Elements Required for a Diverse and Inclusive Classroom

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Elements Required for a Diverse and Inclusive Classroom Part A: Mind map

Part 2: Essay The curriculum content and achievement standards need to be designed in a manner that ensures continuous learning for all learners including students with disabilities, English as an additional language student, and gifted and talented learners. Strategies to promote diversity in the school environment have been described as creating flexibility for learners with special needs, tailoring instruction and assessment to suit the needs of all learners, adopting policies and practices that accommodate cultural differences.

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In the diverse classroom setting, the core elements required for an inclusive classroom include relationships, advocacy, a sense of identity, shared experiences, and transparency (Burritt, 2020). In relation to the elements required for an inclusive and diverse classroom, the mind map and essay address the different strategies that educators can embrace to support inclusive learning for all at the same time taking into account the diversity in the learning environment.

Inclusion has been described as achieved through building relationships, to feel every learner part of the classroom community. Through forging relationships, learners form a bond with their peers, thus they feel supported and appreciated regardless of their unique differences.

The teacher also explores every available opportunity to develop a relationship with learners and this forms the bias for successful learning encounters as the students feel included and appreciated. According to Deery (2019), advocacy is regarded as an integral element of inclusion. Advocating for the needs of special learners such as the disabled is attained by recognizing the unique needs of these learners and differentiating instructions and the classroom environment so that the needs of these learners are catered to. Besides, creating a sense of identity for students who have unique learning needs is the basis for advocating the needs of these students and providing learning support to them. Allowing learners with special needs in the same classroom with peers plays a significant role in nurturing shared experiences, as their learning needs are identified and respective adjustments made to create a supportive classroom setting.

For learners with disabilities and flexibility for teachers to tailor their additional learning needs, inclusion is attaining through the provision of teaching ways to offer rigorous, relevant, and engaging learning and assessment opportunities for learners with disabilities. Inclusion for

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learners with disabilities includes the teacher making an adjustment to instructional processes and assessment strategies to enable students to achieve educational standards that match with their peers (Deery, 2019). The teacher also makes appropriate adjustments to the complexity of the curriculum and its components to focus on instructions on content taught to their peers. The teacher makes adjustments that are focused on how students' progress is monitored, assessed, and reported. For learners with disabilities and additional learning needs, they are also confronted with significant intellectual disabilities. The inclusion for learners is focused on securing opportunities for these students to learn alongside their non-disabled peers in the general education classroom.

Another element for diversity and inclusion in the classroom is to tailor teachings in a way that offer rigorous, relevant, and engaging classroom setting as well as assessment opportunities for all students, including those learners with disabilities. By providing a flexible curriculum, most students can engage with the curriculum content and demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. As asserted by Moss et al. (2017), instructional adjustment for students with disabilities include providing alternative representations for teaching and learning materials such as multimedia materials, braille, illustrated texts, and simplified text. Instructional adjustments also include motivating students by engaging them with personal interests. By modeling and demonstrating skills as well as application of knowledge and cognitive strategies, learners with disabilities are motivated to learn.

Inclusive learning and teaching also entail the adoption of policies and practices to embrace all learners regardless of their cultural beliefs and practices. Inclusion is about embracing intercultural interactions as an integral aspect of everyday lude in an increasingly multicultural environment, Therefore, cultural inclusion can be attained through nurturing

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learners to develop intercultural knowledge, skills, and understandings as these are essential aspects of interacting and learning with others in the diverse world. The intercultural learning approach is important in teaching young people to become responsible students who are equipped to coexist successfully with others in an interconnected world. Promoting intercultural capability in the classroom setting is aimed at developing knowledge understanding, and skills that enable the students to demonstrate an awareness and respect for other people’s culture and reflect how intercultural experiences influence their behavior, beliefs, and relationship with each other (Turner, 2021). Cultural diversity and inclusion are also about acceptance and appreciation of cultural diversity in a cohesive community where learners are motivated to learn and embrace each other.

In conclusion, the learning environment has been described as diverse, thus the need to implement the elements of inclusion to accommodate all the learners. The classroom environment is comprised of learners with disabilities, those studying English as an alternative language, the intellectually gifted, who are from diverse social, cultural, and economic backgrounds and whose needs must be addressed for successful learning. It is through recognition of diversity and working towards inclusion, building relationships, advocacy, shared experiences, and transparency that educators can promote inclusion for all students. More so, instruction differentiation, policies and practices, and embracing cultural diversity offer opportunities for embracing all learners regardless of their unique differences so that they can be integrated in the learning setting.

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References Burritt, A. M. (2020). Religious world views, diverse classrooms and curriculum. Religion & Education, 47(2), 153-169.

Deery, C. (2019). An ethnographic action research project: national curriculum, historical learning and a culturally diverse Melbourne primary school. Ethnography and Education, 14(3), 311-327.

Moss, J., O’Mara, J., & McCandless, T. (2017). School leadership and intercultural understanding: school foyers as situated spaces for doing diversity. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 21(9), 956-973.

Turner, M. (2021). Drawing on students’ diverse language resources to facilitate learning in a Japanese–English bilingual program in Australia. Language Teaching Research, 25(1), 61-80.