Among the objectives Chapter 13 seeks to achieve are these:
This chapter should help students examine the arguments regarding the power of social inequalities and inequities to influence unequal educational outcomes in schools today, and discuss to what degree they agree or disagree with the authors that teachers and schools can have a significant influence that resists the impact of social inequalities.
Students should consider Jane Elliot's famous classroom experiment, the Discrimination Day exercise, and discuss what sense can be made of it today.
Students should be able to assess and discuss which central theories of social and educational inequality seem best able to explain the data on social and educational differences described in Chapters 12 and 13.
Another aim is to consider the degree to which the gender-sensitivity concept applies to race sensitivity or ethnicity sensitivity in the effort to respond to the needs of different children. How similar are these ideas to culturally responsive pedagogy?
Students should be able to consider the examples of successful learning by low-income and minority students and discuss whether these examples are applicable to other teaching settings.
Students should be able to analyze different approaches to multicultural or antiracist or culturally responsive pedagogy and discuss which approaches seem most valuable for achieving the national teaching standards.
Finally, students should understand the importance of school organization to teacher success. If teachers want to have maximum impact on student learning, they must better understand how schools must be led and organized for that impact to be optimal.
