TEACHING STANDARDS

ADDRESSING THE DIVERSITY OF LEARNERS

Effective mathematics and science teachers understand the variety of ways students learn and appreciate the range of cultures, experiences, understandings, and interests that diverse students bring into the classroom.

Highly accomplished teachers recognize that every classroom is made up of unique individuals. Each of these students brings his/her own interests, understandings, experiences, and needs to the learning situation. In addition to the content, effective teachers consider their students and the variety of ways they learn when selecting, adapting, and delivering instruction that will encourage the active involvement of all learners. The teachers see mathematics and science as ways of satisfying students' natural curiosity about the world and their innate desire to make sense of their experiences.

In order to make informed decisions when designing instruction to meet the varied needs of their students, effective teachers build upon an understanding of:

• multiple intelligences and differences in learning styles among their students,
• ways to link tasks and activities to the students' surroundings and past experiences in order to further the students' efforts to construct meaning,
• the effectiveness of teaching strategies such as cooperative learning, independent study, projects, inquiry, experimentation, and problem solving,
• the research-based shifts in mathematics and science education and the implications of these shifts on classroom instruction.

Because learning builds on prior knowledge and experiences, teachers make it a point to find out who their students are as individual learners and as a group, then use this knowledge to help shape decisions in the classroom. Practically everything about the learner is relevant to teachers including cultural, linguistic, and ethnic background, family setting, interests, needs and goals. The teachers strive to gain a sense of each student's degree of confidence in engaging in inquiry, his/her background knowledge, and individual facility with language.

In addition to their knowledge of students as individual learners, teachers also have a broad knowledge of learning characteristics and the developing capabilities of the age group. Teachers:

• recognize that, while students come to school with a wide range of experiences and ideas, for the most part they are intellectual novices engaged in building a mental picture of how the world works,
• are aware of the misconceptions students typically bring to a topic,
• understand that student learning proceeds from concrete experiences to abstract explanations and that direct experiences with natural and technological phenomena help students make useful generalizations about them,
• know that the vast majority of young learners cannot understand abstract models that explain the totality of scientific or mathematical knowledge on a given topic without a long-term building towards such understanding based on concrete experiences,
• know what level of thinking to expect from their students.

Pacific region teachers also understand the rich cultures in which their students live. They appreciate and act upon the fact that:

• although most educational activities are conducted in English, it remains a second language for many students;
• an understanding of the cultural traditions and values helps to inform the design of effective tasks and activities;
• an understanding of mathematical and scientific traditions embedded in the culture can be used to build educationally effective tasks;
• an understanding of the relationship between language and learning is useful in developing and using effective teaching strategies that engage students in learning mathematics and science;
• decisions about grouping, ways of responding to questions, displaying knowledge, ways of reporting learning, and group leadership are often critically important and culture-specific.