Week 3: Literacies and learner differences

School education practices "need to recruit, rather than attempt to ignore and erase, the different subjectives - interests, intentions, commitments and purposes - that students bring to learning" (The New London Group, 1996, p.72). We have to make the differences visible, include and recognise how rich and exciting the learning community can be because of the different life experiences, interests and knowledge everybody possesses. We all bring great diversity to the literacy space! As a professional educator, we need to devise ways that can welcome these diverse ways of engaging with learning.

Kalantzis and Cope (2012) propose that we engage with the great diversity of human society and recognise and celebrate the differences. I experience this in my everyday life. For instance, as I have ventured into my practicum experiences, I have observed children being organised into specific reading groups in accordance to their ability, encountered a student who learns at a much slower pace compared to the rest of his classmates and students who speak languages other than english. Intead of 'categorising' these students we need to build on their existing funds of knowledge valuing and incorporating them into classroom activities instead of altering it (Peters, 2010).

Today, having a multiculutral mix of students in the classroom is much more prevalent. It is generally felt that Indigenous people feel disempowered about speaking. Martin (2008) further emphasises the importance of ensuring that Aboriginal students are not silenced as it reduces the importance of Aboriginal worldviews and literacies, or worse making them invisible. Having the opportunities to draw on and express their knowledges about themselves, their worlds and their stories, not just from people but from other elements (animals and plants) reinforces the importance of working with what students bring with them to the classroom as life-world interests and knowledges. According to Martin (2008) engaging, conceptualising and analysing sufficiently to provide spoken text and write using aboriginal terms is an essential process before thinking, viewing conceptualising, speaking and writing in English. 

It is sometimes easy to forget that everyone learns at different rates having unique ways of engaging with learning in the literacy space reinforcing the importance of adapting your pedagogical methods to suit their needs. I have always strongly believed that school community and a sense of inclusion regardless of differences is vital as if children do not feel like they are in a safe, inclusive and supportive environment they will have a trajectory that does not progress hence impacting significantly on their learning and growth in development. The video below explores this notion of inclusion and diversity in classroom settings.

  

Moreover, the most obvious contributing to differences in literacies learning is group demographics (that is differences in human population e.g. sex, gender. social class, disability, race and ethnicity). Providing a flexible, multimodal and synaesthetic learning environment improves the learning ability of all students by breaking down the barriers to learning (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012). In a classroom setting, I endeavour to use imagery and diagrams in conjunction with visual text to help support and explain concepts to my students.

On another note, as a way of getting to know our students Kalantzis and Cope (2012) have outlined the importance of investigating the lifeworlds of the children that you work with. Creating a multimedia presentation of images to represent and reflect our own unique life world can be effective effective in conveying a lot more meaning than words. Given our recognition of differences; our role as educators is to get to know the lifeworlds of children - their life experiences, personality, languages, values, interests, thinking and communication style.

MY LIFEWORLD:

https://workspaces.acrobat.com/app.html#d=c9AUBFdGX2cOZtkMjJx7Rg



References
Inspiring Education. (2012, January 13). Diversity in alberta schools: A journey to inclusion [Video File]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c-3YCr7zR0&list=TLcXyB75kqIVo
Kalantzis, M., & Cope, B. (2012). Literacies. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
The New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard educational review, 66(1), 60-92.
Martin, K. (2008). The intersection of Aboriginal knowledges, Aboriginal literacies, and new learning pedagogy for Aboriginal students. In Healy, A. (Ed.), Multiliteracies and diversity in education: New pedagogies for expanding landscapes (pp. 58-81). South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press.
Peters, S. (2010). Literature review: Transition from early childhood education to school. Retrieved from http://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/ECE/literature-review-transition-from-early-childhood-education-to-school/chapter-two-successful-transitions