Changing Practices: A Cross-Cohort Examination of Classroom Demographics and Instructional Practices

• In Event: The Role of Learning Environments in Supporting Underserved and Understudied Populations

Abstract

Educators and researchers have acknowledged that classroom instruction needs to address the growing diversity of learners within classrooms if all students are to receive high-quality instruction and the maximum opportunity to learn (Gamoran & Weinstein, 1998; Tomlinson et al., 2003). Utilizing parallel Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten datasets from 1998 and 2011 we examine how instructional groupings, curricular foci, and instructional activities have shifted in the last decade with particular interest in whether teachers have changed the ways they teach demographically diverse classes. Preliminary findings suggest that teachers do adjust instructional practices according to the racial demographics of students as well as respond to changes in the proportion of English language learners and students with disabilities in the general education classroom.

Authors

• Stephani L. Wrabel, University of Southern California

• Morgan S. Polikoff, University of Southern California