The Issues of Educational Inequalities

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Recommended: Educational equality

As I look back, we started our class with the module “the flat world”. This week’s reading addressed the issues of educational inequality. This module taught me how the score discrepancy is increasing between white and other ethnically diverse population. This is an alarming situation in the era of standardized testing. The article by Duffy (2013) from this week’s reading explores mental models and their ability to block or support school improvement. A mental model is a thought process that is completed entirely in the head. Mental model is a variation of what it represents. The thinker believes that it is true based on factual data. Each person’s experiences, knowledge base, and perceptions play a role in the formation of a mental model. The author provides sixteen strategies for unlearning and learning new models and also makes a point clear that teachers and administrators attitude really impact school improvement. The article points out the difference between compliance and commitment of educators and strategies to embrace new mental models for a better change. Compliance happens when the educator has a negative attitude about the new mental model and only behaves as expected when being observed. The goal is for educators to develop positive attitudes about the mental model so that they are committed and long-lasting change happens. I absolutely agree with this point that compliance and commitment are two different concepts, when we have commitment as educators; we are able to work as change agents. Compliance can only promote average professionals.

Another article I would like to mention is by Sleeter (2008) from the same module. I enjoyed reading this article as this piece recommend teachers to examine their own bac...

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...lture. Probably no framework is enough while conducting research with marginalized population/ teaching marginalized students. The question I keep on visiting are do the teachers really have resources (time, effort, material) to cultivate transformative pedagogy/audacious hope? Can we really foster emancipatory education in classroom when our lives are shaped by political forces?

Lastly I have taken this course material and pedagogy to my heart as I identify myself as a multicultural educator. I have been searching for articles and books related my interest that covers equity, social justice, diversity etc. Finally after this class I vouch to stand for what I believe in and teach my students that literacy is not just a set of cognitive skills, literacy is shaped by socio-cultural-political context as well.

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