Nature Vs. Nurture in Education

H1 – Honor student diversity and development

Throughout my experience with both psychology as an undergraduate student and my new experience with education as a graduate student, human development has been a large part of my educational endeavors. Principle H1 addresses this explicitly saying that educators should honor student diversity and development. One of the most prominent debates in both fields is that of Nature vs. Nurture.

Pressely and McCormick (2007) bring up the argument that nature can only be taken advantage of if it is nurtured as well. I feel this is especially true in the education field. As educators we must take what is given to us (our student’s predisposed genetic build up) and foster and teach them various skills to allow them to be even more successful in life.

With this perspective, that nature and nurture are in part, equalities, as an educator this needs to be kept in mind. I cannot dismiss students based on learning disabilities that they had no choice of being gifted with and students that were genetically gifted should not receive the majority of my attention solely because they are more advanced. This dynamic of student abilities and skills will provide me a challenge to accommodate each student and their needs whether it is because they are at an advantage or a disadvantage.

Pressely, M., & McCormick, C. B. (2007). Child and adolescent development for educators. New York, NY: Guilford Press

Incorporating Various Learning Styles

H2 – Honor student access to content material.

The “Multiple Intelligence” concept draws a direct connection to the H2 learning standard “honor student access to content material”. While it may not have much to do with physical resources and access in the form of classroom time, access to content material and learning styles go hand in hand.

Owen Edwards discusses seven different intelligences ranging from Visual-Spatial to musical to linguistic and how each student is able to learn through all of the intelligences but often, one type comes more naturally (2009). From this information, an educator could take a “one size fits all” method of instruction and accept that some students will learn at a faster pace and others might struggle immensely. Similarly, the teacher could plan for a few of the intelligences; maybe those that are more common in their specific classroom and cater to a wider range of students. Allowing children to learn in a way that is most comfortable will produce students with a passion for learning and a built up confidence as they witness their success in school.

The Birmingham Grid for Learning is a valuable tool for both students and educators to explore in order to figure out what their personal learning style is. Teachers may not have time to explore each student’s unique style balance, but providing the survey and grid to students early in the school year will allow for self-reflection by both the students and teacher. As a math educator, I would like to take the time to explore my student’s learning styles and show them my own learning style. This allows students to relate to me and allows me to survey what the best approach to teaching will be for each class. To the left is the Birmingham Grid for Learning with my own learning style results that I would have my students complete.

Incorporating all learning styles in a math classroom will prove to be challenging but highly possible and will benefit each child who will be able to relate and learn the material via their own strengths. Lectures and providing notes for students to see will appease visual-spatial learners, hands on geometry projects will favor kinesthetic learners and having students work together and explore and explain concepts in groups targets those who favor linguistic learning. I found it interesting that as humans, we all learn by incorporating each intelligence and just as Edwards noted in his interview with Howard Gardner, we do favor one or two processes over the others (2009).

Birmingham Grid for Learning – Multiple Intelligences (Secondary). (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2015, from http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm

Edwards, O. (2009). An Interview with Howard Gardner, Father of Multiple Intelligence. Retrieved February 23, 2015, from https://mountainlightschool.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/sis-session-7-reading-gardner.pdf