How to handle Diversity in Teaching?

We are living in a globalized world. Due to the diverse population and origins, in schools, universities and other educational systems, we have to handle differences in levels of abilities, interests, learning and expression styles, motivation and task
commitment as well as in attitudes and values. In order to do this in a proper and sustainable way, our teaching methods should contain the following components

1. Differentiation and enrichment for gaining high quality learning/instruction processes and opportunities;
2. Teaching for thinking: making observations, classification, comparing and contrasting, cause and effect, pattern finding, evaluation etc.;
3. Thinking frameworks: creative thinking, critical thinking, creative problem solving, future problem solving; communication, and collaboration;
4. Teaching thinking skills and empowering two mental processes including: divergent exploratory thinking and convergent integrative thinking;
5. Mentoring, leadership development, and entrepreneurship.

This workshop will also contain information about Diversity, learners‘ profiles, and mental processes. It will shed light on the components mentioned above, on how to include them in teaching diverse populations as well as on how to imply them in daily working environment in the university context.

Goals:
This workshop will enable participants to:
• know the main ideas on how to use differentiation and enrichment in their daily university context;
• challenge students in order to provoke in-depth-thinking;
• use thinking frameworks effectively and efficiently;
• strengthen their competency in handling questions thanks to activities supporting their developing thinking skills;
• learn the basics about mentorship, leadership development, and entrepreneurship.

Workshop Requirements:
If you are interested in joining this workshop, make sure that you

• bring your laptop or a flash key,
• prepare a draft for a presentation (5-7 minutes, in English),
• the presentation deals with one of the issues mentioned above,
• use any type of media that could be integrated to your presentation,
• are ready to answer questions related to your presentation and use the feedback you might get.

Course director: Dr. Sandra Linke
Language: English
Participation fee: 25 EUR
Please register with your name and full address until 3 June.

This workshop is open to all teaching staff of the University of Stuttgart and is eligible for the „Baden-Württemberg Certificate for Teaching and Learning at University Level” with 8 AE (teaching units) in subject field 1

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Simone Loewe.