Test: Education & Leadership (Diverse Learners) - Software Development MCQ

Teaching Learning Materials (TLMs):

• These are a set of tools that facilitate learning by providing the required input that meets the objectives.
• It consists of a variety of resources that are used by a teacher to teach the concepts outlined in the curriculum, and by the learner in learning and deriving knowledge out of the course.

Universal Design of Learning is an educational framework that implies providing teaching-learning materials in accessible formats to diverse learners.

It is a dynamic side of education which benefit the learners by:

• planning the class curriculum effectively.

• developing a flexible learning environment.

• improving accessibility to ample opportunities.

• providing a variety of strategies and resources.

Note: Universal Humanistic Approach of teaching allows students for social personal development and gives importance to learner's thoughts, feelings, and emotions in overall development.

Hence, providing teaching-learning materials in accessible formats to the diverse learners implies Universal Design of Learning.

In any classroom it is not very likely that any two students learn the same thing; in the same way; at the same place. We must realize that in order to assist each pupil and to capitalize on his or her natural inclination to understand, we should be able not only to diagnose his or her style of learning but to accept it.

• Inclusive education approaches differences and "diversity" affirmatively, recognizing the value of such differences and the learning opportunities that such diversity offers.
• It provides opportunities to learn about and accept individual differences, lessening the impact of harassment and bullying.

Key Points

• provide opportunities for communication and expression.
• give importance to every student's perspective on information.
• not provide options for leveling and stereotyping the learners. 
• ensure the presentation of content according to students' needs and interests. 
• use various methods and strategies and modes of assessment to meet the demand of every individual.
• give priority to every child and never ignore students' on the basis of their background or physical appearance. 

Hint

• "Stereotype" means a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.
• Stereotypes are characteristics imposed upon groups of people because of their race, nationality, and sexual orientation.
• These characteristics tend to be oversimplifications of the groups involved and, even if they seem "positive," stereotypes are harmful.
• Classrooms need to reflect every child and every family in the class. The teacher should not make assumptions about what a child’s ethnic background is.

Hence, we can conclude that in a class having learners with diverse needs, a teacher should NOT provide options for stereotyping the learners.

Individual difference refers to the difference which distinguishes an individual from another on the basis of physical, emotional, or psychological characteristics.

Key Points

Children with individual differences should be taught in a school having teachers trained to:

• use different pedagogy to meet their diverse learning needs.

• perceive the significance of individual differences and needs.

• operate innovative teaching tools to address the learning gaps.

• understand the sociology of learning and major principles of child psychology.

NOTE: Remaining options are segregating children based on their abilities and skills, thus not suitable in the context.

Hence, it could be concluded that children with individual differences should be taught in a school having teachers trained to use different pedagogy to meet their diverse learning needs.

Development and growth is a wide, complex and continuous process of human life.

• Development: It refers to a qualitative change that results in an increase in structure for better and enhanced functioning of organs.

• Growth: It refers to a quantitative change that results in an increase in height, weight, and length of the child. 

Important Points

Understanding of human's growth and development enables a teacher to:

• understand the sociology of learning.

• be clear about teaching diverse learners.

• be aware of the principles of child psychology.

• use specific pedagogy to meet learner's learning needs.

• be conscious of the importance of individual differences. 

Hint

Diverse learners could be with reference to their learning abilities, socio-economic backgrounds, cultural variations, or even emotional behavioral characteristics. 

Hence, we can conclude that understanding Human Growth and Development enables a teacher to be clear about teaching diverse learners.

Learner or child-centered approach to education means planning and transacting curriculum in the classroom in a way that allows for flexibility in pace and style of learning to keep in mind that children in a classroom are widely different.

• It, therefore, suggests an approach to teaching different from the existing practice of having a uniform curriculum, uniform learning material and activities, uniform time, and uniform instructional and evaluation strategies for the whole class.

Key Points In child-centered education the learner learns in such ways:

• By exploring their thoughts in a divergent way.
• With the help of peers, they can learn through interaction.
• They can learn by exploration with multiple sources of learning.
• The learner can learn by exploring their knowledge with the help of different sources and methods.
• Children are the center of the classroom, they can learn by their own needs and interest.
• Engagement of the learners in hands-on activities, teamwork, etc.

Thus by all these references, we can conclude that learning in the child-centered classroom should be done through the exploration of the diverse sources of learning.

Hint 

• Learning from textbooks is not the key feature of the child-centered classroom, learners gain their knowledge through activities and hands-on experiences.
• Direct instruction-based learning can not be promoted in the child-centered classroom, learning should be based on exploring different sources.
• Students are the active listener in the child-centered classrooms.

National Education Policy 2020- According to NEP 2020, A good educational institution is one in which every student feels welcomed and cared for, where a safe and stimulating learning environment exists, where a wide range of learning experiences are offered, and where good physical infrastructure and appropriate resources conducive to learning are available to all students.

Key Points 
Some important fundamental principles of the NEP 2020 are- 

• Full equity and inclusion as the cornerstone of all educational decisions to ensure that all students can thrive in the education system.
• Emphasis on conceptual understanding rather than rote learning and learning-for-exams.
• Learning is conceptual which is given by involving the students in experiments, and hands-on activities related to the concept.
• Establishment of the linkage of the concepts with the environment or we can say that the linkage of the school with the home.

Thus we can consider that conceptual understanding, linking learning with the environment, the inclusion of diverse students, and hands-on activities are the main features of the NEP 2020.

A teacher often plays various roles in the life of a student. One of the key roles played by a teacher is that of a motivator.

The National Curriculum Framework for teacher education programs suggests that teacher has to be responsive and sensitive to the social context of education, the various disparities in the background of learners, national concerns for achieving the goals of equity, parity, social justice, and excellence.

Roles of an Effective Teacher in a Diverse Classroom: 

• The increasingly diverse student population requires teachers to be sensitive and have skills and knowledge to meet the needs of the student body.
• The challenge for the teachers is to interweave the students thinking with the course content and help students to analyze their own social, cultural, and historical context.
• when students come from diverse backgrounds, the teacher should focus on their cultural knowledge to address individual differences among the group.
• Teachers interact with students on a daily basis, so their perceptions, beliefs and attitude towards multiculturalism must be implicit.
• Teachers can attain equity pedagogy by modifying their teaching styles so that they use a wide range of strategies and teaching techniques such as cooperative groups, simulations, role-playing, and dramatization to enable children from diverse groups to achieve equality.

Hence, if students come from diverse backgrounds, the teacher should focus on their cultural knowledge to address individual differences among the group.

Inclusion refers to the purposeful, timely, and planned participation of all students, including those with diverse learning needs, in the regular classroom and school community.

• The term “diverse learners” covers a broad range of abilities, communities, backgrounds, and learning styles. 
• Modern approaches to accommodating diversity in the classroom are shifting from teaching to the average student to more inclusive methods that afford equitable learning opportunities for all students. 

Key Points-

• Student populations in any age group contain learners with a wide variety of different characteristics, including academic ability, physical ability, language, gender, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic factors, and personal experiences.
• In a diverse classroom, there will be so many challenges while teaching. So teachers should minimize threats and distractions in the surroundings to ensure the effective inclusion of students with diverse learning preferences. 
• The teacher can also cater to these differences by differentiating the instruction and by providing a variety of learning experiences so that students can correlate what they learn with the physical experience of the concept.

Hint

• Downplay relevance, value, and authenticity of the task, reducing access to tools and assistive technologies, and restricting individual choice and autonomy of students will not be helpful in the inclusion of students with diverse learning preferences. 

Hence, we can conclude that minimizing threats and distractions in the surroundings will be helpful in the inclusion of students with diverse learning preferences.

Linguistic diversity refers to the use of different languages by different groups of people in a society. India has a lot of linguistic and culturally diverse. 

• A culturally and linguistically diverse learner is typically used to identify a learner who differs from the mainstream culture in terms of ethnicity, social class, and or language.
• A multilingual classroom is a classroom with learners having more than one languages including learners from different backgrounds.

Important Points

Multilingual and Linguistic Diverse Classroom:- 

• It should be considered an opportunity to have children student of diverse backgrounds than to consider it a barrier.
• When the teacher respects all the languages and encourages children to communicate in all of them, it promotes inclusivity and none of the children will feel left out due to their language background.
• The teacher recognizes those students as well who speak in their mother tongue.
• It also gives exposure to students with a mono-linguistic background.

Hence, we conclude that the teacher should respect all languages and encourage children to communicate in all of them.

Diversity in literary terms means differences. The term diversity, when used in discourse related to people or communities or in social contexts is more specific, indicates that a group of people is made up of individuals who are different from each other in some way or the other or it means collective differences among people, that is, those differences which mark off one group of people from another.

Key Points

• A diverse education system refers to an education system that accommodates all children regardless of their physical, intellectual, social, emotional, linguistic, or other conditions.
• It means to teach or treat all the children equally. There would be no discrimination in a diverse education system.
• This system is the same as Inclusive education i.e. including children with disabilities in regular classrooms that have been designed for children without disabilities and to create safe learning environments that are equitable for all.
• NCF (2005)  gives significance to child-centered pedagogy that can meet the range of challenges confronting the inclusive school system.

Thus, it is concluded that Diverse education system refers to welcoming all children without discrimination in the regular school.

Individual differences refer to how individuals differ from each other. Different people have different interests; and their behavior is influenced by these interests, likings, dislikings, values, beliefs, etc. Even if we are of the same age group or gender, we are aware of how we differ from others and, others are also aware of these differences.

• For example, you may like dancing and gossiping with friends, but your friend may not like these

Key Points

• According to RTE 2009, the school should ensure the Inclusion of diversity (students with disabilities/special needs) as per the provision of the Act.
• The principles of Inclusive education include no discrimination among the students and equal educational opportunities for all. 
• In a classroom with a diverse group of students, a teacher should advocate for and celebrate individual differences.
• In inclusive education, all the learners with disabilities, or without disabilities are learnt under the same roof.
• Inclusive education promotes different languages, thoughts, and cultures, of different students.
• In inclusive education, the thoughts of the students became divergent, they can think divergently after engaging with different students.
• So that we can conclude that in a diverse classroom, teachers should respect individual differences and treat all the students equally.

Hint

• Teachers should not have to try to reduce or ignore the individual differences because it makes the classroom interesting also opposes the concept of inclusive education.
• Individual differences are not an obstacle in learning, it will promote students to cater to different cultures and learns different skills by engaging with students of different ability.

The term diversity used in discourse related to people or communities or in social contexts is more specific, indicates that a group of people is made up of individuals who are different from each other in some way or the other or it means collective differences among people. They can be diverse socially, educationally, economically, culturally, etc.

Key Points

Effective strategies to address learners from disadvantaged and deprived backgrounds- 

• Inclusive education is a movement to empower the vulnerable and marginalized groups to overcome the disadvantages of unequalized socialization and give them examples from diverse settings. 
• The curriculum should to be specific and related to the needs and real-life experiences. Emphasis should be on learning manual skills, life skills and technical efficiency.
• Sometime the teacher should talk to the learners to understand their needs and challenges faced by them. 
• Interest in learning has to be, created by the teacher, effort should be towards developing self-confidence, self-respect and a sense of cultural identity. 
• Form collaborative groups to work on activities and encourage students to support each other.
• Motivate the students to set moderately challenging goals and provide appropriate instructional support. 

Thus from above-mentioned points, it is clear that in order to address learners from diverse backgrounds, a teacher should draw examples from diverse settings. 

Diversity is everything that makes people different from each other. The term diversity indicates that a group of people is made up of individuals who are different from each other in some way or the other. For example, differences in culture, language, gender, appearance lifestyle, social and economic status, etc.

Key Points

• Diversity among students in education directly impacts their performance. Students work better in a diverse environment, enabling them to concentrate and push themselves further when there are people of other backgrounds working alongside them. This promotes creativity, as well as better education, as those with differing viewpoints are able to collaborate to create solutions.
• In a diverse class, teachers must teach according to diverse cultures and encourage students to share unique features of their culture.
• Teachers must bring diverse culture examples in the classroom teaching.
• Developing a curriculum and teaching style suitable to the dominant culture should be avoided by the teacher.

Thus, it is concluded that in a class comprising culturally diverse students, developing curriculum and teaching style suitable to dominant culture should be avoided by a teacher.

Inclusive Education means meeting individual differences in the general classroom as It refers to the inclusion of all children in the education system, regardless of their differences and disabilities.

Key Points According to the concept of inclusive education, diverse learners should provide learning by the teachers by following these ways:

• Teachers should respect their diverse nature, their culture, and their tradition.
• A teacher should encourage diverse learners and promotes unity in diversity in the classroom.
• Teachers should provide ample opportunities to all the students including diverse learners so that they can learn the concepts.
• A teacher should have to use various teacher learning strategies as per the needs of the individuals.
• Teachers should provide the task as per the ability of the diverse learners.

Thus by all these references, we can conclude that understand that all children have the potential to learn and design activities to help them progress at their own pace. 

Important Points Basic Principles of Inclusive Education:

• Well constructed educational plan.
• Use of multilingualism as a resource.
• Equity and equal opportunities for all.
• Use of specific pedagogical strategies.
• Sensitization towards individual differences.

Learning is a continuous life-long process that is not inherited but can begin right from birth by providing constant interaction and stimulation received from the physical, social, and cultural environment and it does not stop till the end.

Diverse learning : It covers a range of learning styles, abilities, backgrounds, and communities to which the children belong too.

Key Points Barriers in the way of education to Diverse learning:

1. Labeling and ranking of students in multiple ways: Labelling and ranking students in any way will reduce their confidence or motivation to do learning.
2. Classroom management: It will become difficult for the teacher to manage the classroom if the diversity on its peak. If the students belong to different states then that can cause language barriers also.
3. Socio-Cultural barrier: In school students belong to different cultures and backgrounds and values. It is very important for teachers to respect every community and celebrate every festival of every culture so that they feel connected with each other and with the teacher too.

Hence, To address the diverse learning needs of the students Labeling and ranking of students in multiple ways is a barrier.

Hint

•  The teacher should have provided various ways of learning by engaging the learners in multiple activities so that they can learn meaningfully.

Inclusion as a philosophy or practice cannot be discussed meaningfully unless it is situated in the context of diversity across the members of the group, especially in the framework of inclusive education.

• It allows students from disadvantaged groups to be taught with normal students in the classroom. Therefore, it becomes significantly important that the teacher needs to orchestrate the needs of all students in the class.

Key Points 
Inclusion is an unrelenting process of augmenting learning and participation for all students irrespective of their differences.

• It is a process to bring all students together in one classroom and school, regardless of their strengths or weaknesses in any area, and it seeks to maximize the potential of all students hence helping them to develop their thinking power.
• It is a process where diversity in a group with respect to any aspect is appreciated and in which everyone is recognized and respected for his/her worth
• It is an effort to make sure that diverse learners – those with disabilities, different languages and cultures, different homes and family lives, different interests and ways of learning – are taught using teaching learning strategies adapted to individual learning needs. 
• Most importantly, It should be the responsibility of the teacher to create an environment towards change and acceptance towards Children with Special Needs (CWSN)
• It is a process that allows every individual to feel accepted, valued, and safe. An inclusive community consciously evolves to meet the changing needs of its members.
• Inclusive education allows the learners to learn together in a single class than to have separate classes for differently abled children.
• Through recognition and support, an inclusive community provides meaningful involvement and equal access to the benefits of citizenship
• It is a means of enhancing the well-being of every member of the community.

Therefore, it can be concluded that teachers need to Orchestrate the needs of a diverse groups of students. 

Additional Information

In the context of diversity, the importance of the agenda of “inclusive education” is further reinforced by the enactment of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.

The term diversity used in discourse related to people or communities or in social contexts is more specific, indicates that a group of people is made up of individuals who are different from each other in some way or the other or it means collective differences among people.

Important Points

• Though parents, friends and relatives appreciate or put down a student, the teacher’s role is important to develop a student morally.
• The teacher gives a morale boost to the students; to achieve success and fame.
• A teacher's expectations from her students have a significant impact on their learning.

Hence, we conclude that a teacher's expectations from her students have a significant impact on their learning.

The diverse classroom is the classroom that comprises students from different backgrounds (social, economical or cultural) and respects every student's culture, language and other backgrounds. 

Key Points

Diversity in the classroom helps:

• students to learn about different cultures and traditions.
• it brings new ideas and experiences, student can learn from each other.
• an important tool to boost skills from their peers.
• it promotes creativity among students.
• it helps dispel negative stereotypes.
• it expands our mind and thought process
• helps to enhance different language skills.

Hence, it can be concluded that the given statement, "having a diverse classroom with children from varied social, economic and cultural backgrounds enriches the learning experiences of all students" is correct because children learn many skills from their peers.

Counselling is a problem-solving process. The personnel involved/counsellor help students to understand themselves, their potentialities, and the problems they are facing and make decisions to take alternative actions to solve their problems.

Key Points Eclectic counselling approach:

• This approach to counselling is based on the fact that all individuals differ from one another and so do their problems.
• This approach is consistent with modern-day life wherein we do not believe in just one set of values but try to harmoniously blend the best values from different cultures and these are reflected in the way we eat, dress up, and mingle with others.
• The eclectic counselling approach incorporates and combines doctrines, findings, and techniques selected from diverse theoretical systems.
• It refers to the selection and orderly combination of best features from diverse sources in to a harmonious whole.

Hence, it is clear that any counselling theory or practice that incorporates and combines doctrines, findings, and techniques selected from diverse theoretical systems is termed as eclectic counselling.

Additional Information

• Non-directive counselling, also known as client/person-centred counselling is a type of counselling in which primacy is given to counsellee's needs, problems, and behaviour.
• Directive Counselling refers to a type of counselling in which counsellor plays an important role and prescribes a course of action to deal with counsellee's problems.
• Vocational counselling aims at helping the person select a proper vocation and prepare for it. Deciding on a career/vocation is crucial as it involves lots of time, effort, and money.

Cultural and linguistic diversity is the most challenging job faced by any teacher in a globalized world. A diverse classroom is the one in which students come from a variety of cultures, status, race, abilities, etc.

Linguistic problems are faced by students who have grown up immersed in their mother-tongue and may find it difficult to learn a new language. So, the process of acquiring a new language is profoundly influenced by their mother-tongue.

Key Points

A good teacher is the one who can:

• Evaluate the influence of a student’s mother-tongue and give them the appropriate attention to be able to learn an entirely new language. This requires special training and skills on part of the teacher.
• Puts in efforts to research and reflect on how to address the problem and to identify the dominant language in a student.
• Make students to pair with other students speaking the same language as them in order to evaluate their learning levels.
• Have detailed discussions with parents regarding the languages spoken at home so that students can be helped with making connections between the language they speak and the language that they are trying to acquire.

Hence, it could be concluded that in the above-mentioned situation a teacher should evaluate students on her/his mother language to establish disability.