ns or interests in mind.
- Students should make choices related to learning that include experiences, values, needs, and strengths.
- Students can voice their opinions in the class (Wlodkowski & Ginsberg, 1999).
Classroom Activities for Positive Attitude
- Clear learning goals
- Problem-solving goals
- Experimental learning
- Fair and clear criteria for evaluation, such as good feedback
- Learning contracts or activities which promote students’ interests and experiences
Enhancing meaning refers to challenging and engaging learning. This condition expands and strengthens learning in a way that matters to students and builds their identities as valued civic participants (Ginsberg, 2015). The broader purpose of this concept is that the teacher should provide challenging learning experiences involving higher-order thinking skills. She should also address relevant, real-world or current issues in an action-oriented manner in the classroom.
Strategies for Applying Enhancing Meaning in the Classroom
- Active participation in the challenging ways.
- Questions that go beyond facts and encourage different points of view.
- Teacher builds on what students know.
- Teacher respectfully encourages high-quality responses or higher order thinking skills.
- Teacher should encourage or incorporate student dialect into classroom dialogue (Wlodkowski & Ginsberg, 2005)
Classroom Activities for Enhancing Meaning
- Projects based on critical thinking and critical questioning techniques
- Assignments based on experimental inquiry techniques
- Case-study methods
Engendering competence refers to principles and practices that help students to be effective at what they value, authentically identifying what they know and can do, and linking them to a hopeful future (Ginsberg, 2005). The teacher can connect assessment process to students’ world, frames of reference and what they value, and by doing so, she can beautifully connect the students to a better future.
Strategies for Applying Engendering Competence in the Classroom
- Clear criteria for student success
- Grading policies fair to all
- Performance and demonstrations with real world connections
- Encourage self- assessment (Wlodkowski & Ginsberg, 2005)
Classroom Activities for Engendering Competence
- Authentic assessment
- Portfolios and process-folios
- Tests and testing
A work sample of feedback/peer-feedback in one of the author’s writing class has been videoed and can be found here.
Thus, after exploring culturally responsive teaching in her classes through the four components of a motivational framework, the author realized that it is one of the best tools for motivating students. The different teaching strategies from the four components can be applied beautifully in all ESL levels: listening, speaking, reading, and writing classes.
After using a motivational framework in her classes, the author highly recommend it to other ESL educators to utilize it in their classrooms. To prove this theory in practice the author has added some interesting class assignments from her own classes in the appendix which she has created based on the four aspects of a motivational framework: inclusion, attitude, meaning, and competence.
Fenner, A. (2008). Cultural Awareness in the Foreign Language Classroom. In Cenoz, J. and Hornberger, N. (E.Ds.). Encyclopedia of language and Education. Vol. 6, pp. 273-285.
Ginsberg. B Margery (2005).Cultural Diversity, Motivation, and Differentiation, THEORY INTO PRACTICE, 44(3), pp. 218-225
Kourova, Alla and Modianos, Doan (2013). Inter-cultural Awareness and its Role in Enriching Students’ Communicative Competence. The International HETL Review, Special Issue 2013, pp. 60-70
Wlodkowski & Ginsberg (1995). A Framework for Culturally Responsive Teaching, EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP, September, pp. 17- 21
Wlodkowski J. Raymond (1999) Part One: Motivation and Diversity: A Framework for Teaching, NEW DIRECTIONS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING, no. 78, Summer 1999