BALANCING BASIC SKILLS AND EQUITY ISSUES

Joan Córdova, Daniel S. Pittaway, Darwin Smith - Basic Skills Committee, Academic Senate for California Community Colleges

Julius B. Thomas - Equity & Diversity Action Committee, Academic Senate for California Community Colleges

November 2009

3x5 Card Activity

Name

DateSubject

Number of years teaching Define Equity. List two strategies focused on

developing equity in the classroom.

DEFINE EQUITY How do you define equity?

Access Equality Opportunity Overcoming Obstacles Equitable Success Outcomes Universal Design

Universal Design Borrowed from architecture,

“universal design” is an educational framework based on research in the learning sciences.

It includes cognitive neuroscience and guides the development of flexible learning environments that can accommodate individual learning differences.

Universal Design Universal Design for Learning

helps meet the challenges of diversity by recommending: use of flexible instructional materials techniques strategies that empower educators

the tools they need to meet students' diverse needs.

UDL – improves educational outcomes

Educators can improve outcomes for diverse learners by applying the following principles to the development of goals, instructional methods, classroom materials and assessments.

Principle 1– Presentation

Provide multiple and flexible methods of presentation to give students with diverse learning styles various ways of acquiring information and knowledge.

Principle 2 – Expression

Provide multiple and flexible means of expression to provide diverse students with alternatives for demonstrating what they have learned.

Principle 3 – Engagement

Provide multiple and flexible means of engagement to tap into diverse learners' interests, challenge them appropriately, and motivate them to learn.

The 3 Principles…

…lend themselves to implementing inclusionary practices in the classroom.

Student Data

Ethnicity % of Total Head Count % of Total Enrollment (Credit) % of Enrollment (Noncredit)

Credit and Noncredit Unduplicated Headcounts by Ethnicity

ETHNICITY% Total

Enrollment

Credit Basic Skills/ESL

Enrollment

% Total Credit Basic Skills/ESL

NoncreditBasic Skills/ESL

% Total Noncredit Basic

Skills/ESL

AFRICAN-AMERICAN

7% 38,265 11.3% 7,900 3.5%

ASIAN 12% 45,880 17% 34,933 15.5%

FILIPINO 3% 10,069 3% 3,012 1.3%

HISPANIC/LATINO

30% 140,270 41.3% 117,232 52.1%

NATIVE AMERICAN

1% 3,067 0.9% 694 0.3%

OTHER, NON-WHITE

2% 6,471 1.9% 9,688 4.3%

PAC ISLANDER 1% 2,912 .9% 688 .3%

WHITE 35% 74,080 21.8% 27,724 12.3%

UNKNOWN 8% 15,931 4.88% 37,511 9.54%

TOTAL 339,278 100% 225,097 100%

Basic Skills Accountability Supplemental Report 2009, CCCCO

STUDENT DATA Unduplicated headcount for California

Community Colleges 2008-2009 academic year: 2.93 million students.

We are the largest higher education system in the world!

The CCCs assess between 70-85% of students into a pre-collegiate level in one or more of the basic skills areas.

EFFECTIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES

FIVE CATEGORIES1. Student Success Checklist2. Learning Styles3. Active Learning Strategies4. Classroom Assessment

Techniques5. Learning Communities

1 - Student Success Checklist

Survival Level Skills Successful Level Skills Advanced Scholarly Behavior

2 - Learning Styles Learning styles are various approaches or ways of

learning. They involve educational methods, particular to an

individual, that are presumed to allow that individual to learn best.

One of the most common and widely-used categorizations of the various types of learning styles is Fleming's VARK model:

visual learners; auditory learners; reading/writing-preference learners; kinesthetic learners.

3 - Classroom Assessment Techniques Classroom assessment is both a teaching

approach and a set of techniques. The approach is that the more you know about what and how students are learning, the better you can plan learning activities to structure your teaching. The techniques are mostly simple, non-graded, anonymous, in-class activities that give both you and your students useful feedback on the teaching-learning process.

4 - Active Learning Strategies

There is a large amount of research attesting to the benefits of active learning.

"Active Learning" - anything that students do in a classroom other than merely passively listening to an instructor's lecture. More specifically, learners should be cognitively active.

5 - Learning Communities Linked courses: Students take two connected

courses, usually one disciplinary course such as history or biology and one skills course such as writing, speech, or information literacy.

Learning clusters: Students take three or more connected courses, usually with a common interdisciplinary theme uniting them.

Freshman interest groups: Similar to learning clusters, but the students share the same major, and they often receive academic advising as part of the learning community.

Pair Share

1. Select a partner.2. Review the five CATEGORIES.3. Choose one category; select one

strategy.4. Specify when/where/how to use

it.5. Report back to the large group.

EXIT STRATEGY

“What did you learn in this session?”

1. Raise your hand.2. Tell us something you

learned. 3. Do not repeat what

someone else said.