One Classroom Many Worlds

Jacklyn Blake Clayton challenges the notion of "tolerance" for cultural differences-a notion that implies resignation, passivity, superiority-and offers instead another challenge-to understand the building blocks of all cultures. This understanding is the keystone that holds together a variety of world views and creates a more solid structure for meaningful interactions between teachers and students. Each chapter of her book looks at an aspect of culture that affects the classroom: how children are socialized how values can differ from culture to culture how learning styles may be influenced how verbal and nonverbal communication differ across cultures how immigrant children acculturate how the mainstream classroom in the United States has its own culture. Deftly combining theory and practice, Clayton incorporates into her book general suggestions for applying concepts to the classroom, plus numerous sections called "Try this!" with specific questions, prompts, or activities to promote inquiry and reflection.

Originally published in 1997. By drawing on the experiences of children aged 3 to 8 attending schools in Britain, Germany, Iceland, Australia and the USA, the authors of these eleven case studies provide insights into what it means for young children to enter a new language and culture in school. They look at the scope of out-of-school language and learning practices (the role of care givers, siblings and community language classes) and go on to look at the ways in which the teacher can act as mediator of a new language and culture in school. This book helps teachers develop culturally responsive teaching programmes based on an awareness of the knowledge children bring from home and the community. The book will be of interest to early years and primary school teachers working in multilingual classrooms and students.

Six complete cross-curricular lesson plans for embracing cultural diversity - specific regions within the continents of North America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia are included. Discover history, landmarks, traditions, and much more in this activity-packed, reproducible resource.

Practical classroom management applications assure that beginning and experienced teachers of all grade levels and instructional settings develop the cultural and managerial competence to make daily classroom practice easier, effective, and culturally-inclusive. Through developing culturally-competence, teachers learn to manage classrooms with a culturally-inclusive mindset in both mainstream and non-mainstream classrooms alike. They learn from start to finish how to structure and manage a culturally-inclusive classroom—how to establish the governance principles, how to set up the structure for operating the classroom with sensitivity and caring, and how to prevent and address student misbehavior. Emphasis is on helping students become disciplined caring individuals, and on assuring fairness and due process in applying penalties for misbehavior.

One Paradigm, Many Worlds: Conflict Resolution across the Disciplines surveys how the paradigm of collaborative conflict resolution shapes a variety of disciplines. Conflict resolution examines the theory, research, strategies and spirit that accompany subscription to this “win-win” approach to conflict. In the past few decades, such a collaborative approach has emerged to challenge existing “win-lose” paradigms to approaching conflict that are predicated on some form of violence and unacknowledged/ unchanging power differentials. By challenging these existing paradigms, One Paradigm, Many Worlds documents and instructs on the merits of the collaborative approach to conflict resolution. It promises a broad and contemporary examination of how this paradigm both influences and holds the potential to influence a number of different professional and academic disciplines. The text is organized in four sections. They focus on the application of conflict resolution in the human services, elementary/secondary education, higher education, and a range of other disciplines (philosophy, communication, international relations). With such a breadth contained in the text, One Paradigm, Many Worlds’ unifying core is the centrality of conflict resolution as a paradigm supportive of cooperation, positive communication and relationship to self, to others, to organizations and institutions, and to society.

Culturally-transformative teaching restores teaching excellence to prominence in classroom practice through its systematic approach to precise teaching. It develops the pedagogical and cultural competence of both beginning and experienced teachers with learners in all instructional settings from the primary grades through university levels. Comprehensive explanations and examples throughout the volume help teachers get better and better at designing and conducting effective lessons so that all students have an equal opportunity to learn regardless of their cultural backgrounds or status in American society. The lesson framework and principles of the teaching model have been field-tested to serve as a growth-oriented university, school, or district-wide teacher development and evaluation system.

Culturally-centered educational experiences form the core of classroom practice. Beginning and experienced teachers at all grade levels and instructional settings learn how to help all students achieve their full potentials through an education program which draws on information from multiple cultures and perspectives. Through day-to-day classroom practice in both the regular and hidden curriculum and by joining forces with parents and the community they learn to employ practices which broaden students’ understanding of the world and its peoples.

Excellence in student learning is dependent upon cross-cultural understanding--having a broader view of people and the world than the traditional western-oriented view. This is a vital contextual resource for learning how and why to employ the recommended classroom practices outlined in the three classroom practice volumes. The presentation builds cultural competence. Readers become more observant and open to questioning why certain practices exist in schools. Through the process in this and in additional volumes of the series, readers gain new knowledge, deeper insights, and a way of thinking about schooling that will extend to the classroom and beyond.