Question | Answer |
Culture | The knowledge, attitudes, values, customs, and behavior patterns that characterize a social group. |
Cultural diversity | The different cultures that you'll encounter in classrooms and how these cultural differences influence learning. |
Ethnicity | A person's ancestory; the way individuals identify themselves with the nation from which they or their ancestors came. |
Assimilation | A process of socializing people so that they adopt dominant social norms and patterns of behavior. |
Multicultural education | A general term that describes a variety of strategies schools use to accommodate cultural differences in teaching and learning. |
Culturally responsive teaching | Instruction that acknowledges and accommodates cultural diversity. |
English language learners (ELLs) | Students whose first language is not English and who need help in learning to speak, read, and write in English. |
Maintenance Language programs | Language programs that place the greatest emphasis on using and sustaining the first language. |
Immersion program | Language program that emphasizes rapid transition to English. |
English as a second Language (ESL) program | Language program that teaches English along with content. |
Transition programs | Language programs that maintain the first language until students acquire sufficient English. |
Gender-role identity | Differences in expectations and beliefs about appropriate roles and behaviors of the two sexes. |
Stereotype | A rigid, simplistic caricature of a particular group of people. |
Single-gender classes and schools | Classes and schools where boys and girls are segregated for part or all of the day. |
Intelligence | The capacity to acquire knowledge, the ability to think and reason in the abstract, and the ability to solve problems. |
Multiple intelligences | A theory that suggests that overall intelligence is composed of eight relatively independent dimensions. |
Ability grouping | The practice of placing students of similar aptitude and achievement histories together in an attempt to match instruction to the needs of diffferent groups. |
Between-class ability grouping | Grouping that divides all students in a given grade into high, medium, and low groups. |
Within-class ability grouping | Grouping that divides students within one classroom inot ability groups. |
Tracking | The practice of ability grouping that places students in a series of different classes or curricula on the basis of ability and career goals. |
Learning styles | Students' personal approaches to learning problem solving, and processing information. |
Metacognition | Students' awareness of the ways they learn most efectively and their ability to control these factors. |
Students with exceptionalities | Learners who need special help and resources to reach their full potential. |
Disabilities | Functional limitations or an inability to perfom a certain act, such as hear or walk. |
Giftedness | Abilities at the upper end of the continuum that require support beyond regular classroom instruction to reach full potential. |
Special education | Instruction designed to meet the unique needs of students with exceptionalities. |
Mainstreaming | The practice of moving students with exceptionalities from segregated settings into regular education classrooms. |
Least Restrictive Environment (LRE) | The placement of students in as normal an educational setting as possible while still meeting their special academic, social, and physical needs. |
Inclusion | A comprehensive approach to education students with exceptionalities that advocates a total, systematic, and coordinated web of services. |
Individualized Education Program (IEP) | An individually prescribed instructional plan devised by special education and general education teachers, resource professionals, and parents (and sometimes the student). |
Learning disabilities | Exceptionalities that involve difficulties in acpuiring and using listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities. |
Communication disorders | Exceptionalities that interfere with students' abilities to receive and understand information from others and to express their own ideas or questions. |
Speech disorders (or expressive disorders) | Problems in forming and sequencing sounds. |
Language disorders(or receptive disorders) | Problems with understanding language or using language to express ideas. |
Mental retardation | An exceptionality that includes limitations in intellectual functioning, as indicated by difficulties in learning, and problems with adaptive skills, such as communication, self-care, and social ability. |
Behavior disorders | Exceptionalities involving the display of serious and persistent age-inappropriate behaviors that result in social conflict, personal unhappiness, and school failure. |
Gifted and Talented | A designation given to students at the upper end of the ability continuum who need special services to reach their full potential. |
Acceleration | A program for gifted and talented students that keeps the regular curriculum but allows students to move through it more quickly. |
Enrichment | A program for gifted and talented students that provides richer and varied content through strategies that supplement usual grade-level work. |
Collaboration | Joint communication and decision making among educational professionals to create an optimal learning environment for students with exceptionalities. |