aids like diagrams, videos and hand-
outs

B.) Auditory Learners

- learn best through verbal lectures, discussions, talking things through and listening to
what others have to say

C.) Tactile/Kinesthetic Learner

- prefer “learning by doing”, benefit much from hands-on approach,

actively exploring the physical world around them.

Multiple Intelligences (Howard Gardner)

1. Visual / Spatial (Picture Smart)

2. Verbal/Linguistic (Word Smart)

3. Mathematical/Logical (Number/Logic Smart)

4. Bodily/Kinesthetic (Body Smart)

5. Musical/Rhythmic (Music Smart)

6. Intrapersonal (Self Smart)

7. Interpersonal (People Smart)

8. Naturalist (Nature Smart)