This week, I did a reading on a critical review of the flipped classroom for our discussion forum, and it got me thinking: How can we use this model of teaching to support diverse learners in the classroom?
The flipped classroom can accommodate and provide flexibility to the learning process. Just like how assessment can allow diverse students to demonstrate their learnings and understandings in a multitude of ways, the flipped classroom is a 21st century, student-centered learning model that provides these opportunities.
The flipped classroom encourages active learning approaches. Students engage with pre-studied lesson content using higher-order intellectual skills such as; analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluation. By doing this, low-level or surface learning can occur outside of the classroom, leaving high-level deeper learning to be achieved inside the classroom (Johnston & Karafotias, 2016). The advantages to this type of learning is that students can work at their own pace at home. They can pause, review, and digest learning material using diverse learning styles that are unique to them. In the classroom, students will learn from their peers, explore learning content through a deeper, critical lens, and discover problem solving strategies.
It is the teacher’s responsibility to observe how well students are gauging with the material by their in-class participation and level of critical thinking. Teachers can then use this information to design assessments that are constructed around Universal Design for Learning and Differentiated Instruction practices.
UDL Thinking Cycle
Differentiated Instruction Strategies
This all leads to a deeper understanding of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Bloom et al.1956). The original Taxonomy consisted of six major categories: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation (Bloom et al.1956). Today, the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy looks like this (Armstrong, 2010):
References
Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved August 3, 2022 from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/.
Differentiated instruction: Examples & classroom strategies: Resilient educator. ResilientEducator.com. (2021, April 29). Retrieved August 3, 2022, from https://resilienteducator.com/classroom-resources/examples-of-differentiated-instruction/
Johnston, N., & Karafotias, T. (2016). Flipping the classroom to meet the diverse learning needs of Library and Information Studies (LIS) students. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science Online, 57(3), 223–238. https://doi.org/10.12783/issn.2328-2967/57/3/1
Ministry of Education, N. Z. (2016, November 30). Universal Design for Learning. Inclusive Education. Retrieved August 4, 2022, from https://inclusive.tki.org.nz/guides/universal-design-for-learning/
Toronto, April 2022
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