week 7 rough draft for final project
Running head: the relevance of Sexual identity and orientation 1
the relevance of Sexual identity and orientation 4
The Relevance of Sexual Identity and Orientation
Paula King
Walden University
Diversity in Child/Adolescent Development and Learning
Dr. Virginia Salzer
March 30, 2019
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The issues of diversity in the classrooms are prominent especially in the modern learning setting as the composition of students continues to change and diversify radically (Gruenewald, 2014; Meyer, 2010). This aspect has promoted the inclusion of various demographic groups such as the female students that were previously barred from accessing such services in the traditional societies and systems. Such trends show that gender influences have been crucial in the development of specific perspectives of the educators and the students as well as the effectiveness of the education systems (Francis, 2016). This aspect calls for the educators to develop adequate and research-based techniques that would help the learners to overcome the challenges and value cultural diversity (Deakins, 2009).
The topic of sexual identity or orientation in the classrooms is crucial for analysis when evaluating the matters of cultural diversity because it would help in analyzing the different experiences of the females and other sexual identities in the male-dominated learning settings (Pincus & Pincus, 2011). It would also reveal the experiences of the male students as they engage and interact with the females in the learning processes. Sexual orientations in modern societies have diversified with the recognition of different groups such as lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender (Gorski, Davis, & Reiter, 2013). Therefore, many scholars perceive the need for educators to recognize the existence of such groups and to acknowledge their implications to the learning processes (Banks, 2012; Kosciw, Palmer, & Kull, 2015; Jones, Smith, Ward, Dixon, Hillier, & Mitchell, 2016). Research-based teaching emphasizes the use of culturally sensitive approaches for instruction to avoid offending some cohorts of the learners or providing unequal learning opportunities because of upholding the traditional instruction models (Flores, 2015). Adequate understanding of the sexual orientation and identity of the students would help the instructors to recognize the most popular and most effective instruction models that would help the learners to grasp the education content and apply it in their daily life scenarios.
References
Banks, J. A. (Ed.). (2012). Encyclopedia of diversity in education. Sage Publications.
Deakins, E. (2009). Helping student’s value cultural diversity through research‐based teaching. Higher Education Research & Development, 28(2), 209-226.
Flores, I. M. (2015). Developing Preservice Teachers' Self-Efficacy through Field-Based Science Teaching Practice with Elementary Students. Research in Higher Education Journal, 27.
Francis, D. A. (2016). Troubling the teaching and learning of gender and sexuality diversity in South African education. Springer.
Gorski, P. C., Davis, S. N., & Reiter, A. (2013). An examination of the (in) visibility of sexual orientation, heterosexism, homophobia, and other LGBTQ concerns in US multicultural teacher education coursework. Journal of LGBT Youth, 10(3), 224-248.
Gruenewald, D. A. (2014). Place-based education: Grounding culturally responsive teaching in geographical diversity. In Place-based education in the global age (pp. 161-178). Routledge.
Jones, T., Smith, E., Ward, R., Dixon, J., Hillier, L., & Mitchell, A. (2016). School experiences of transgender and gender diverse students in Australia. Sex Education, 16(2), 156-171.
Kosciw, J. G., Palmer, N. A., & Kull, R. M. (2015). Reflecting resiliency: Openness about sexual orientation and gender identity and its relationship to well-being and educational outcomes for LGBT students. American Journal of Community Psychology, 55(1-2), 167-178.
Meyer, E. J. (2010). Gender and sexual diversity in schools (Vol. 10). Springer Science & Business Media.