Cultural Diversity. Racial Diversity. Socioeconomic Diversity. Academic Diversity. Students have many kinds of needs. It is the job of the teacher to meet the needs of each of these diverse students. That's a tall order. The first thing a teacher must do is identify the needs of the diverse learners.
A specific type of diversity is that of immigrant students. Immigrant students often come to the United States with a myriad of diverse needs from not speaking the language to having academic disparities. Teachers need to have a deep of understanding of their specific learning needs and academic disparities. The chart below shows the learning needs and academic disparities of Japanese Immigrant Students, Mexican Immigrant Students, and Puerto Rican Immigrant Students.
Note: From “Identifying Diverse Learner Needs,” by S. Martin, 2021, p. 3.
However, learning needs and academic disparities apply to many other groups of disadvantaged students including those from low socio-economic status and those with other cultural or racial diversities not linked to immigration. It would be good practice for teachers to identify the types of diverse students they have in their classes and then determine the learning needs and academic disparities for each group. Teachers need to tailor teaching strategies for students by considering their economic and social contexts (American Psychological Association, 2012).
References
American Federation of Teachers. (2019). Closing the achievement gap: Focus on Latino
students. Colorin’ Colorado.
American Psychological Association. (2012). Ethnic and racial disparities in education:
Psychology’s contributions to understanding and reducing disparities. APA Presidential
Task Force on Educational Disparities. https://www.apa.org/ed/resources/racial-
Antrop-González, R.,Vélez, W., and Garrett, T. (2003). Where are the academically successful
Puerto Rican Students? Five success factors of high achieving Puerto Rican high school
students. The Julian Samora Research Institute.
Bennett, J. (n. d.). Expectations for Japanese children.
de Souza, M. (2017). Understanding Mexican immigrant students in American schools: A
case study of two Preparatorias in México. Cogent Education, 4(1).
Fugiwara, K. (2006). A study of Japanese ELL students in mainstream classrooms (Publication
No. 1964) [Doctoral Dissertation, University of Tennessee]. Tennessee Research and
Creative Exchange. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1964
Comentarios