4. Be able to apply theories, principles and models of learning and
communication to delivering inclusive teaching and learning
4.1
Design resources that:
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actively promote equality and value diversity
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meet the identified needs of specific learners
What is equality and diversity?
Diversity, equality and multiculturalism is the concept of accepting and promoting the
differences between all sorts of different people. In particular, the importance of
equality lies within the necessity of treating people equally and in a fair way,
regardless of their race, age, gender, disability, religion of gender. Diversity is
primarily about understanding and fully respecting the difference people have in
order to establish an all-inclusive environment.
The importance of promoting diversity and equality is necessary within education for
both teachers and students. The target is to establish a classroom environment
whereby, all students can equally thrive and comprehend how individual
characteristics make them unique and not different in a undesirable way.
How can multiculturalism and equality be encouraged within schools?
Encouraging diversity and equality within the classroom is not necessarily needed to
be challenged and it is something which all children should be familiar with from an
early development age. This surely means:
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Treating all teachers and students equally and fairly.
Lessons should be planned to show diversity
Ensuring learning resources are adapted wherever necessary thus, never
discriminating against anyone.
Establishing an all-inclusive culture for students and staff members.
Ensuring all students have equal access to all opportunities and participation.
Specifically attacking all negative qualities.
Establishing a clear bar on how all people should be treated accordingly.
Refraining from using stereotypes in resources and examples.
Using a wide selection of assessment materials and teaching methodology.
The Equality Act 2010
The equality act was established in order to provide legal protection to all those with
one or more protected characteristics:
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Marriage and civil partnership
Race
Belief or religion
Sex and orientation
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Age
Gender
Disability
The following needs to be considered when applied to teaching:
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Understanding opportunities within your teaching element for students and
operate collaboratively within diverse groups.
Making bold and obvious the standards of behaviour expected from students
so, they deal with, interact and appropriately handle incorrect behaviour.
Establishing respective creative ways of implementing diverse experiences
students partake in, to add value to the entire learning process people have.
Paying particular close attention to the requirements for students within
diverse groups in your course design- this should include an equality impact/
analysis assessment process within your course development, as this is a
rather useful way of ensuring you have provided consideration to accessibility
and inclusivity.
Diverse and equality based classroom activities
The following are some classroom activities and concepts you can implement and
adapt to promote diversity in your school.
Make use of current events and relevant news
Actively promoting discussion and debates with your students via raising current
issues and seeking out what your students comprehend about each particular
situation. For instance, find a situation where someone was fired from their job
because they belonged to a certain demographic… what do you students think about
this?
Sample Food from different countries
Set up tables representing different countries across your classroom, and have your
students sample food made in different counties, corresponding to each culture. Ask
them to evaluate each food they taste and how does it differ to food they eat on a
normal day? You can then teach the students why particular foods are eaten more in
some countries and less in others.
Sample different sports
Set up sessions experimenting different sports which are more popular and dominant
in some countries in comparison to others. They can evaluate each sport and
understand why some sports are more popular in some regions and less so in
others. Also the cultural significance with each sport can be taught to the students as
they can widen their perspective on understanding a variety of different skills and
techniques. For instance, cricket is the main sport in Pakistan whereas baseball and
NFL is more populous in America.
Themed weeks
Have a week centred around entirely different cultural followings such as, ‘South
American week’, ‘Islam week’, ‘Hip hop week’. The week can involve trying different
music groups, games, fact learning, foods and various videos. Attempt to incorporate
each particular theme into each area of the curriculum to establish the area of
interest and strengthen the topic.
Implement diverse images within resources
When selecting books, activities and posters for learners, ensure they involve people
from various backgrounds or with disabilities to represent these differences between
them are ‘normal’. Avoid using resources whereby stereotypes may be implemented.
Quizzes
Host regular quizzes on a particular theme and actively learn how much your
students understand about differences in individuals such as their, religion, ethnicity,
disabilities etc. You could allocate the task of locating a story where someone was
removed from their work due to their disability. What do you students think about
this? How would they challenge this?
Play music
Listen to different music from across the world and if possible see if you can create
your own using percussion instruments. Introduce your students to instruments from
different countries and cultures they have previously not come across and the
variations in the styles. If you are in a diverse classroom, you can ask the students to
demonstrate the difference in the music within their country.
Male or Female?
Explore the concept behind stereotypes- allocate each student with 10 different
professions and ask them to decide whether each profession should be more of a
women’s job or a man’s one. Search through their answers, feedback to the class
and let the students discuss what stereotypes they have come across.
Jigsaws
Create your own jigsaws, whereby facts should match up with their country etc. you
should also do with different languages, national clothing and colours of clothing.
Celebrate different occasions
Host class events for Eid, Easter, Ramadan, Diwali etc. to increase perception of
how people celebrate in different religions and cultures. Analyse each festival as a
class and ask them what they think about each festival.
Tell stories
Locate a few stories which challenge the ideas and stereotypes, such as the simple
tale of the tortoise and the hare… which proves initial ideas can be deceiving. These
kind of stories can encourage students to ponder deeply on their beliefs and look at
the world in a different light.
Have debates and discussions
Split your class in half in two teams. Provide one team with a statement and task.
Such as ‘im a young man working as a field engineer and I am told, I can no longer
work because I got injured on the job’. This team must defend this statement. After
this, ask the other team to provide advice and challenge this statement. Question
how both teams feel afterwards and ask them which team they would prefer to be on
in the end?
Learn different languages
Give your students the task of learning a few phrases in popular languages such as
Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese etc. to increase their level of perception on the
language barriers in the world. If your class has students speaking different
languages, ask them to pair up with other students. Allow the class to discuss the
advantages of speaking different languages.
Initial expressions
This works a lot better for students who are more mature. Find youtube clip posted
from the independent, but pause the video every 20 seconds, after you ask the
students what they believe is happening in the video. Do the student’s perceptions
change as the video carries on; get your students to justify the responses they
provide.
Learn things which come from abroad
A useful activity you can implement in the first part of your lesson is to introduce the
element of multiculturalism. Allow your students the chance to make a useful list on
everything they have done in their life which comes from a country outside the UK.
Explore the responses the students came up with as a class.
Hearing/ sight/ physical impairment games
A great idea on how to raise perception on different physical disabilities is to play
some games as a class. For instance, ask your students to stand up from the floor
using just one leg or ask them to do a one arm pullup or can they understand speech
when theres no sound? Implement these activities to show the problems individuals
face and then explain how the people go about overcoming them.
True or false
Either based on the protected characteristics on facts based around people’s
cultures, disabilities or ethnicities, ask the students to discuss whether the facts are
true or false.
Here are some resources I found useful to represent diversity and show
equality
There is also a useful diversity quiz on this site, I can have students practice on:
https://www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/equality-diversity-quiz/
Here is an additional power point presentation I have created:
4.5
Explain how the student’s own delivery of inclusive teaching and
learning has taken account of theories, principles and models of learning and
communication.
4.5 The student should complete a reflective piece explaining how their own delivery
of inclusive teaching and learning has taken account of theories, principles and
models of learning and communication.
For my role as a physical education teacher, I require an understanding into all of
current legislation, procedures and policies. To my understanding, when these are in
place, we have a guideline, and it also protects students and tutors to want to work
within an environment for teaching. Inclusive learning can be established in several
different ways such as, looking out for those on lower income brackets, and
providing them with subsidies and grants, so they can partake in sessions of training
on a much lower cost, which is universally affordable by all. When running classes or
teaching, I ensure I use a venue which is accessible from all people with disabilities
and has access to a lift for wheelchair users. If applicable (with deaf, blind etc), a
student can have access to learning support available to attend any class.
I have in the past carefully prepared resources which can additionally aid in inclusive
learning. For instance, when handing out flyers, the font should be large enough to
read from anyone who reads it. All the language used should be in plain font and no
unnecessary jargon should be used. A good layout should be used which combines
text and pictures captivates a student’s attention far better than just plain blocks.
Coloured paper can also be used with children who suffer from dyslexia.
When I teach my classes, there are several techniques to encourage inclusive
practice. This is entirely based on using different learning styles, differentiation and
fluctuating the students to interact with each other. It is universally understood,
different students assimilate knowledge with different learning styles such as
auditory, kinaesthetic, aural and visual. Differentiation occurs when the methods of
teaching match up with and directly challenge an individual’s requirements and
ensure their enthusiasm and level of interest remains high within the area of training
taught or sport. Being able to understand and directly empathize with your student’s
capabilities will ensure the correct balance of methodologies is applied and
differential activities are implemented.
There are other points of referral which are also needed to be made available to my
clients should they need them such as, a universal hardship support fund, job centre
plus, MIND, sensory support etc.
I have used the following theories of communication in my practice:
Aristotle’s model: I have implemented the five fundamental factors needed for
communication (speaking, speech, audience, effect and occasion). I have found this
model especially effective in public speaking skills as it enables my students to
construct a speech for separate groups of people, based on the required purposes.
The is especially important for students I want to encourage to become team
captains and leaders of their peers.
Lasswell’s Model (1948): through the different stages, this states the mass
communication process is universally understood. I often use this model with my
students as opposed to the message being relayed instead, it focusses on the effect
instead. For instance, an observable change I have noticed can be on the body
language when being asked to carry out say pullups as a task. This will provide a
better indication of development than purely the elemental changes.
Newcomb’s model (1953): this is the ultimate model to implement if you want the
best communication within a society. The primary function here is to attain universal
equilibrium in society.
For instance, there was a time when I came up with a novel policy of increasing the
timings of the warm up from 5 minutes to 10 with some dynamic stretching.
A=Teacher, B=Student, X=Policy issue
When both the teacher and the student are content with then, then equilibrium status
is achieved via communication. Otherwise, the flow of communication between A
and B leads to problems in the social system. Should A or B refrain from accepting
the social system, the equilibrium status will have issues in maintenance. Therefore,
as a teacher, I have to convince my students as much as possible. Otherwise, I have
to go back and amend my policy X and try a new way to convince them towards the
policy.
There are several methods I have found useful in effectively communicating between
different professionals and students- these include and are not limited to:
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Sharing resources: this is when you pool resources and knowledge
collectively; inclusive practice will be improve when the diversity of the
selected pool is greater as well as reducing costs.
Liaison will establish additional opportunities to be created to progress or
different forms of learning strategies to enhance working relationships &
learners will be more likely to be added to newer courses.
Several different types of media can help out in the contacts they could get in
touch with; this is even easier now as technology allows communicating
virtually anywhere on the globe. Albeit there are issues in time zones though,
this can be resolved with pre-recorded material and emails.
Support specialists can bridge the gap in providing professional specialist
advice and knowledge, including legal requirements; this is even more
important for rare issues, and a solution not easily applicable (this comes at
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an increased cost). However, legal issues may be avoided in the future which
could potentially be expensive, via status and on a financial level.
Mentoring: teachers can be paired with a more skilled and knowledgeable
tutor in the same field, who can then go on to provide guidance and adequate
advice. Acting as a role model, the student can observe the mentor to
understand exactly how their principles can be applied.
It also aids in lowering the level of risk whereby all referrals have to be
convoyed with a risk assessment. Based on the assessment results, you can
determine whether the student is eligible to attend, and this is an essential
process to establish duty of care to protect all students especially, the ones
volatile in nature. Ultimately, if risks cannot be to minimised, then this remains
to be the limit of inclusive practice as services cannot be provided and a noninclusive level.