How to challenge our own attitudes

STEP 4

You can either supply a ready-made problem (see below for an example problem) or invite participants to share real life problems they have already encountered with the other members of their group.

Read an example problem here

An example problem

This problem was written to encourage discussion amongst (future) teachers of primary school children (Hancock et al, 1996).

It could be adapted for use with other members of the education community (teaching assistants, parents, school psychologists…) working with children from different age groups.

Mrs McGregor teaches a class of 7 year olds which contains a number of children whose home language (their mother tongue) is different from the language of the school. Mrs McGregor is really concerned that these children don’t seem to be making the same progress as the native speakers of the school language. Some of them don’t participate in learning activities. The Scottish children in the class are losing patience with these children’s attempts to communicate. Mrs McGregor would really like to help these pupils more and would like to help the class as a whole to be more welcoming. She is discussing with you what she might do.