Teaching Diverse Populations

  EDG 2701

Prof. Joseph D. McNair

 Please Read:

Course Syllabus

This course is designed to inroduce tou to issues of diversity and transformation in education and to maximize your interaction with educational technology.  You will be assigned articles to read for each class.  This frees up class time for enhanced student-teacher interactions. You are expected to "react" or "reflect" on each article or set of articles assigned.  A reflection paper consists of twenty-five word processed lines, one inch ("1") side margins (no larger than a 12 point font size) and submitted in Microsoft Word document format (Please do not use Microsoft Works). You will also take all of your tests and quizzes on-line.  As such you will be required to do or observe the following:

  1. Submit your reflection papers by uploading them into Webct (Webct4a.mdc.edu). Check the first for plagiarism bu submitting them to Turnitin.com. Use my college email only as last resort (jmcnair@mdc.edu)

  2. Write your reflections in your own words. Plagiarized reaction papers will be returned ungraded.  

  3. Reflection papers are due by the end of the class period following the one in which they were assigned. E-mailed reflection papers will be determined late according to the date they were received. You must keep a copy and a back-up copy of each reflection on a jump drive or another CD.  

  4. Submit a digital portfolio of all of your work at the end of term on a re-writable (CD-RW) compact disc.  You are responsible for your copies and must be able to produce them on demand!

  5. You are to download articles and web pages that you used to write your reflections and take your tests and save them on your floppy disk or your CD-RW.  These will comprise part of the digital portfolio that you will submit at the end of the term.

  6. On the first day of class you will be registered into the WEBCT program so that you can take your tests and quizzes.

  7. You will take all of your tests and quizzes online.

  8. You will have three (3) attempts to take each test and quiz within a two to three week time period.  You will be credited for the best score of the three (3) attempts.

  9. You will download the a copy of each of your completed tests (the best performance). (The best of your three attempts) and save the test to your floppy disks or your CD-RW.

  10. Your digital portfolio will contain minimally 32 reflection papers, 32 articles/webpages and a minimum of eight (8) to eleven (11) tests and quizzes. 

  11. Attend 85% of scheduled classes to receive an "A" in the class.  (This means no less than 40  fifty (50)minute classes on  Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays,  twenty-six (26) seventy-five (75) minute classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and  thirteen (13) one hundred sixty minute (160) on any given day or night.

  12. Attend 75% of scheduled classes (34 MWF classes, 24TR classes, and 12 single night or day classes) to confirm and validate any earned grade e.g. if you have earned a "B" through your work, you will get a "B" if you have attended class &75% of the time.  Attendance will influence borderline performances. In a Tuesday and Thursday class, you must be present for twenty-four (24) classes.  In a Monday, Wednesday, Friday class, you must be present for thirty-six (34) classes.  In a class meeting once a week, you must be present twelve (12) classes.

  13. You must be in class before fifteen (15) minutes past the start time has elapsed. You will not be admitted after fifteen (15) minutes unless you have received prior permission by the professor. 

  14. Perform a minimum of fifteen (15) hours of community outreach activities as required. If you do thirty (30) hours or more, you will receive extra credit.

Week One and Two:
  • Register for WEBCT 
  • Presentation of Website

The purpose of this week's readings and activities is to introduce the education student to

  1. The ideas and conceptual structures of transformation.  The  transformation of beliefs, values and attitudes is a necessary on-going process crucial to the develop-ment of competencies requisite for teaching diverse populations.

  2. Transformation from  personal and academic perspectives. Mental models, conceptual frameworks, paradigms, what they are and how they are used form the basis of this lesson. 

Assignments: 

  • Reflection Paper#1: What insights have you gained from your reading of the prehistoric human use of fire, the invention of the wheel and the invention of writing? Why as a pre-teaching intern are you being asked to read this kind of material

  • Reflection paper#2:  Read Transformation: A Beginning" and "Transformation: Creating Context, Part 1." React to the two articles

  • Reflection Paper#3: Read Frames, Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts. What are paradigms? What is a paradigm shift?  Have you had one? Why is it important for teachers to experience paradigm change?

  • Reflection Paper#4: After reading "Learning is Transforming" do you think you can effect a paradigm shift to become a transformative teacher?

  • Assignment#1: Take the two brain hemisphere tests. Write twenty-five lines on whether you agree or disagree with the tests.

 

 Readings
Week Three, Four Five and Six:
  • Review

The purpose of this Unit's readings and activities is to introduce the education student to:

  1. the concept of culture

  2. Culture and Community

  3. mental models often described as beliefs, values and attitudes. 

  4. fundamental elements in a culture's characteristic cultural thought and behavior.

Assignments:

  • Reflection Paper#5:  Read "Culture: What It Is." and "Transformation: Creating Context, Part 2."   What new insights have you gained about culture and intercultural  competence
  • Reflection Paper#6:  Read Woolfolk's Culture and Community (Woolfolk #5). Discuss what you have learned about American cultural diversity and school achievement.
  • Reflection Paper#7:  What is meant by high and low context cultures? What are proxemics? How is this important requisite knowlege for the pre-teacher or beginning teacher?
  • Reflection Paper#8:  Why are rites of passages important? Discuss Facing Mt Kenya, Sitting Quietly and the Sambia. What is the relationship of rites of passage to formal education?

  • Reflection Paper#9:  React to the article "Teaching for Inclusion."

  • Reflection Paper# 10 Read the articles "Mental Representations " and "Schemas." How do these relate to this unit on Culture? How are the useful to you as a teacher in training?
  • Reflection Paper#11: Read the article Transformation: Awareness and Consciousness. React to this essay.
  • Reflection Paper#12: Read and compare Essay 5 and 6 "Transformation: The Miracle of Sensation" and "Transformation: Making Sense out of Sensation." What were four of the most important things you learned?
  • Assignment#2:  Take the "Mindstyles" and the "Impulsivity" tests. Write twenty-five lines about your results.

  • Assignment#3:  Take the intercultural competence test, Assessing Cultural Competence. Write twenty-five lines about your results.
 
 Readings
Week Seven and Eight:

The purpose of this Unit's studies and discussions is to study and discuss

  1. Beliefs, values and attitudes and the important mental models we hold about Self.

  2. Self-disclosing surveys on the beliefs,values abd attitudes we hild about various life issues and circumstance; The Theories of Freud and Adler.
  1. The concept "Self" as a personal and cultural construct. 
  1. Defense Mechanisms

    Assignments: 

    • Reflection Paper#13:  What strikes you as most important to you as a teacher in reading about Beliefs, Values and Attitudes. What is the most important thing that you have learned?
    • Reflection Paper#14: Why is Freud's work on the Theory of Personality considered so important even by those who don't agree with him?  What do you think about Freud?

    • Reflection Paper#15:  What are the most important concepts you got out of reading the article "Understanding the Self" and the sections on Self concept and self-esteem in Transformation: Creating Context, Part I?
    • Reflection Paper#16: What have you learned from your readings about learner needs and learner differences? Is there a connection with Self-concept and self esteem?

    • Assignment#4:  Read about perceptual modality and take the  PMPS test. Write twenty-five lines about your results.
    • Perceptual Modalities Preference Survey
       
    • Assignment#5:  Read about LSDI theory and take the LSDI test. Write twenty-five lines about your results

Take each of the self-disclosing surveys over the next seven (7) weeks: Mind, Body and Spirit; Core Beliefs; Beliefs about Men and Women; Beliefs about Race; Beliefs about Sex and Gender.

Download your completed Survey and save to your storage disk. Be prepared to have them in class for discussions.

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Readings

 

 

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