Classroom Strategies for
Teaching Diverse Groups
Sarah Moore
Professional Development Team
Learning and Teaching Services
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Learning Outcomes
By the end of this session, you will be able to:
• explain the theory around different learning
styles and how this creates diversity in the
classroom
• identify key methods/strategies for teaching
diverse groups of students
• establish how and when you might use some of
these strategies with the groups you teach
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Factors influencing learning
• Age
• Gender
• Rest of their student
experience
• Ethnicity
• Learning background
• Culture
• Demand of the task
• Context
• Context of learning
• Discipline
• Learning outcomes
• Learning environment
• Cues of the learning
Wisker G, Exley K, Antoniou M and Ridley P (2008) Working One-To-One With Students (London: Routledge)
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Experiential learning
Kolb’s (1984)definition of experiential
learning is that it is:
•‘the process whereby knowledge is created
through the transformation of experience’
Kolb, D. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the source of learning and
development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
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Experiential learning cycle
Concrete
Experience
Active
Experimentation
Reflective
Observation
Abstract
Conceptualisation
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Kolb, D. (1984) Experiential Learning:
Experience as the source of learning
and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
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Honey and Mumford’s (1986)
learning styles
Activist
Reflector
Theorist
Pragmatist
Honey, P. and Mumford, A. (1986) Using Your Manual of Learning Styles. Maidenhead: Peter Honey Publications
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Strategies for teaching
• Name cards/
numbering
• Show of hands/
clickers
• Muddiest point
• ‘Think, pair, share’
• Group monitoring
• Online tests
• Questions
• Lecture flipping
• Feedback
• Mingle
• Workplace tasks
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Think about these strategies:
• Which might you use in your teaching to
help your students learn?
• How might you use them?
• What might you have to take into account
when using them with your students?
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Things to bear in mind:
• Make expectations and language clear
• Relate to the workplace
• Allow students time to think
• Teaching sensitive issues:
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/lets/toolkit/teach
ing/sensitive
• Cultural trends aren’t the only difference
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Professional Development
Team
Sarah Moore
Nigel Russell
Karen Ford
profdev@sheffield.ac.uk
13/04/2015 © The University of Sheffield