Week 27: THE BROADER PROFESSIONAL CONTEX

THIS WEEK’S ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY

Identified Trend: Cultural Diversity

After some searching of different trends in education I found that Core Education (2017), Cultural Diversity trend (2016) is one that is relevant to New Zealand education and my own teaching practice. Core Education (2017), discuss the reasons behind this being a trend in that recently New Zealand had a Superdiversity stocktake and this looked at how the ethic backgrounds of New Zealanders has changed. The Superdiversity stocktake explains that New Zealand has seen rise in numbers of new Asian and Pacific New Zealanders. For myself, this is what I enjoy about New Zealand, the fact that we have so many cultures in one country and each is always embraced. 

So, what does this mean for Education and Teachers?

Being able to say that you are a culturally responsive school is really common these days but what does this mean? Being able to identify and acknowledge all the cultures in you school and classroom, but how and why? Looking at my own classroom of 25 students I have 6 different cultural backgrounds that my students identify with, and with in my school we have over 10 different cultures. As teachers we have been told to 'teach' our students and that our 'one-size fits all' approach will work for all students. But in reality we have so many different needs within our classroom that it can be hard to do this. In a classroom there is so much to cater to and for; non-english speaking students, physical and emotional well-being and behaviour; to name a few. So how do we support all our learners? As our classrooms become more diverse our teaching needs to do that as well. We need have a classroom more focused on the learner and have tasks and opportunities for students to learn in a range of ways.

The biggest change and probably the most helpful for teachers would have to do with technology and how this brings many new learning opportunities, but also challenges as well. With the opportunities comes the access to information anytime and anywhere. This can change with how the information and technology is used in the classroom, teachers have lost the power to control what students learn. Within this trend, you can see that the 'old school' way of teaching has changed dramatically. No more is the teacher in front of the class dictating what students need to learn or how they learn. Technology has a huge part to play with this , educators need to look at how and what learning will look like for a student, the whole school and what it will look like at national level. 

Curriculum and pedagogy, learning environments and whole school strategy can begin to look quite different if learners are in the driving seat and if each member of the community is seen as part of a networked eco-system.

In New Zealand, we can see this trend emerging in new views on curriculum design and reimagined schooling environments that aim to cater to diverse contexts for learning. 

CORE Education (2017)

References:

Diversity » CORE Education. (2017). Core-ed.org. Retrieved 1 June 2017, from http://www.core-ed.org/research-and-innovation/ten-trends/2016/diversity/ 

(2017). Chenpalmer.com. Retrieved 1 June 2017, from http://www.chenpalmer.com/wp-content/uploads/Superdiversity_Stocktake.pdf