The graphic below sums both my previous experiences with individuals with disabilities, as well as my thinking after completing some more learning. As educators, we owe it to our students (ALL students) to be informed and up-to-date. Even though we may be general education teachers, we still should have enough background knowledge to appropriately serve students who need some more or different care in our classroom.
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Over the past few weeks, we have been discussing culture and its place in schools. Culture is something that we all participate in, but sometimes forget to give thought to. So what exactly is culture? As educators, culture needs to be at the forefront of our minds when planning instruction and interaction with our students. Culture impacts the language that students (and ourselves) use, the classroom expectations that we set, and beliefs that ourselves and our students hold about topics, and the background knowledge that students bring with them to school. Imagine a class full of students who live in a small, rural town. They may have experience with farm animals, outdoor activities, and houses on larger plots of land. Now imagine a class of students who live in a city. They may live in apartments, take public transportation, and are used to have to go to parks to be able to play outside. This is just one simple example, but where kids grow up and who they are surrounded by can influence their background knowledge, behaviors and beliefs.
Now comes the challenge: How to educators meet the needs of ALL children, especially in culturally diverse classrooms? It is not easy, but it is necessary. Culturally relevant classrooms celebrate the differences between children and their families, raising them up FOR those differences, rather than despite them. Teachers, administrators, and curriculum directors also must take a hard look at what is being taught to ensure that information is not only filtering through one lens - often the white/European lens. Being culturally responsive in the classroom may seem impossible, but it isn't. To be honest, you do not necessarily have to plan for every possibility that you may encounter. You do, however, need to have enough flexibility to pivot your teaching based on the input your students are giving. You also have to be willing to learn more and to learn from your students. Teachers are no longer the ultimate authority over knowledge in classrooms. Instead, they need to be partners in learning who are able to guide their students towards new knowledge, while also acquiring new knowledge themselves. The distinction between nature and nurture can be difficult to make. Think of yourself and your own traits and behaviors. How many are genetic factors, and how many are due to the way you were raised or who you spent time with? How can you be sure which factors influenced which traits?
In reality, genetics and environment interact a lot to mold you into the person you are. This week, I looked at the personality trait of extroversion. I listed a few examples of how this trait could present itself through the nature (genetic) lens and the nurture (environment) lens. Merriam-Webster defines intelligence as “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations”. When we think of intelligence, there is often not just one subject matter that we are focusing on. Instead, we might talk about emotional intelligence, creativity, spatial and numerical intelligence, or intelligence related to words, to name a few. Some argue that there is an underlying intelligence factor that spans across all subject areas, called the g-factor. This idea is backed by instances where a person who scores well on one type of cognitive tests tends to score well on other types of cognitive tests. While someone may not appear AS intelligent in every area measured, there is an underlying baseline for how their intelligence compares, overall, to the intelligence of others. So, in terms of intelligence, do people stay the same over time? This is a tough question to answer. There are several factors that play into intelligence, and there is debate whether environment or genes play a larger role. I think people do have the potential to change significantly over time, but there is also a natural baseline that can limit them. One of my classmates this week summarized a research article that stated that when students come from a low socioeconomic status, their environment plays a larger role in their intelligence than their genetics do (Turkheimer, et. al., 2003). Given this information, I think that people who come from a low socioecomonic status have greater potential to change significantly over time if their environment changes. In the same study, researchers found that students who came from a high socioeconomic status are more influenced by genetics than environment. I think that these people have a lower likelihood to change greatly over time because their genetics are the driving factor behind their intelligence. However, this is talking in terms of the overall intelligence of people. I do think that people can appear to have different intelligence levels in different situations or settings. For example, I think that I have high intelligence when it comes to making inferences about situations or people and drawing conclusions. However, I am not very intelligent when it comes to numbers. I have a difficult time visualizing numbers and understanding what they really mean. If somebody talks to me about a situation and I offer a new perspective, they may view me as intelligent. However, if I talk to somebody else about money or the size of a crowd, they may view me as less intelligent. This isn’t to say that my actual intelligence is changing based on my setting, but my perceived intelligence would be different in each situation. What are your thoughts on intelligence? Do you think there is one overall intelligence level? Or are people more intelligent in certain areas, and less in others? References: Turkheimer, E., Haley, A., Waldron, M., D’Onofrio, B., & Gottesman, I. I. (2003). Socioeconomic Status Modifies Heritability of IQ in Young Children. Psychological Science, 14(6), 623–628. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.0956-7976.2003.psci_1475.x Over the past few weeks, I have been focusing on assessment measures that are used by both researchers and teachers to collect information. Part of this exploration focused on intelligence tests, which have always intrigued me while at the same time leaving me with an uneasy feeling. How can we judge a person’s intelligence based off of one test? How do we make sure that this test is an accurate measure of what the person knows, and will not provide a skewed view? When researchers are looking at the accuracy of these types of tests, they are looking at the reliability (aka consistency) and the validity (aka accuracy) of the test. In acting as a researcher, I focused on one type of intelligence test called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales. Take a look at the image below for a quick summary of this test, along with some of the criteria that researchers look for in both validity and reliability: I was then tasked with coming up with my own idea for measuring intelligence, taking into account the issues of validity, reliability, and cultural bias in testing. If I were creating my own assessment, I actually would model it after a test like the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales because it already measures a wide variety of skills and it is shown to be both reliable and valid.
However, a common critique of this test and other like it is that they fail to address any type of student motivation or perspective. If I were developing a test to measure intelligence, I would want to include a scale that measures the participant’s mindset (fixed vs growth), motivation, attitudes towards learning – not school, but learning in general – and ability to consider multiple perspectives. In order to maintain validity, I would need to make sure that the test was measure factors that will determine success. This goes beyond problem solving and critical thinking skills. I would also want to take into account the participant’s background. Are they coming into the assessment with trauma? And if so, what impact does that have on their learning? What is their cultural background? How will that impact their understanding of the test questions? In order to make this test free of cultural bias, the questions would need to be culturally neutral. The test should also provide background information, as needed, so that the participant is able to fully understand the context of each question. To maintain reliability, the test would need to be given multiple times throughout a person’s life and produce results that are comparable each time. The test would also need a standard scoring system, especially for sections that can be considered qualitative, like mindset and attitudes. To ensure that the results are truly reflective of the participant, questions could show up several times throughout the test with the same answer choices. If the participant answered the same each time, we would know that the results were a more accurate reflection of the participant. Assessment methods are not perfect, and lots of work has to go into them before they are readily accepted by both researchers and educators. I think that if schools are using intelligence tests as a means to place students on a particular track, the tests need to be more robust and well-rounded than simple measuring quantitative data. What are your thoughts on intelligence tests, standardized tests, or assessments in general? I would love to hear your thoughts! Leave a comment below, and follow me on Twitter @haley_fraeyman Resources: McDevitt, T. & Ormrod, J. (2019). Child development and education (6th ed.). New York: Pearson. |
AuthorI am a graduate student at Michigan State University and a first-year Kindergarten teacher. Archives
April 2021
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