Struggling Readers In The Regular Classroom: A Personal Reflection

Eclecticism, a common alternative to the model of unique instruction, holds that multiple perspectives and approaches will be necessary to accommodate the needs of children who possess differences in abilities and learning histories (Kameenui, 1993, p. 376-383). Here teachers select the best teaching and learning activities from various approaches to literacy as a means of meeting the diverse needs of learners

Return of the Deficit

What is it about school that manages to transform children who are good at learning . . . regardless of their economic and cultural differences, into children who are not good at learning, if they are poor or members of certain minority groups?” (Gee, 2004, p. 10) Education as the great leveler of social class is one of the enduring myths of American culture. With hard work and a good education “any American can grow up to be president.” It was in this context that the Brown v. Bd. of Education decision of the US Supreme Court held such hope for African Americans. After decades of “inherently unequal,” separate schooling sanctioned by the Supreme Court’s Plessy decision, integrated classrooms and schools required by the Brown decision promised an antidote to the poverty and discrimination that limited the life chances of African Americans

Including All Students Within a Community of Learners

One of the inevitable consequences of schooling is this: a substantial number of children will experience some failure during their educational careers. In general, students fail when they are unable to learn the skills their teachers think they should learn, at the time the teachers think they should. We believe that efforts to reduce school failure must turn away from trying to fix students. Instead teachers should concentrate on transforming their classrooms to make them places which are more congenial to the linguistic, cultural, social, and intellectual backgrounds students bring to school. In short, teachers need to create a community of learners

Two Perspectives On Inclusion in The United States

The history of schooling for students with disabilities in the United States is marked by exclusion and, until the passage of the Education for All Children Act in the 1970s, a substantial number of students with disabilities were denied free public education and many more were poorly served by public schools. The requirement that all children be educated in the ΓÇ£least restrictive environmentΓÇ¥ gradually allowed many students with disabilities to be educated alongside their non-disabled peers and today a majority of students with disabilities spend more than 80% of their school days in regular classroom settings. Still, the meaning of inclusion is bitterly disputed fueled in large part by two contrasting views of disability. This paper discusses these two views ΓÇô a deficit stance and a social constructivist perspective ΓÇô and the effects of these views on the meaning of inclusion, the purpose of inclusion, and how inclusive education is achieved

Discussion in Postsecondary Classrooms : A Review of the Literature

SAGE Open, Vol. 3, No. 4Spoken language is, arguably, the primary means by which teachers teach and students learn. Much of the literature on language in classrooms has focused on discussion that is seen as both a method of instruction and a curricular outcome. While much of the research on discussion has focused on K-12 classrooms, there is also a body of research examining the efficacy of discussion in postsecondary settings. This article provides a review of this literature in order to consider the effect of discussion on student learning in college and university classrooms, the prevalence of discussion in postsecondary settings, and the quality of discussion in these settings. In general, the results of research on the efficacy of discussion in postsecondary settings are mixed. More seriously, researchers have not been explicit about the meaning of discussion and much of what is called discussion in this body of research is merely recitation with minimal levels of student participation. Although the research on discussion in college and university classrooms is inconclusive, some implications can be drawn from this review of the research including the need for future researchers to clearly define what they mean by “discussion.

The Resilience of Deficit Thinking

Deficit thinking, which situates school failure in the minds, bodies, communities and culture of students, dominates schooling practices in the US and Canada. From this perspective, the remedy to school failure is to “fix” students, their families, culture or language. Critics of deficit thinking point to systemic factors, especially diminished opportunities to learn, to explain high levels of school failure among poor students and students of color. Decades of fierce critique have failed to diminish the appeal of deficit thinking. This paper considers the resistance of deficit thinking to critique by examining the appeal of Ruby Payne’s Culture of Poverty, a particularly egregious instantiation of deficit thinking that pathologizes the language and culture of people living in poverty. The paper then turns to more recent work by the author to counter deficit thinking by showing what happens when students in high-poverty schools are challenged by the kind of thoughtful, engaging, high-expectation curricula common in affluent, high-achieving schools and classrooms

How School Troubles Come Home: The Impact of Homework on Families of Struggling Learners

Homework is the focus of many versions of educational reform; yet research on the efficacy of homework as a means of raising student achievement is mixed at best. Even less certain is the impact of homework on the lives of families, particularly family relationships. This study used interviews to examine how a diverse group of parents whose children struggled academically perceived the effects of homework on their families. In general, the presence of homework had a disruptive effect on the lives of these families, reducing the time available for family activities and diminishing the quality of family interactions. In these families, homework was a carrier for school troubles, a means by which school troubles were transformed into family troubles

Discussion in Postsecondary Classrooms

Spoken language is, arguably, the primary means by which teachers teach and students learn. Much of the literature on language in classrooms has focused on discussion that is seen as both a method of instruction and a curricular outcome. While much of the research on discussion has focused on K-12 classrooms, there is also a body of research examining the efficacy of discussion in postsecondary settings. This article provides a review of this literature in order to consider the effect of discussion on student learning in college and university classrooms, the prevalence of discussion in postsecondary settings, and the quality of discussion in these settings. In general, the results of research on the efficacy of discussion in postsecondary settings are mixed. More seriously, researchers have not been explicit about the meaning of discussion and much of what is called discussion in this body of research is merely recitation with minimal levels of student participation. Although the research on discussion in college and university classrooms is inconclusive, some implications can be drawn from this review of the research including the need for future researchers to clearly define what they mean by “discussion.

Confronting the Discourse of Deficiencies

A body of scholarship has challenged the narrative of learning disabilities as a story of progress focused on the needs of individual students. In this alternative formulation, learning disabilities reinforces a pernicious discourse of deficiencies that sustains the dominant myths of schooling while absolving schools, teachers, and (some) parents of responsibility for educational failure. In this paper we discuss excerpts from an inquiry project involving four teachers, each of whom worked with students who had acquired a special education label. The goal of the inquiry was to challenge the teachers to shift their gaze from what students who struggle academically cannot do to what makes them smart. The teachers had little difficulty taking up a social constructivist frame but readily defaulted to the language of deficiencies when discussing their own students. Arguably, challenging deficit discourses challenged the dominant discourse of schooling and threatened their status as teachers

The Effects of Market-based School Reforms on Students with Disabilities

Neoliberalism is a theory of political economy which holds that the well-being of individuals is best served by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedom in a framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of government is limited to keeping people safe and preserving the rules of the market and leaving to the markets services, including education, that it is assumed will be more efficiently delivered by the private sector. Educational policies in the US and in other countries around the world have been strongly influenced by market-based reforms including accountability, high-stakes testing, data-driven decision-making, charter schools, deregulation, and competition among schools. This paper summarizes current theory and research on the effects of market-based schooling practices on students with disabilities. The available evidence indicates that students with disabilities are not well served by market-based reforms and, further, free-market reforms may be fundamentally incompatible with the needs of students with disabilities.Keywords: charter schools; vouchers; educational reform; free-market schooling; school choice; neoliberalis