In this section, we're going to talk about Literacies and Learner Differences. I don't want to say it upfront, I believe that this is one of the most important areas that we can talk about. And I'm going to start with referencing something that Carl Wieman said. He's a professor in both the Department of Physics and Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. And this is because he's not very interested in physics and won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2001. But he's also interested in what it means to learn physics. So he's also interested in the nature of education and the nature of teaching and learning. So he has said, and I quote him, that he finds doing research in education different. But in some ways, he says, it's much more fun and easier than his physics research and why is this? Fun, he says, it's more fun because it's easier in the sense that there is so much unplowed ground. So many unanswered questions and so many potential experiments with possible surprises. He then goes on to say, of course, in other respects, doing research in education and teaching and learning in education, is harder because for this reason. He says, we know a lot more about the contextual influences on the behavior of atoms than we do on students. And hence, what contextual elements do and do not have to be controlled in designing experiments. So my reasoning in quoting him is to just say how important it is to understand context and variety and difference. That exists in all classrooms and the context in which teaching and learning happens. >> These series of videos is about literacies learning and the relationship of that learning to learn the differences. So one of the fundamental dynamics of learning is how learners come in with different experiences of language, different experiences of life. They're different people and we then have to calibrate what we do to align with those differences. Now let me tell you a bit of a story about education and differences. A big picture story and the University of Illinois has a little part of this story. And that is the way which we try to deal with learners in the initial phases of modern education. Mass compulsory education's, only been around for 150 years or so. And in the west that is and the way we tried to deal with it is we created this kind of fiction assumption little we learn is the same, right? And if they want the same we make them the same, we put them by grade level which is age, we track them by cycled ability, we have tests to do this. So that was about creating an architecture sameness. About creating environments that were as much the same as possible, because that was the fundamental pedagogical assumption that the kids were saying. So we might done the same and then even though of course, when I came to the classroom they weren't the same, we assume they were the same. So in other words, let's say a kid comes from another country. They don't speak English, we're an English speaking country discussing this. They were just simply put in the class, and they'd pick it up, and they'd talk amongst their friends. And the idea was that we really can't calibrate or regig what we do to meet differences. So, everything was done to make things the same as possible and then there was an assumption of sameness. Now, in fact one of the things about education is it's a system which produces unequal outcomes. And the unequal outcomes have always been connected with these patents of loaded difference. So, the reason why we want to explore these things is to try and work out What do wee do with inequality? To what extent does education reinforce and extend inequality? And there have been big agendas in the past to try to compensate for the disadvantages that some particular groups of learners actually experience. Now, My U of I contributing a little bit to the history of the world story is that the chinks in this edifice was the development of an area called special education. And in fact, some of the key early thinkers in special education in the 1940s and the 1950s. We're here in the College of Education at The University of Illinois and it was the beginning of a recognition that the learners were not all the same. Now historically, what we did in the field that's now special education. Is that if you had a disability, if you had a disability around sight, you were perhaps completely blind or partially sighted. Or if you were deaf, that you would go to a school for the blind or a school for the deaf. And there, we could have the same sort of pedagogy for kids which were intrinsically the same. But with the gradual or progressive development of special education, we came to think, look, in fact, we can build integrated classrooms. Where kids mix and they're different and where we can cater those difference within the context of mainstream schooling. So it's the beginning of a fundamental shift in the underlying assumptions in education from an architecture of sameness. A pedagogy of sameness, to one where we became capable of recognizing differences. >> There is typical ways of viewing diversity or difference. And the most obvious one, usually goes to what we call gross demographics. We usually try to kind of figure out what diversity exist on the basis of gender or age or whether somebody lives in a rural or urban location. What the ethnic background is, whether they're indigenous or non-indigenous, what their education background is, what ability and disabilities they might have. What sexual orientation, what socioeconomic status and perhaps also what faith they have. However, these gross demographic ways of grouping people, there are more differences within each one of these categories then one can imagine. So it's not much good saying, I have a group of women or a group of men and thinking that simply saying that is enough to understand how they difference as men and women might influence teaching and learning. >> Towards a beginning of a fundamental shift in the underlying assumptions in education. From an ACA teachers same as a pedagogy of sameness to one way we became capable of recognizing differences. In terms of systemic approaches to education which is structures of inequality. In various countries of the world, there have been all sorts of initiatives over the years. Here we have a photograph of President Johnson, who established, in the United States. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESCA, which later became no child left behind. Now and there he is outside the old school room in Texas, where he went to school with his childhood teacher, who was in that little old school. So for him this was part of what Johnson called The Great Society, it was part of the whole movement to try to deal with issues of inequality. And by the way, in Australia, just to give another example of another country, the equivalent kind of history, the EESCA is 1965 been in Australia in 1975 to 76. No, sorry, I tell a lie. In Australia, 1973 actually. Not many years later, the Commonwealth Schools Commission was setup in a Disadvantaged Schools Program. Now why is this important? There are all these dimensions of differences amongst learners, which we're going to be talking about in this series of videos. There are all these dimensions and one of the dimension is just a socio-economic dimension. So to what extent does poverty produce unequal economic outcomes? And in a way, in the world which is a deeply unequal world, if you're an immigrant and you don't speak English as the first language. If you're born a poor person, education is almost the only chance you have for intergenerational mobility. So from one generation to the next, for the kids to do better than the parents, a lot of parents are really keen that their kids do better. And there's not much chance of becoming rich in other ways unless you have some crazily ingenious business idea. Even though you don't have much of an education, which is pretty unlikely. Unless you miraculously win the lottery, you have some rich uncle you didn't know existed, which all of this is unlikely, improbable, statistically, forget about it. So the only realistic way to improve your life chances and the only realistic way for there to be generational mobility is education. So the question of structures of differences in education which produce inequalities is then a profoundly important question. >> We want to argue, that there's another, better and more complex and more appropriate way of looking at diversity. And this is thinking of diversity and difference as the life-world in which people exist. What is their life experience? What kind of language and which languages do they speak? What are their communication styles, their interpersonal styles, their thinking styles? How do they create networks and who are their contacts? What kind of affinities do they have and what are their interests in the world? What orientation do they have to the local community or to the larger globe. What are their values frameworks? What are their political and social views? What are their local and ritual identities? What kind of employment cultures are they used to, what kind of family cultures? Who we are, that is, and how we live and make meaning? What motivates us? So just simply saying we're a man or a woman does not allow us to understand all this aspects of our living. That might influence our behavior in any kind of learning environment or in fact even our role as teachers.
