Effective Curriculum and Instructional Design Approaches for Diverse Learners

Education is shifting away from emphasizing teachers teaching to ensuring student learning. All students learn differently and learn best when instructional practices are tailored to their own cultures, languages, and experiences. Student engagement and achievement are associated with a teachers’ use of evidence-based and proactive classroom management practices (Larson et al., 2018). These proactive practices are also associated with higher rates of positive student behavior. There are several strategies to create a rigorous and appropriate curriculum for all learners. These strategies include knowing your own beliefs, building strong rapport with students and families, and understanding cultural impacts on learning.

A critical component to recognizing and using effective instructional strategies for culturally and linguistically diverse students is for a teacher to be aware of their own experiences and beliefs. Whether they realize it or not, these beliefs and experiences play into their interactions with students and curriculum. Teachers must realize and acknowledge their own sociocultural positions and learn to manage how this causes them to respond to student diversity (Hammond, 2013). This cultural competence includes knowledge of their known culture and worldview, biases, and prejudices (Chen & Lindo, 2018). Having an open mind and learning to embrace other perspectives can help increase their effectiveness and relationships with students to produce better outcomes.

Perhaps the most important element of building effective curriculum and instruction for all learners is building strong rapport with students. Teachers should work to establish authentic connections with students through mutual trust and respect (Ford, 2015; Hammond, 2013). To do this, teachers must understand children individually (Little, 2013) and recognize the full potential of each child (Nganga, 2015). An ultra-supportive environment appears to be perhaps the only chance for children from challenging backgrounds to be successful in school and in life (Bowman, Comer, & Johns, 2018). Students feeling valued are likely to be motivated and engaged which can help ensure learning in the first place (Ford, 2015).

As teachers are working to build a rigorous and appropriate curriculum and learning environment for all students, they must understand cultural impacts on learning. Culture impacts the brain’s information processing (Hammond, 2013) and can affect how a student learns. Students learning in a secondary language also indicates deeper learning although that may not always be reflected. Students learning in a second language must translate all learning and vocabulary and then comprehend the information. This may make students more tired or disruptive as they may be working cognitively harder than their peers. 

Curricular resources, materials, and technology offer helpful tools that can help integrate any of these effective strategies including authentic learning, collaboration, and culturally sensitive curriculum. Technology can especially be an essential component to build a differentiated curriculum for all students. It is important that teachers are competent and comfortable with any curricular resources, materials, and technology that they use. They must recognize how each student engages with these resources to ensure they do not become a distraction. Teachers should also continue to know their students well and integrate technology into learning in productive and relevant ways. Knowing students’ backgrounds and contexts can help discriminate the appropriateness of curricular resources, materials, and technology use in all learning opportunities.

The visual below depicts the main points presented by an interview with a veteran teacher on November 21, 2023.



References

Bowman, B., Comer, J., & Johns, D. (2018). Addressing the African American achievement gap. Young Children, 73(2), 14-23.

Ford, D. (2015). Culturally responsive gifted classrooms for culturally different students. Gifted Child Today, 38(1), 67-69. https://doi.org/10.1177/1076217514556697

Hammond, Z. (2013). Ready for rigor: A framework for culturally responsive teaching. Ready 4 Rigor. www.ready4rigor.com

Larson, K., Pas, E., Bradshaw, C., Rosenberg, M., & Day-Vines, N. (2018). Examining how proactive management and culturally responsive teaching relate to student behavior: Implications for measurement and practice. School Psychology Review, 47(2), 153-166. https://doi.org/10.17105/SPR-2017-0070.V47-2

Little, T. (2013). 21st century learning and progressive education: An intersection. International Journal of Progressive Education, 9(1), 84-96. 

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