Abstract/Response to "Diversity, Learning Style, and Culture"

The article “Diversity, Learning Style, and Culture” refreshed and redirected information and insight we’ve been gaining over the past several years. It illustrated how instructional technique can either positively act with a student’s culture, benefiting the student’s sense of self, or it can negatively reverberate with the culture, putting the student in a position of uncertainty and shame. It also looks at another version of the same complex, substituting the student’s culture for the student’s learning style, which is made up of cognition, conceptualization, affectation, and behavior. Despite these two items being the primary focus of the piece, it was frequently reiterated that while the classroom teacher needs to take both culture and learning styles into account, it is important not to combine the two factors into one, as this is learning style stereotyping of a culture. While certain cultures may espouse certain values, there is no reason that these values will necessarily translate into a specific uniform learning style, nor is there reason that the student will fully embrace the values of the culture. The main point of the article is that teachers should sincerely employ a variety of instructional techniques because the more limited instruction is, the smaller the group that can learn, and the less the entire class can learn fully.

I got a lot out of the article. The article frequently reminded me that it is important not to get lazy and to make my instruction very deliberate. I kept recalling a particular camper I had this summer whose behavior was problematic. I remembered telling myself over and over again to keep in mind that the fact that this camper was black was not a direct factor in his behavior, but the fact that he’s grown up being chastised for his thinking style (highly physical, kinesthetic) has negatively impacted his desire to cooperate with an authority figure. I had to remind myself and other counselors that ethnicity was not directly involved in his behavior. The worst part was when I had to explain this to other campers who were trying to take matters into their own hands. In a classroom environment, I would hope that I had more opportunity to redirect his energy in a positive direction, but it’s definitely easier said than done, as the article made clear. As a teacher, I will need to be constantly vigilant in planning my teaching styles and observing the learning styles of my students.