Chapter 8 provided many tips on dealing with different learning styles and approaches to take when dealing with them.

Multicultural education has several goals and the most important thing about these goals is that they transcend the classroom.  If these goals are achieved the students will lead better lives.  The first approaches to multicultural education failed because the focus was generally put on minority students.  A different approach, cross-disciplinary multicultural education, includes creating a positive classroom environment, communicating positive expectations, recognizing diversity and using strategies that build on students’ backgrounds and strengths.  I think the part where the book said that good teachers recognize the importance of students’ backgrounds and experiences is so true because not all students are the same.  Good teachers need to analyze this information about their students so they can be more effective in the classroom.

Cooperative learning deals with getting students to cooperate and interact with each other.  I think cooperative learning is very important because I feel students are more likely to learn better from their peers.  A teacher’s job will be so much easier if you set up a classroom so that students who are strong in a certain subject area are able to communicate their knowledge effectively to their classmates.  The important thing to remember when implementing cooperative learning is that there has to be a goal, students have to be held individually accountable and all students should have an equal opportunity for success.

There are different types of cooperative learning.  Student teams achievement division puts emphasis on team performance.  Group investigation puts more control in the students hands as they develop their own goals and assign individual responsibilities.  The jigsaw strategy breaks down a large topic so that each student in the group takes a piece and presents the information to the rest of the group so they can learn it as well.

Mastery learning helps students move at their own pace.  Students are given quizzes to see if they’ve mastered the material and if they haven’t, they are moved into alternative learning activities.  This part confused me a little, or maybe I missed something in the reading.  What are the students that pass the quiz the first time doing while the other students are in the alternate learning activities?  It seems like you would have a lot of different students at different levels at most of the time and it would be hard for the teacher to give instruction to the class as a whole.  I do agree that it is important to make sure that all students have mastered the material before moving on.

Inclusion deals with giving students with handicaps and/or learning disabilities the best learning environment in which to succeed.  In the past, these students were separated from other students.  This resulted in the students not being prepared for the real world where they would interact with people of all kinds.  Individualized education programs play a large part in helping to educate these students as they are catered to each student’s unique needs.

Probably my favorite part of the book: computers.  The book lists several uses for computers, my favorites being designing instruction materials and keeping student records.  Being a future math teacher and having tutored students who were in a computer-based math class, I’m not a big fan of using them as an instructional tool, for math subjects at least.

Learning styles are something teachers will have to become familiar with because each student identifies with a certain style.  The two extremes on facing the issue of learning styles fails because all students learn differently and you can’t cater a lesson plan for each student.  Ways to overcome this obstacle include implementing the techniques learned in this chapter, such as cooperative learning and using computers.  I think the best thing we can do is help a student learn how they learn best so that they can adapt now and in the future based on this knowledge.

Chapter 8 had a lot of great information.  My favorite section was on computers, but I also learned a lot about cooperative learning and mastery learning.  Inclusion is something we will all have to deal with and I’m looking forward to helping these students maximize their potential.