 |
Professional Standards on Diversity
As part of its commitment to providing excellent educational services to
diverse students, CEC developed a set of knowledge and skills addressing
multicultural competence all special educators should know. These
standards for multicultural competence are incorporated into all aspects
and disciplines of special education teaching and learning. Following is
a synopsis of the Knowledge and Skills for All Entry-Level Special
Educators that Address Multicultural Competence (taken from What Every
Special Educator Must Know: Ethics, Standards, and Guidelines for
Special Educators, 5th Edition):
Assessment
- Administer nonbiased formal and informal assessments.
- Use assessment information in making eligibility, program, and
placement decisions for individuals with exceptional learning needs,
including those from culturally and/or linguistically diverse
backgrounds.
Beliefs/Historical Perspectives
- Issues in definition and identification of individuals with
exceptional learning needs, including those from culturally and
linguistically diverse backgrounds. Historical points of view and
contribution of culturally diverse groups.
- Impact of the dominant culture on shaping schools and the
individuals who study and work in them.
- Variations in beliefs, traditions, and values across and within
cultures and their effects on relationships among individuals with
exceptional learning needs, family, and schooling. Strategies used by
diverse populations to cope with a legacy of former and continuing
racism. Personal cultural biases and differences that affect one's
teaching.
Communication
- Culturally responsive factors that promote effective communication
and collaboration with individuals with exceptional learning needs,
families, school personnel, and community members.
- Communicate effectively with families of individuals with
exceptional learning needs from diverse backgrounds.
- Ways of behaving and communicating among cultures that can lead to
misinterpretation and misunderstanding.
- Demonstrate sensitivity for the culture, language, religion,
gender, disability, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation of
individuals.
English as Second Language
- Use communication strategies and resources to facilitate
understanding of subject matter for students whose primary language is
not the dominant language.
Home and School
- Cultural perspectives influencing the relationships among families,
schools, and communities as related to instruction.
- Characteristics and effects of the cultural and environmental
milieu of the individual with exceptional learning needs and the family.
Potential impact of differences in values, languages, and customs that
can exist between the home and school.
Instruction
- Strategies to prepare individuals to live harmoniously and
productively in a culturally diverse world.
- Develop and select instructional content, resources, and strategies
that respond to cultural, linguistic, and gender differences.
- Impact of learners' academic and social abilities, attitudes,
interests, and values on instruction and career development.
- Prepare individuals to exhibit self-enhancing behavior in response
to societal attitudes and actions.
Learning Differences
- Differing ways of learning of individuals with exceptional
learning needs including those from culturally diverse backgrounds and
strategies for addressing these differences.
- Teacher attitudes and behaviors that influence behavior of
individuals with exceptional learning needs.
- Effects of cultural and linguistic differences on growth and
development. Characteristics of one's own culture and use of language
and the ways in which these can differ from other cultures and uses of
languages.
Learning Environments
- Create a safe, equitable, positive, and supportive learning
environment in which diversities are valued.
- Organize, develop, and sustain learning environments that support
positive intra- cultural and intercultural experiences.
- Ways to create learning environments that allow individuals to
retain and appreciate there own and each other's respective language and
cultural heritage. Ways specific cultures are negatively stereotyped.
- Mediate controversial intercultural issues among students within
the learning environment in ways that enhance any culture, group, or person.
| Assessment, Beliefs, Communication, ESL, Home, Instruction, Learining Difference, Learning Environments |
|
