Tailoring Teaching to The Learner: Multicultural Assessment of Students and Environments
Multicultural Assessment of Students and Environments: Tailoring Teaching to The Learner
What Is Multicultural Assessment Environments
College classrooms and clinical settings have become increasingly diverse and more reflective of globalization and immigration. Faculty needs to consider issues related to this increasing cultural 94 6 Tailoring Teaching to the Learner 06Moyer(F) Ch-06 5/28/07 2:11 PM Page 94 diversity from two perspectives: being able to teach future nurses to care for the increasing numbers of clients from diverse cultural backgrounds and being able to meet the many challenges of preparing multicultural students to meet the health-care needs of a diverse society.
It is imperative that faculty members begin to increase their own cultural awareness and cultural competence to help multicultural students to learn and all students to appreciate diversity. Cultural competence can be viewed as “a continuous process of cultural awareness, knowledge, skill, interaction, and sensitivity among caregivers and the services they provide” (Smith, 1998, p. 9).
The culture of nursing education and most of higher education continues to reflect a largely Eurocentric dominance, which adheres to the tradition of linear learning, deductive logic, hierarchical structure, and individualistic, competitive, time-oriented, and authoritarian dominance (Brennan, 1997) .
The cultural bias that may be caused by faculty teaching in this way may have deleterious effects on student learning. Frequently, faculty does not give enough consideration to the differences in ethnic cognitive and no cognitive variables that constitute the students’ cultural differences.
Therefore, given the increasing number of minorities being recruited into nursing, as well as represented in the population in general, faculty is challenged to relate to multicultural students who have varying learning styles and needs as well as various performance abilities. Factors that affect student learning relate to ethnic background, birthplace, immigration status, age, gender, lifestyle, educational and career background, and language proficiency (Williams & Calvillo, 2002).
The obstacles faced by minority students include lack of ethnically diverse faculty who can serve as positive role models and mentors, lack of adequate financial assistance, and the need for increased educational support services (Billings & Halstead, 2005). Non-native–English-speaking students offer challenges in the classroom. They may not participate in class discussions because they feel uncomfortable with the language, and may “lack linguistic proficiency, cultural conventions, or educational background” (Kim, 2005, p. 5).
Several strategies can help such students to improve their listening and speaking skills. Faculty should speak clearly and at a reasonable pace, avoid the use of slang, encourage the use of audio taping, encourage peer discussion and sharing of notes, use visual aids for further enhancement of concepts, and use the Web or e-mail to post study guides and key points for further information and clarification (Kim, 2005).
In addition, faculty should try to become familiar with students’ backgrounds and invite guest lecturers from other cultures to attend class so that students can experience firsthand an appreciation of cultural competency in class discussions. Have students share their cultural beliefs, artifacts, and practices with their peers. Diverse backgrounds can provide enriching experiences and reduce cultural barriers. Be careful not to stereotype students or to overgeneralize (Billings & Halstead, 2005).
Faculty must be careful not to overcompensate or appear to provide special attention and services to any specific group or individual, and must strive to treat everyone fairly and equally. In order to achieve a proportionate representation of minorities in nursing, faculty should strive to make every effort to recruit students, retain them, and graduate them from nursing programs. Faculty plays a pivotal role in creating positive learning environments for all students.
Strategies to enhance cultural competence follow:
• Get to know students early; find out any needs they may have. Be honest about lacking specific knowledge about all cultures. Encourage students to share their beliefs, values, and meaning of health-care concepts to facilitate learning about their culture.
• Incorporate known cultural information when discussing particular cultures. Ask students to relate to past knowledge of their own culture’s beliefs and perspectives.
• Convey respect for all cultures. Avoid stereotyping and overgeneralizations.
• Discuss willingness to accept folk practices that are not harmful to adapt interventions to the needs of the client. Assessing the Learner 95 06Moyer(F) Ch-06 5/28/07 2:11 PM Page 95
• Be a positive role model who views cultural differences as valuable rather than obstacles.
• Provide clinical assignments so that all students can have opportunities to care for culturally diverse patients.
• Use gaming, simulations, and role play to increase the comfort level and understanding about different cultures.
• Form study groups and connect with resources early. Provide specific and clearly written instructions for all assignments and encourage frequent contact with faculty to deal with misconceptions and misinterpretations early.
• Use guest lectures from a variety of cultures who can provide insight into specific health-care views and perspectives.
Literacy Assessment
The ability to read and write are unquestionably basic skills for academic learning and success. Literacy is a term that denotes the relative ability to use printed and written material or “the ability to read, understand, and interpret information written at the eighth-grade level or above” (Bastable, 2003, p. 192). Literacy includes both readability and comprehension. Readability of printed material refers to the ease with which the learner can read the written or printed material.
Comprehension, on the other hand, refers to the degree to which the learners understand what they have read. Comprehension varies with the amount, clarity, and complexity of the material (Fisher, 1999). “The ability to read does not alone guarantee reading comprehension” (Bastable, 2003, p. 193). Both readability and comprehension are affected by many factors.
Faculty needs to be able to evaluate the learner’s level of comprehension and the student’s ability to read information from a variety of sources at an appropriate level for nursing. Factors limiting literacy skills can vary from limited educational opportunities, English as a second language, and learning disabilities. Developing a consensus as to what level of literacy is necessary for students to succeed in nursing is essential for the establishment of effective admission and promotion practices within the program (Hardy, Segatore , & Edge, 1993).
Strategies to Assist in Learning
Once the educator receives the assessment data about the students, several strategies developed by Knapper (1995) and Filene (2005) can facilitate a deeper appreciation of the material and connect the material that you want the learner to learn on the one hand to the learners ‘needs and what you intend the learning outcomes to be on the other.
- Decide upon the learning objective that you want to achieve in addition to the outcomes or what you want the learners to know.
- Is the main goal of learning to emphasize knowledge mastery, skill acquisition, or attitudinal change?
- Identify the expectations you have for your students.
- Communicate clear objectives that help the student examine what is done in the classroom.
- Communicate what might contribute to learning outside of the classroom.
- Decide which activities will foster the learning that is desired.
- How can students best achieve the objectives of the course?
- Get frequent feedback to determine if learning is occurring. 96 6 Tailoring Teaching to the Learner 06Moyer(F) Ch-06 5/28/07 2:11 PM Page 96
- Match the aims of your teaching with learning activities to facilitate higher-level skills. For example, active learning strategies rather than passive learning approaches create an interactive process.
- Emphasize the process of learning that is involved in the activities and include instruction on skills necessary to carry out learning activities (for example, how to write essays effectively, perform research to complete assignments, work in groups, and read critically).
- Evaluate the amount of time necessary to fulfill learning activities required.
- Applies to in-class and out-of-class activities so that students can prioritize and manage their time to study and complete assignments.
- Apply research findings about instructional strategies to teaching so that learning activities are sufficiently challenging to motivate achievement without overwhelming the students. The more you know about what the students bring to the classroom, the more attainable the outcomes.
- Apply learning theory in class by providing incentives, continuous feedback, and modeling one’s own effective learning style. Treat and evaluate students fairly
Understanding, Assessing, and Using Learning Styles
Research on learning styles has taken place over the past 40 years, beginning in the field of psychology and moving slowly into other disciplines, such as nursing (Cassidy, 2004). As educators, faculty members often teach students in much the same way they were taught, trying to provide the students with as much information and detail as possible to foster learning.
The lack of student proficiency on examinations frequently suggests, however, that learning has not occurred equally for all students and that students may have different ways of processing and learning material. Learning style represents just one valuable insight into how students learn as individuals. Assessing learning styles can help educators design and develop effective instruction that meets the learners’ needs best and facilitates more effective learning for individual students (Katz & Henry, 1993).
Billings and Halstead (2005) define learning style as “the unique way in which a person perceives, interacts with, and responds to a learning situation” (p. 27). Therefore, learning style refers to the preferred way by which an individual typically responds to or approaches different tasks or learning situations. Students should be encouraged to identify their preferences and use study and test-taking strategies based upon their preferences.
At the same time, faculty should help students diversify their preferences so they are better able to enhance learning in a wide variety of settings. Faculty can help students expand their use of various styles by using a variety of teaching strategies. Adding alternative activities that supplement or replace traditional assignments or learning modalities affords students the chance to use different styles.
Furthermore, Leamnson (1999) emphasizes that content is often understood better by more students if it is repeated using different teaching strategies each time. Research conducted on the more than 100 learning style inventories that have been developed has been inconclusive and inconsistent in identifying which single instructional method or learning style inventory works best for all students (Cassidy, 2004; DeYoung, 2003).
With that said, Cassidy (2004) describes 23 different instruments that have been developed to assess various theories related to learning styles to provide faculty with the ability to make comparisons and better decisions about which instruments to use and when. A brief description of the most common instruments used in nursing education follows.
Specific Learning Style Instruments
Learning style instruments can be administered at any time during the student’s matriculation in the program. Faculty can then use the information gleaned from the tool to assist individual students with remediation, tutoring, and counseling sessions.
By taking a learning style instrument, students become aware of their own learning preferences, capitalize and incorporate this preference into their study strategies, and can work on developing additional strategies to facilitate their ability to learn in other ways.
The following examples of instruments can be used to assess students’ learning styles. Additional information can be obtained from The Policy Center on the First Year College Web site: http://www.brevard.edu/fyc/resources/Learningstyles.htm.
The Kolb Learning Style Inventory (1976) uses a 12-item sentence completion format that can be completed in approximately 15 to 20 minutes (Richardson, 2005). It is based on Kolb’s (1976) view of learning as consisting of a four-stage cycle in which the learner moves from concrete experience (feeling), to reflective observation (watching), to abstract conceptualization (thinking), to active experimentation ( doing).
Concrete experiences (CE) versus abstract conceptualization (AC) and active experimentation (AE) versus reflective observation (RO) comprise the two pairs of polar opposites in this model. The combination formed from the learner’s preference for one aspect in each of the two pairs constitutes the learning style. The four learning styles that exist in this model are:
1. Accommodative style: refers to the preference for CE and AE. Learners are characterized as being good at completing tasks; prefer doing things; seek opportunities and risks; solve problems using trial and error; and rely on others for information.
2. Assimilative style: refers to the preference for AC and RO. Learners prefer reasoning; creating theoretical models; and working with ideas and concepts rather than with people.
3. Divergent style: refers to the preference for CE and RO. Learners prefer organizing ideas into meaningful form; are imaginative and sensitive; are good at generating ideas and implications; and are people-oriented and emotional.
4. Convergent style: refers to the preference for AC and AE. Learners prefer problem solving to interacting with others; prefer single solutions to problems; prefer to work on technical tasks; and prefer practical application of ideas (Davis, 1993; Forrest, 2004; Kolb, 1976; Richardson, 2005).
The Dunn, Dunn, and Price Productivity Environmental Preference Survey (PEPS) (Dunn, Dunn, & Price, 1996) is a self-administered survey of 100 Likert-type statements that measure the following four categories:
1. Environmental: This category measures such factors as preference for environmental noise level, temperature, level of light, and formal verses informal setting. 06Moyer(F) Ch-06 5/28/07 2:11 PM Page 98
2. Sociological: This category measures preference for studying alone or in a group, availability of a collegial or authoritative teacher, or a variety of either preference.
3. Physical: This category consists of a visual subscale (preference for reading to learn); an auditory subscale (preference for listening to learn); or a kinesthetic (tactile preference for practicing demonstrations or procedures). In addition, other preferences, such as time of day to study, frequency of breaks versus no breaks, or eating and drinking, and mobility are assessed.
4. Emotional: This category measures aspects such as responsibility, persistence, motivation, and need for structure/detail to complete assignments. The PEPS instrument elicits self-diagnostic responses and takes 25 minutes to complete.
The VARK Questionnaire provides students with a quick online version to assess how they prefer to receive and process information: visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic. There is no charge for this inventory. The strength of this questionnaire is that it provides a basis for students to reflect and discuss their preferences about learning practices including how to take notes and study for examinations (Fleming & Mills, 1992).
To access the inventory, go to www.varklearn.com/english/page.asp?pquestionnaire. Learners vary in their preferences with regard to their use of different sensory learning modalities. Faculty members need to be sensitive to the variety of influences that affect learning and should strive to facilitate the students’ awareness of their preferences. By identifying students’ learning styles and suggesting study strategies based on their personal preferences, it may be possible to enhance student learning.
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