STUDENT DIVERSITY " Individual Differences "

           No matter what happen, "everyone is unique" because no two individual can have identical hereditary endowments or the same environmental experiences. Every individual have their own characteristics, ability, skills, and learning styles. 

         In all learning environments, individual interact with others who are in some way different from them and that. what we called "diversity". This diversity also comes from other factors like SOCIO ECONOMIC STATUS, THINKING/ LEARNING STYLES and EXCEPTIONALITIES.

      In socioeconomic status, it depends on how individual differ in life style from that of the middle income or lower income group. It also depend on a combination of variables including occupation, education, income,wealth and place of residence. Socioeconomic status is the measure of the influence that the social environment has on individual, families, communities and schools. In many ways, socioeconomic status is related to the concept of social class.The next factor is, thinking / learning style of every learner which involves their different strategies and techniques on how they learn easily and effectively. There are some learners learn by seeing and looking and others are by hearing and listening. On the other hand, there are individual learn better by touching and doing. Wherein they actually perform what they want to know and learn, that's why every learner have their own styles in learning. And the last is the exceptionalities, in these factor learners with exceptionalities as persons who are different in some way from the "normal" or "average". Exceptional learners includes those with special needs related to cognitive abilities, behavior, emotional disturbances and giftedness. And the learners require a lot of understanding and patience as well as special education and related services to reach their full of development.

     

   And to those factors that bring about student diversity, the teacher as a facilitator of learning is task to consider the individual differences among the students in planning for effective instruction. Every individual being diverse in terms of culture, race, gender, age, learning abilities, social requirements, physical / mental disorders, learning strategies, skills, past knowledge, socioeconomic and educational background and language.

              How student Diversity Enriches the Learning Environment

       A teacher may be " challenged " to handle a class with so diverse. Why? Because there are students having different language, abilities, cultural background, different attitude and behaviors. A wise teacher see a diversity in a classroom in a respect way and in a god terms. For other teacher, having a diversity in a classroom is an exciting part because not only the  students are learned also the instructors as well. But a word " hassle" are upset at the mind of the teacher who are difficult to adapt the diversity happened in a classroom.

  

    Lets discover the benefits and learning opportunities that students diversity can bring to your classroom.

  STUDENT'S SELF AWARENESS IS ENHANCE BY DIVERSITY

    - exposing students to others with diverse background may enhance their self awareness. Because they see the differences between themselves and other, and they are given points to  sharpen an assessment to their own attitudes,values, and behaviors.

 STUDENT DIVERSITY CONTRIBUTES TO COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT 

     -it is the opportunity to gain access to the perspective peers and to other student. And not only the teacher can gain more cognitive knowledge but also other student can gain more knowledge and information with diverse culture of other students.

STUDENT DIVERSITY PREPARES LEARNERS FOR THEIR ROLE AS RESPONSIBLE MEMBERS OF SOCIETY

    - Suzane Mores argued : " the classroom can provide more than just theory given by the teacher in a lecture. Which students diversity, the classroom becomes a public place where community can be practiced.

STUDENT DIVERSITY CAN PROMOTE HARMONY

    - when student diversity is integrated into the classroom teaching and learning process. It can become a vehicle for promoting harmonious race relationship.

" SOME TIPS ON STUDENT DIVERSITY"

  1. Encourage learners to share their personal history and experiences.

  2. Integrate learning experience and activities which promote students multicultural and cross- cultural    awareness.

  3. Aside from highlighting diversity, identify patterns of unity that transcend group differences.

  4. Communicate high expectations to students from all subgroups.

  5 Use varied instructional methods to accommodate student diversity in learning styles.

  6 Varry the examples you use to illustrate concept in order to provide multiple contexts that are relevant to        student from diverse backgrounds.

  7. Adapt to the student diverse backgrounds and learning styles by allowing them personal choice and    decision-making opportunities concerning what they will learn and how they will learn it.

 8. Diversity your methods of assessing and evaluating student learning.

 9. Purposely, form small-discussion groups of students from diverse backgrounds. You can form groups of      students with different learning styles, different cultural background.