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What Would It Mean To Have Equitable Outcomes For Students?

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What would it mean to have equitable outcomes for students? In Enid Lee’s words, if equality is the goal, equity is the approach for achieving the goal. Equity does not mean treating everyone the same. It means using extra and different means to bring about the condition of same status – the status of equality. The domains of equity are content, pedagogy, and climate. If students are not learning or do not have access (which precedes learning), there may be instructional discrimination, which may be an unconscious act with observable consequences. Prerequisites for a successful learning environment: • Recognition, valuing and positive use of students’ prior knowledge, language, culture, communal life, familial life and group history …show more content…

Do all students feel that the classroom is a shared space for learning? Do all students have access to the curriculum at all times? How do the teacher’s language and actions encourage shared ownership of the classroom space? How are questioning strategies (form, type, think time and level) and “calling on” strategies (calling on by name, restating questions by students, card sort, numbered heads together, etc) used for full participation of all students? How does the teacher make choices about seating and implications of seating and movement? • Representation of all students in the curriculum. How do teachers go beyond heroes and holidays to make certain that all students’ racial, ethnic, language and cultural traditions are represented, acknowledged and affirmed in the classroom? How does the teacher incorporate the students’ prior experiences? How are differences in verbal and physical expression allowed and affirmed as positive (within reasonable limits)? How does the teacher, even using a mandated curriculum, bring in other materials and perspectives to augment? What are the “benign stereotypes” regarding cultural representation? How do you avoid facile

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