One of the biggest challenges facing educators is managing multiple forms of diversity in the classroom. How do we even assess diversity? Brookfield mentioned The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Inventory, but I find this test problematic and it is not something I would feel comfortable asking my students to do. There are so many other social, cultural, and cognitive factors that create diversity amongst learners, that go way beyond the parameter of “personality”.

Brookfield also mentioned Kolb’s (1984) cycle of experiential learning, which sounded more relevant to educational settings, so I decided to look it up.

McLeod (2017) delineates the two parts of Kolb’s theory using a variety of helpful diagrams. The first is the Experiential Learning Cycle, a fairly straightforward model of how learning works, which tracks well with my own experience:

Image: www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html

The second part of Kolb’s model is the four Learning Styles, which are based on the above cycle: diverging, assimilating, converging, and accommodating. The bottom line is that “educators should ensure that activities are designed and carried out in ways that offer each learner the change to engage in the manner that suits them best” (McLeod 2017). By cycling through different approaches, assignments, activities, and ways of presenting material, we have the greatest chance of hitting every learner’s strong and weak points more equally.

It makes sense to employ a range of learning modalities, as suggested by Kolb’s model above. To this end, I found some of Brookfield’s suggestions in this chapter useful. Some techniques I am already using:

Team Teaching

I agree that team teaching can be helpful for exposing learners to instructors with different backgrounds and styles, and I make use of regular guest instructors in my courses for this reason.

Mixing Student Groups

When I put students in breakout rooms on Zoom, I try to mix up the pairings so that students are working with different people and aren’t always with their friends. These are great opportunities for students to connect with people they don’t normally interact with outside of class.

A new technique that I will try:

Incorporating Silence

I loved Brookfield’s suggestion of incorporating periods of silence into discussion-based activities! Instead of letting the usual voices jump in immediately after asking a question, I will give 30-60 seconds of silence for students to write down their responses first.