Description

EDP4200: The Reflective Practitioner

ASSESSMENT 1: Critique

Weighting: 30%

Due Date: 31 July 2023

 

Connection to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers

APST 1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socio-economic backgrounds: Demonstrate knowledge of teaching strategies that are responsive to the learning strengths and needs of students from diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds.

APST 1.4 Strategies for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students: Demonstrate broad knowledge and understanding of the impact of culture, cultural identity and linguistic background on the education of students from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds

APST 2.4: Demonstrate broad knowledge of, understanding of, and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and languages.

Purpose and Context

The purpose of this task is to provide you with opportunities to critically analyse teaching and learning scenarios in which a teacher responds to the perceived learning strengths and needs of students from diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students).

Task Outline

Analyse the scenario on the following page outlining a teacher’s responses to the learning strengths and needs of students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socio-economic backgrounds. To do this:

• Identify and critically analyse teaching approaches that the teacher described in the scenarios has utilised.

o To critically analyse these approaches, you should draw on materials from the course about topics including culturally responsive teaching (particularly the interaction of brain, culture and learning), strength-based responses, and implicit bias. Use these readings and concepts to discuss the teacher’s responses and any assumptions that appear to have been made about the perceived learning strengths and needs of these students from diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds.

• Discuss the impact of culture, cultural identity and linguistic background (including those of teachers and schools, and perceptions about culture etc.) on the education of students from diverse backgrounds in the following scenario.
• Identify any aspects of the teacher’s approach that you would retain, and what you would change. Justify your suggestions by referring to relevant course materials.

Submission Requirements

• 1000 words +/-10% (written) OR 8-minute recorded response, OR combination of written and audio. For example, 500 words and 4 minutes.
• Reference lists and subheadings are not included in the word count, but quotations are. If submitting an audio recording, please also attach your reference list as a Word document.
• Do not exceed the word limits, as excess text will not be read by your marker.

SCENARIO: Students from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) backgrounds, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

Mrs Lawson is your mentor teacher during professional experience and she’s discussing two students in her Year 4 class who, she suggests, you will need to pay particular attention to.

Mrs Lawson describes the first student as “an Indigenous girl who arrived with her family from somewhere up north…some island I think”. She says that the student hardly every seems to be listening – “she’s always fiddling with something on her desk instead of listening to me, won’t engage in group work and don’t even think about getting her up to deliver a speech!”. Mrs Lawson says the student’s written work is at or above average, but “her spoken English is pretty bad – she gets a lot wrong, which the other kids obviously find pretty funny”. I’ve tried a few things to get her to pay attention – I always have those Eight Ways symbols next to activities and assignment tasks when I think they’re relevant, but when I go over to discuss things like links to land, “she just stares down at her desk, or straight through me, but I can tell she’s not listening. When I pull her up on it, she gets really sullen and won’t do any more work. Most of the time I send her to the CEC [Community Education Counsellor/Aboriginal Education Worker] with worksheets”. Mrs Lawson acknowledges that some of the Eight Ways topics can be tricky for her to make strong connections with – particularly as a white, non-Indigenous teacher. She suggests that it might be “safer” if you just don’t mention those topics while you’re on professional experience in his class, as she’s considering skipping over as much of this kind of content as possible – “It’s just not worth the stress – for me or the kids!”.

A boy, who Mrs Lawson says is from “a refugee background”, refuses to speak in her class if the rest of the class can overhear him. Mrs Lawson now only talks to this student in the hallway. “I’m at a bit of a loss frankly – if the student has a question while I’m teaching, he’ll just sit there until I’m done and we can talk in the hall, but it can mean he won’t understand a large part of what I said because he didn’t get a chance to ask his question early on”. This boy also has a strong accent and other students laughed at his attempts to speak English early on, before he stopped talking in front of them. To support his language skills Standard Australian English (SAE) and to assist his learning in other areas, Mrs Lawson gives the student English worksheets and Year 2 reading books, “which he seems happy to plod along at, with the help of the teacher aide”. As the student is always quiet and doesn’t present any discipline problems, Mrs Lawson has decided to let the student work at his own pace on these texts and simple worksheets he has been provided with in the classroom. “He seems to be making some progress with the strategy I’ve put in place. His parents haven’t been in touch. Given that they’ve probably had such tough lives and they probably don’t speak very good English either, it’s likely that they’re just happy that he’s getting any work done at all. Plus, he seems to enjoy school much more now that he doesn’t have to speak in class, and can just ask his questions of me in the hall”.

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