Developmentally Appropriate Teaching Strategies

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Running Head: DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE TEACHING STRATEGIES 1

Developmentally Appropriate Teaching Strategies

Andrew Smith

SOC 312

Instructor Baez

September 24, 2014


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Developmentally Appropriate Teaching Strategies 2

Developmentally Appropriate Teaching Strategies

One challenge involved with ensuring that teaching strategies are appropriate for

culturally diverse children is when the teacher is unfamiliar with the childs culture, which can

lead to several issues and misunderstandings. Definitions and expectations of appropriate

behavior are culturally influenced, and conflicts are likely to occur when teachers and students

come from different cultural backgrounds, (New York University Steinhardt School, 2008, P. 2,

Par. 2). Kids from different cultures have different values, beliefs, and rules of behavior, and

being aware of these differences and acknowledging them can help these students to understand

that the rules of the classroom may be different than the rules they have at home or in their

community. In addition, [m]isreading behaviors or communication patterns of culturally and

linguistically diverse students (i.e., White, Black, Latino, Asian, Native American) can lead

teachers who are unprepared to meet the educational needs of these students to see them as

having a disability and request a referral to special education, (New York University Steinhardt

School, 2008, P. 2, Par. 2).

One strategy of dealing with this challenge is by using the Culturally Responsive

Classroom Management approach, a pedagogical approach, that takes the students backgrounds,

experiences, knowledge, and learning styles into account during lessons. Teachers who do not

have cultural competence, that do not know much about their students cultures, often experience

difficulties in connecting with their students, and relating the information to their lives to make it

personal for them so that the learning is meaningful. This approach is broken down into five

parts, multicultural counseling and caring: recognition of ones own cultural lens and biases,

knowledge of students cultural backgrounds,awareness of the broader social, economic and

political context, ability and willingness to use culturally appropriate management strategies, and


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commitment to building caring classroom communities, (New York University Steinhardt

School, 2008, P. 3, Par. 3). Taking these into account when designing and presenting lessons

will go a long way towards ensuring that teaching strategies are appropriate for culturally diverse

children.

Another challenge facing culturally diverse children in the classroom is that of language.

The children in our schools come from a number of different countries, and some may not speak

English, or may have a very limited vocabulary and understanding of the language. In these

cases it could be very difficult in finding ways to relate the material so that these students can

connect with it and be successful learners. Teachers are often a young immigrant's first regular,

ongoing contact with someone outside their home community and culture. It's a relationship that

can provide the emotional scaffolding necessary to cross the linguistic and cultural divide

between country of origin and country of residency,(Culture in the classroom, n.d., Par. 24). If

the students are unable to understand the teacher or the instruction, then no matter what teaching

strategy is used, it will not be effective for these students.

There is plenty of help and different strategies that could be used to help these English

Language Learners. One strategy is connecting the students home language to that of English.

English share many commonalities with other languages, for instance, in the Korean language

there is a long asound just like in the English language with words that have aiand ay

spellings. With these types of sounds, the teacher could circle the letters in English and then

write the corresponding symbol or letters that make the same sound in the students language.

This strategy was found to click with the students and helped them to learn the English language

much more quickly because it made meaningful connections to their own language

(TeachingTolerance, 2008). Another strategy that will help while the student is in the process of


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learning English is to have subtitles and translations so that they can see both the word in their

own language paired with the English translation of the word. In some areas, success has been

found using techniques that range from extending the school year and adding after-school

programs to implementing scripted phonics-based learning programs, (Girard, 2005, Par. 7).

Stereotypes also pose a challenge with ensuring that teaching strategies are appropriate

for culturally diverse children. There are stereotypes for everybody, but do people know what is

true and what is false? It can be a hard line to distinguish, and even if the stereotype may be true

for most of a culture or group of people, it will not be true for everyone in that group. Negative

stereotypes not only jeopardize how members of stigmatized groups might perform on tests and

in other skill-based acts, such as driving and golf putting, but they also can inhibit actual

learning, (Indiana University, 2010, Par. 1). Because teachers deal with students from many

different nationalities, they may only know popular stereotypes about these students culture and

do not know about their real experiences, values, prior learning, or etcetera.

To engage students effectively in the learning process, teachers must know their

students and their academic abilities individually, rather than relying on racial or ethnic

stereotypes or prior experience with other students of similar backgrounds, (Culture in the

classroom, n.d., Par. 7). Therefore the teacher must get to know their students as individuals,

what their interests are, what they want to learn, what they already know, and what they want to

accomplish. Teachers should also use tests that are gender- and race-fair tests that convey that

they are being used to facilitate learning, not to measure innate ability or reify stereotypes,

(Walton, n.d., P. 4). To ensure that teaching strategies are appropriate for culturally diverse

children, teachers must disregard stereotypes, and see their students as they are, so that they


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know what they need to learn, and not what the teachers think they should learn. That way

teachers can close the learning and cultural gaps.

According to the functionalist perspective of sociology, each aspect of society is

interdependent and contributes to society's stability and functioning as a whole. For example, the

government provides education for the children of the family, which in turn pays taxes on which

the state depends to keep itself running, (Rakhi & Licy, 2011, P.15, Par. 2). Looking at society

in this way, we can see that when there is a challenge in educating the diverse groups of students,

it can have an effect on the rest of our society. We should strive to meet these challenges so that

these students can learn as well as native students and grow to be a contributing member of

society. In Eriksons stages of psychosocial development, there are a number of stages that each

person goes through. Each stage has a potential for two outcomes, the successful completion of

the stage which results in a healthy personality and successful interactions with others,

(Heffner, 2011, Par. 1), or failure to complete the stage which can result in a reduced ability to

complete further stages and therefore a more unhealthy personality and sense of self, (Heffner,

2011, Par. 1). The cultural challenges in the classroom can have a major effect on the outcomes

of these stages, so these challenges could not only pose a problem to learning, but to proper

social development as well.

[C]ulture, language, and social factors are being recognized as having an impact on

learning. Indeed, culture is a major, if not the primary factor affecting the development of

cognitive style, (McIntye, 1996, Par. 3). To address the challenges related to difference in

culture, the teacher should learn about the teaching styles of their students cultures, because

often the teaching styles of our schools conflict with those of other cultures, such as African-

Americans, Arab-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Native Americans, and a subgroup of Asian


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Americans that includes Laotian and Cambodian Hmong immigrants, (McIntye, 1996, Par. 8).

Here, the focus is on independent style of learning, whereas many other cultures use a field

dependant style of learning. In comparison with field independent youngsters, field dependent

pupils tend to be more group oriented, more proficient at summarizing group consensus after

hearing many individual positions put forward, and are more sensitive to the needs and reactions

of others, (McIntye, 1996, Par. 10). When the teachers are aware of the differences, from how

the students have been taught, to how our schools teach, they can try to bridge the gap and use

teaching styles that will be more effective for their students.


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Developmentally Appropriate Teaching Strategies