New Learning’s Updates
Learner Differences in Theory and Practice
This paper explores the complex and shifting dimensions of the social, cultural and bodily differences that impact on learners and their learning. Our theoretical argument proceeds in five stages. First, we build a typology of terms used to classify demographic differences for the purposes of designing, implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of educational institutions and programs: material conditions (social class, locale and family); corporeal attributes (age, race, sex and sexuality, physical and mental abilities); and symbolic representations (language, ethnos, communities of commitment and gendre). Second, we address the paradigms of civic association that modern nation-states have used to negotiate these differences: exclusion, assimilation and an aspirational regime that we call ‘civic pluralism’. Third, we explore complications that render the demographic categorizations problematic. Fourth, we propose an alternative and supplementary frame for social and learner differences based on ‘lifeworld differences’. Finally, we explore the ways in which civic pluralism might be translated into educational practice. We interleave these theoretical explorations with an analysis developed for an evaluation of an inclusive education program in Roma communities in Northern Greece. The Roma serve as a case study of the complex ways in which categories of difference play out in social and educational reality.
- Kalantzis, Mary and Bill Cope. 2016. "Learner Differences in Theory and Practice." Open Review of Educational Research 3(1):85–132. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/23265507.2016.1164616.
This article makes a wonderfully specific argument about the benefits of true, integrated education. By using Rome's ecosystem as an analogy, it takes us through socially and culturally constructed categories that are used either to differentiate or assimilate populations. I instantly think about a school environment and how easy it is to see these constructs in action. However, at the core, is the notion of transforming school environments to allow for difference and encounter complex identities to flourish.
For teachers used to checking student learning against identified standards, how is learning assessed here? And to what extent are such assessments recognised by the formal education systems of countries to enable post-secondary education?