Assignment for Education 2011年10月8日

The following is a draft for Educational diversity class.
I hope you take a look and offer me corrections and/or suggestions in grammar and content.



Low socioeconomic status (low-SES) in a class would involve generic and yet tough issues that teachers have to deal with. These may be difficult because there is no clearly defined guideline for teachers to prohibit discrimination unlike race- or ethnicity-related discrimination. One particular difficulty, in my opinion, would be a possible quantitative/hierarchical comparison among students due to the linearity of SES. This aspect requires different solution approaches compared to racial and ethnic issues because sharing the plausible idea of “differences with equity” may not be enough. As clearly seen in the expression of high- and low-SES, even teachers may view differences as deficits or weakness.

The authors of the readings (Allard & Santoro, Dunne & Gazeley) point out that teachers' views on students are liable to be influenced by their SES, and such biased views consequently cause less attention/expectation for low-SES students. While such limited attention and expectation alone lead to deteriorated quality of their teaching and consequently lower academic achievements by the students, teachers' biased views may even further result in unfair grading. I would like to emphasize that this phenomenon possibly causes vicious cycles not only within itself, but also by resulting in distorted preconception about the students by successor teachers that would hinder their effective teaching. Such a contagious tragedy must be prevented.

Teachers' perspectives toward students should be fair, and teachers should always hold high expectation for individual students regardless of their SES so that each student’s potential of academic achievement is maximized. Such teacher ethics should be secured in the first place, but unfortunately as in the readings, teachers are liable to promote or even create implicit/explicit discriminations instead of taking measures to prevent those due to the prejudices or misconception as mentioned above.

Specific strategies to corroborate low-SES students’ learning would involve identifying accessible resources for them, and take advantage of the resources fully. We would be able to share the idea that low-SES students have limited options of resources to begin with due to financial restrictions and other constraints involving racial and ethnic issues that are often correlated to SES. Thus, I would suggest focusing more on in-class resources instead. Offering organized and accessible materials, or teaching students how to use a library would be another approach. Pair-works or group-works would also be helpful especially when partners can be resources to each other. Teachers should seeking concrete approaches for effective learning of individual students, and such attitudes shall be rigidly supported by fair teacher ethics and policies. In that aspect, we should be not only an educator, but also a role model for every student.