A workshop with the title 'Teaching Across and Within Student Differences' will be offered on Friday Dec. 2nd, 2016, by Dr. Melanie Shoffner (Fulbright Scholar; Associate Professor, Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S.).
This workshop is going to take place at Room 108 (New Philosophy Building 1st floor) between 14:30-16:30.
**A certificate of attendance will be provided**
The places available for this workshop are limited. So If you're interested in attending, please forward your emails to:
ellikara@enl.auth.gr.
This event is organized by the School of English Book Club 'Transparent Windows.' For more information about our group please click on the following link: http://www.enl.auth.gr/trans_windows_en.html.
ΕVENT ABSTRACT
Diversity is often seen as a negative element in education, by both students and teachers, with classrooms becoming sites of subtraction rather than addition to students’ lives (Valenzuela, 1999). Rather than viewing difference as a distraction to mitigate or an outlier to assimilate, teachers should view difference as a positive element in the classroom, one that can be built upon to deepen and broaden all students’ learning. To do so, teachers must examine their beliefs about learners, diversity and instruction in order to develop pedagogical approaches that support all students’ learning. This workshop will ask attendees to engage with issues of teacher belief, student diversity, culturally relevant pedagogy and teacher reflection in order to consider how we can teach across and within student differences.
BIO
Dr. Melanie Shoffner is Associate Professor of English Education at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, where she holds a joint appointment in the Departments of English and Curriculum & Instruction. This year, she is a Fulbright Scholar in the Faculty of Letters at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Her research focuses on secondary English teacher preparation, addressing reflective practice, pedagogy and affective issues. Her recent work includes the edited book Exploring Teachers in Fiction and Film: Saviors, Scapegoats and Schoolmarms (Routledge, 2016) and co-edited book Teaching English Language Arts to English Language Learners: Preparing Pre-Service and In-Service Teachers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), as well as articles in The Teacher Educator, Reflective Practice and English Education. Currently, Dr. Shoffner is Past-Chair of the Conference on English Education (CEE) and Co-Editor of Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education (CITE): English.
