The first thing to jump out at me in these articles came from the Focus On Blacks where it made the notion that the same type of thinking that created an achievement gap cannot be used to fix it. This is something I heard used similarly regarding US politics and it stands out as a challenge to develop a whole new way of thinking to address academic issues.
The research based strategies that I see beneficial are community involvement, setting high help/high perfectionism goals, explicit language instruction, making the classroom a space for critical thinking and free expression, and implementing dialogue not lecture. Some of these ideas where things learned last semester. Conscious effort must be put into content instruction to implement these. As I get to know my students, I will be using the same critical thinking skill I want to teach the students.
William, thanks for making your reading responses available with links on the left side of your blog. It makes it very accessible! It is evidence like this that make me believe you are going to be great at designing online learning for your students!
ReplyDeleteAnne René