Parvin Peivandi
Sep 17th, 2014, IB reflection
The difference between understanding and awareness in today’s IB seminar got me reflecting on the classrooms settings that I have been there as a student. As we know, understanding is beyond the awareness and in order to understand some one, one needs to put him/herself in place of others and show empathy, but how much in reality we see this understanding is happening? I think some teachers do not consider the composition of their classes as an important factor in their teaching strategies. They can observe the diverse body of the students and their different needs in order to facilitate their learning. For example by applying the scaffolding techniques or the zone of proximal development they can pair up different abled students with keen students in groups. The students with different needs like ESL students can benefit from this approach and learn the language more easily. More over, more friendship and understanding happens in collaborative works. But as I have seen in most classes, students join those people whom they like most and shape an intercultural group in the classroom. As IB aims to develop intercultural understanding among students, students from different backgrounds should have opportunity to interact with the dominant group in the classroom and learn from them. The majority group also should learn that there are always valuable aspects in other cultures too that they can learn or get awareness of them. This is great that IB has focused on both awareness and understanding in the education.