Why "Keeping Differences in Mind"?

Welcome to "Keeping Differences in Mind."  This blog was created to explore the connections between education, inclusion, and neuroscience.   At the center of this exploration is the reality of the profound differences between the students in our classes.  I will try to examine those differences in light of current neuroscience and in terms of the implications they have for inclusive educational practice.

The truth is, in the education field we can easily get caught up in subject content and techniques and forget to take student differences fully into account.  Because of my studies in inclusive education and neuroscience, as well as my years of working as a classroom support teacher, I see myself as bearing a particular responsibility to help my colleagues to keep student differences in mind.  Many of the posts that I will share here will have that focus.  I know that I need those constant reminders myself.  The day to day pressures of teaching can lead us to do what we have always done and keep us from looking at alternatives.  I would be most satisfied if these posts could provide that reminder for others as well as myself.

The initial motivation for this blog was more personal, however.  At the time of starting this blog, I had just completed 2 years of a 3 year Masters in Education program with a focus on Inclusive Education and Neuroscience.  The courses drew from a variety of different perspectives and raised a number of interesting questions.  In the rush of completing that coursework, there wasn't always adequate time to reflect on those questions and integrate the insights from those perspectives into my daily practice.  I wanted another crack at them; another chance to process and reflect on them.  I know that if I don't, the inertia of doing "what I've always done" will tend to drag me back into the ruts I have followed for so long.  I know that I can do better and that we as a teaching profession can do better in the ways we talk about and respond to student differences.

I know too that many of the topics I discuss here will show up in my my final capstone paper for my MEd.  In that respect, these posts are sort of a dry run; a rehearsal of how I might string some of the ideas together.  I am under no illusions that they are fully formed articles, fit for publication in peer-reviewed journals.  Your input, dear reader, would be most valuable in refining those ideas and helping me to ground them in the reality of actual teaching practice.

Finally, there is another way of looking at the title "Keeping Differences in Mind" which I hope will become clear through my posts.  It is a more literal reading of the title.  You might think of "differences in mind"  as referring to differences in cognitive processes or "ways of thinking," and "keeping" as "maintaining" or "preserving."  Too often, in education, we have looked at cognitive differences through the lens of disability, rather than difference.  We have looked at them as things to be fixed or overcome, rather than as things to be valued.   This is a whole topic unto itself, and I will undoubtedly blog more about it, but I need to state upfront that I will be approaching the issue of student difference with a bias towards valuing diversity rather than overcoming it.  I have an intuition that this can be done while continuing to encourage change and growth within individuals.  I do understand that the working out of this balance in real life situations and individual circumstances can be most challenging.  Through these posts, however, I hope to show that it is possible and even desirable to do so.