Book review of Teaching to Diversity: The Three-Block Model of Universal Design for Learning
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Teaching to Diversity: The Three-Block Model of Universal Design for Learning by Jennifer Katz Winnipeg, MB: Portage & Main Press, 2012, 232 pages ISBN: 9781553793533 Jennifer Katz's recent text, Teaching to Diversity: The Three-Block Model of Universal Design for Learning is a much-needed text for pre- and in-service teachers. Although Canada is poised to become a leader in inclusive education, there is still much to be realized on the front lines. This text provides a foundation that both beginning and seasoned teachers can use to create inclusive classroom environments by utilizing a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. Based on prevailing research, Katz has created a three-block model as a framework for enacting inclusive education. The first block is to establish a compassionate learning community. As she sees it, we have a responsibility to teach personal, moral, and ethical responsibilities within diverse communities (p. 43). The section on creating a Respect for Diversity classroom is extremely useful with nine lesson plans to sequentially develop a community that acknowledges diversity and understands the importance of including the contributions of all members. The lesson plans are easy to follow, adaptable to multiple grade levels, and would provide an excellent foundation for the beginning of every school year. To further aid in establishing a welcoming and workable classroom climate, Katz outlines 7 Principles of Democratic Classrooms, explaining how to arrange class meetings and walking the reader through the exact procedures that she, herself, has tried and tested. Using the familiar t-chart looks like/sounds like, she outlines how to develop partnering and small-group work skills among students, noting that most children do not automatically come to school knowing how to be good listeners, coaches, and problem solvers. Chapter 4 is extremely valuable for any new teacher who struggles to incorporate a myriad of prescribed learning outcomes into meaningful plans and lessons. Katz guides the reader through the process of integrating subject areas so that students grapple with the big idea concepts (essential understandings), advocating to start at the end (p. 65) when planning a unit of study. The chapter includes an example of how to create rubrics that span several grade levels, using the previous grade learning outcomes to establish a baseline for what all students should already know. The rubrics illustrate a continuum of learning, reflecting the philosophy of inclusion, which honours the wide range of abilities within each classroom. She also incorporates different multiple intelligences into the unit so that throughout group, centre, or individual work, each child completes an activity using their dominant intelligence. An interesting aspect of the section on assessment is how she uses multiple intelligences in student reporting, addressing the themes of assessment for learning, as learning, and of learning. She also includes a sample class profile. Throughout the discussion, Katz maintains that the units of study are for all students. Students with significant or even severe disabilities may appear to be unable to join in, or activities may appear inappropriate for them. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".