Schools should try to improve equity in classrooms, because an essential part of education is making sure that each and every student has the opportunity to achieve their goals. There is a rising understanding that despite the efforts of teachers and other educators, gender and cultural fairness is not always accomplished.
This is a problem that is becoming more prevalent. The following are some easy pointers that teachers may use to improve equity in classrooms and narrow gender and cultural inequalities that could exist in their classrooms.
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Being Aware of Your Classroom Environment
The promotion of gender inequality may be avoided by avoiding segregation in classroom seating and activities. One example of this would be to avoid pitting girls against males in a math facts contest. Nevertheless, when there are just a few students of the same gender or race, putting those kids in the same group helps reduce the feeling of isolation that they have.
When forming smaller groups, especially with pre-teen and older children, make sure that there are at least two girls in each group. This is because many girls have a tendency to pull away from the group when they are the only girl in the group.
Investigate the gender and cultural equality of the classroom resources that are at the disposal of the students, particularly posters and other display materials.
Exist many racial and cultural subgroups within the group? Are there depictions of young men and women pursuing careers that deviate from the norm, such as male nurses or female technicians? If this is the case, you will need to identify substitutes if you want to improve equity in classroom.
Improve Equity in Classroom – Interactions Between Teachers and Students
If you call on the student whose hand goes up in the air the quickest, it will lead to uneven involvement among the students in the class; nevertheless, some students will feel scared when they are called upon.
The creation of a friendly environment in the classroom could narrow the gender participation gap, but it probably won’t be enough to encourage involvement if the difference is caused by cultural factors.
Have a deck of cards with student names written on them, and then draw from that deck in order to make the activity less teacher-directed. This is a better alternative than calling on students one at a time.
Remember to wait for two full seconds before inviting students to participate in a discussion by delivering answers or asking questions. The first wait, which lasts around thirty seconds to one minute, is for students to prepare a response. This allows students who digest information more slowly to avoid feeling intimidated by students who are more quick to respond.
The second wait is for the instructor after the student has responded, which provides an opportunity for the teacher to more thoroughly evaluate the response and devise a suitable reaction.
Eye contact and the amount of personal space each individual takes up are two further aspects of student-teacher interaction that might provide cultural challenges. In the same way that children of Asian and Native American descent may look down as a gesture of respect, other children may look down as a sign of humiliation or submission; therefore, requiring students to make eye contact might create a cultural barrier between students and teachers and does not help to improve equity in classrooms.
Some people may view it as intimidating while others may see it as caring when an adult gets physically near to a youngster. Understanding a child’s expectations can be facilitated by seeing how they interact with their classmates and the instructor in terms of personal space and eye contact.
Conclusion
It won’t happen tomorrow, but eventually we will close the gender and cultural inequalities that exist in education and work to improve equity in classroom.
However, there are some simple things that teachers and educators can do in classrooms and small educational settings that will help to improve equity in classrooms. These things include being aware of the environment of the classroom, the grouping of students, and the interactions between the teacher and the students.
