European teachers’ concerns and experiences in responding to diversity in the classroom

There seems to be a higher challenge today for teachers across Europe and the USA to respond to an increasing diversity of students. Responding to diversity implies understanding individual student characteristics and matching differentiated teaching within an inclusive atmosphere to enable everyone to participation actively in all classroom activities (see e.g., Gay, 2000). Student diversity is seen as arising from three main sources: (a) A cultural one due to the impact of an increasing number of immigrants and increasing mobility within and across countries. Recent EU reports note that “Teachers may be confronted with different cultures, religions, and languages in a single learning environment” (Eurydice, 2002, p.48); “Teachers/ trainers are faced with socially, culturally and ethnically diverse pupils/trainees and challenges them to deal with more and more heterogeneous classes” (EC Directorate General for Education and Culture 2003, 35). (b) Both the above reports add a second major factor: the policy of mainstreaming of students with impairments or special needs, which calls “for the acquisition by teachers of specific skills, such as the ability to offer teaching geared to individual needs and adapt the curriculum accordingly” (Eurydice 2002, 47). One may add to this the wider democratic concerns on the entitlement of each student to reach his or her potential, whether as gifted or as having a different learning style: “It is unacceptable for any teacher to respond to any group of children (or any individual child) as though the children were inappropriate, inconvenient, beyond hope, or not in need of focused attention” (Tomlinson 2001, 21). “The teacher ... has to adapt or prepare the curriculum in such a way that the needs of all pupils, those with special educational needs, gifted pupils and their peers, are sufficiently met” (Meijer 2003, Para 3.2.2). (c) There is also a new concern about the difficulties that are faced in modern society by youths who fail to achieve adequate levels of literacy or drop out of school, together with an awareness of the multiplicity and complexity of competencies required in today’s society (Gregory and Kuzmich 2005). This concern has been strong in Europe but is also a worldwide concern: In the learning society, social stratification is increasingly based on a division between the haves and have-nots in terms of skills and qualifications. Dropping out from school, therefore, has much more lasting consequences than it had in the past, since it can mark an individual for life and greatly narrow the range of career choices open to them. Schools are at the centre of the learning society and life-long learning begins there. (EC 2001, Sect. 4.5, see also Eurydice 1994, UNESCO 2004)peer-reviewe

DTMp : a comenius 2.1 project to produce a differentiated teaching module for primary school trainee teachers

This work was supported by the EU through Comenius 2.1 granr no. 118096 for the DTMp Project.As European classrooms become more heterogeneous, the movement towards inclusive education becomes more urgent as well as more challenging. This paper describes the process of developing and running a proposal for a Comenius 2.1 project aimed at developing training materials for the preparation of pre-service teachers in responding to diversity in primary classrooms. The project, started in October 2004, has collected the concerns and experiences of responding to diversity of 35 teachers (5 each from 7 different countries) through semi-structured interviews, and produced the first draft of a multilingual handbook for trainees. The handbook in hard copy and web-based format, will be piloted in 2005-06 in the seven participating countries, namely Malta (coordinator), Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Sweden and the UK. This paper will focus on the process of trans-European sharing of research and development of the training course.peer-reviewe

Responding to student diversity : tutor's manual

The handbook was conceived during a meeting in Malta in 2003 among an international group of teacher educators spanning from Sweden to Malta and Greece and to the U.S. The concept was then worked out as a Comenius 2.1 Project DTMp (Differentiated Teaching Module – primary) over three years from 2004 to 2007 (see Box 1, p. viii, and www.dtmp.org). The DTMp Project team consisted of an even wider and more diverse group coming from seven EU countries, namely Malta (Coordinator), Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands, Sweden, and United Kingdom. The background of each partner varied as well: one from an inclusive education concern, one from differentiated teaching, two from issues of disability and one from issues of disaffected students, one from socio-emotional development concerns, and one each from the pedagogy of language and mathematics. We also listened to teachers from the seven countries who were trying to reach out to the diversity of their children in the classroom, and you will find the text peppered with the experiences they related to us. We felt that this diversity enriched our teamwork and our products.peer-reviewe

Als verdriet je spelen kleurt: onderzoek naar de spelkenmerken van depressieve jonge kinderen tussen 3 en 6 jaar

Onderzoek naar de spelkenmerken van depressieve jonge kinderen tussen 3 en 6 jaar

Passend Onderwijs: Haute couture of Zeeman?

Lectorale rede bij de installatie van het lectoraat passend onderwijs/Inclusive Education op 9 maart 2011. Passend onderwijs gaat in de meeste notities, publicaties en gesprekken over geldstromen en organisatievormen. Voor het lectoraat passend onderwijs/Inclusive Education gaat het echter over de dagelijkse onderwijspraktijk waarin leerlingen, leraren en ouders centraal staan en het toerusten van (aanstaande) leraren voor deze onderwijspraktijk. Het gaat immers om het bieden van kwalitatief goed onderwijs en optimale ontwikkelingskansen voor alle leerlingen

Als verdriet je spelen kleurt

Depressie bij jonge kinderen is een ernstig en onderschat probleem en vormt een bedreiging voor de ontwikkeling van het kind. Spelobservatie biedt de mogelijkheid om signalen van depressie bij kleuters vroegtijdig te kunnen onderkennen. Maar hoe kun je dat dan zien

Depression and Play in Early Childhood

Het belangrijkste doel van dit proefschrift was om te onderzoeken of depressieve kinderen specifieke spelkenmerken laten zien die hen onderscheiden van niet-depressieve leeftijdgenoten. Daarnaast wilden we ook onderzoeken of leerkrachten in de onderbouw van het basisonderwijs op basis van hun dagelijkse observaties in de klas ook specifieke spelkenmerken herkennen bij kinderen bij wie een depressieve stoornis vermoed wordt

Met kleine pasjes een grote stap vooruit naar Passend Onderwijs

Passend onderwijs houdt de gemoederen flink bezig. Leerkrachten en directeuren staan er over het algemeen niet onwelwillend tegenover, maar geven tegelijkertijd aan dat het hen aan tijd ontbreekt om ‘op maat onderwijs’ voor vrijwel iedere leerling mogelijk te maken. Toch kan het wel. De Impulsklassen bewijzen dit. Dr. Annemieke Mol Lous, lector aan de Hogeschool Leiden en de Thomas More Hogeschool in Rotterdam, legt uit waarom de Impulsklassen zo succesvol zijn

Spel maakt depressie vroeg zichtbaar

Depressie bij jonge kinderen is een onderbelicht probleem. Tijdig onderkennen is van groot belang, te meer daar interventies en therapie op jonge leeftijd vaak goed aanslaan. Enkel is het herkennen van een depressie bij kinderen tot zes jaar niet eenvoudig. Spelobservatie kan daar verandering in brengen