EDU 692 w5 D1

Teachers are professionals who must
make many decisions throughout their day! Some decisions are immediate, spur of
the moment choices like disciplining students or revising a lesson that is not
working. Others decisions are more calculated, like developing a semester-long
project designed to incorporate community resources into a problem-solving
scenario. All the small decisions teachers make throughout their day likely
support the two most important, larger overarching decisions that are made at
the beginning of a learning experience and are based in part on many
macrocultural and microcultural factors:

• What is truly important for students to learn? 
• What is the best way to arrange experiences within the
  learning environment to maximize the probability that all students will
  learn what is intended for them to learn?

Chapter 1 of the course text
provides a number of different definitions for the term “culture.” Wardle
(2013) makes a distinction between cultural factors at the national level
(macroculture) and cultural factors unique to a specific sub-population of
people in local communities (microculture).  This discussion provides you
with additional practice identifying cultural influences on specific decisions
teachers make to develop the most effective learning experiences possible,
which further prepares you for the Week Six Final Project. You will use one of
the schools or programs identified in last week’s assignment (website or
web-based presentation) that you and your peers developed as the subject of the
first discussion. Recall that these schools showcase examples of innovative
educational experiences designed to promote 21st-century skills while promoting
culturally relevant pedagogy.

Initial Response: This discussion requires you to select one of the
schools/programs you researched and included in your Week Four Assignment. Once
selected, you need to conduct a brief analysis of the decisions that needed to
be made in the design and implementation of the school or program you selected.
To help guide this analysis, ensure that the following questions are addressed:

• What decisions, in general, did the program
  developer(s) and/or other professional(s) need to make in order to plan
  the school or program?
• What macroscopic cultural influence likely supported
  the development and implementation of the program?
• What microscopic cultural influence likely supported
  the development and implementation of the program?

Be sure to
provide a link to the school or program you are analyzing so that other
students can have easy access as they review your work.