Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners and the Mandates of Accountability without Compromising

Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-64
Author(s):  
Mara E. Culp ◽  
Karen Salvador

Music educators must meet the needs of students with diverse characteristics, including but not limited to cultural backgrounds, musical abilities and interests, and physical, behavioral, social, and cognitive functioning. Music education programs may not systematically prepare preservice teachers or potential music teacher educators for this reality. The purpose of this study was to examine how music teacher education programs prepare undergraduate and graduate students to structure inclusive and responsive experiences for diverse learners. We replicated and expanded Salvador’s study by including graduate student preparation, incorporating additional facets of human diversity, and contacting all institutions accredited by National Association of Schools of Music to prepare music educators. According to our respondents, integrated instruction focused on diverse learners was more commonly part of undergraduate coursework than graduate coursework. We used quantitative and qualitative analysis to describe course offerings and content integration.


1994 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcy Stein ◽  
Steve Isaacson ◽  
Robert C. Dixon

1994 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 406-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doug Carnine ◽  
Eric D. Jones ◽  
Robert Dixon

1994 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Carnine ◽  
Rita Bean ◽  
Sam Miller ◽  
Naomi Zigmond

Author(s):  
Owen Astrachan ◽  
Rebecca Brook Osborne ◽  
Irene Lee ◽  
Bradley Beth ◽  
Jeff Gray
Keyword(s):  

2012 ◽  
Vol 114 (7) ◽  
pp. 1-50
Author(s):  
Steven Z. Athanases ◽  
Juliet Michelsen Wahleithner ◽  
Lisa H. Bennett

Background/Context Learning to meet students’ needs challenges new teachers often focused on procedures, management, materials, and curriculum. To avoid this development pattern, student teachers (STs) need opportunities to concentrate especially on needs of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. Teacher inquiry (TI) holds promise as one such opportunity. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study We sought to understand how STs in a teacher credential program with a history of attention to diverse learners were learning about their CLD students through TI. Research Design We examined data collected from 80 STs over a 6-year period, including 80 TIs; STs’ data analysis field memos; questionnaires with reflections on TI processes and products; and taped ST peer discussions and conferences with instructor. Data also documented TI instruction, classroom culture, and opportunities to develop learning related to conducting TI. Drawing on research and theory, we developed, tested, and used a rubric of 17 indicators of attention to CLD learners as a means to examine the range of ways and the extent to which STs attended to CLD students through TI. Findings/Results STs took actions of various kinds to learn about diverse students: researching contexts and histories; examining student work and performance at full-class, subgroup, and individual levels; and asking and listening beneath the surface to students’ reasoning, attitudes, beliefs, and concerns about school learning and other issues. Various assessment and inquiry tools supported the process, helping STs develop data literacy to attend to CLD learners. However, TI elements were used to varying degrees, in various ways, and with varying levels of success. Two cases illustrate the range of TI tools that STs used to learn about their CLD learners, to generate data and evidence about learning, and to act in ways responsive to what they learned about students. Conclusions/Recommendations Those interested in studying multiple STs’ inquiries for attention to CLD learners may need to develop frames and analytic methods to examine a corpus of cases. This study was grounded in an assumption that such crosscutting analyses accumulate knowledge to disseminate to larger audiences, challenging conceptions that values of TI are purely local, serving only those directly involved. Teacher inquiry can help focus attention on individual student learners by allowing a teacher to compare data among individual students, giving a clearer, organized format in which they can observe growth and improvement or a decline in performance. In my own project, I observed lower performance among specific students concurrent with assignments in which instructions may have been difficult to decode for English learners or students with disabilities. (Tracey, preservice English language arts teacher)


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