The Skillful Teacher

particular learning activities weakening (though sometimes the
opposite happens). They also come to know their peers better, a
process that can reduce or increase student-student hostility. Only
by conducting some form of continuous classroom research such as
the CIQ will you be able to know how diversity is manifesting itself
and how successful are your efforts to address it.
Teaching in Diverse Classrooms
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EACHER
In the rest of this chapter, I outline a number of responses teach-
ers can make when they encounter the kinds of diversity outlined
above. Before exploring them, however, it is important to state that
any comments I make must exhibit a necessarily restricted level of
generality. Local, contextual factors always distort any global ped-
agogic strategies, and that is never truer than when teaching to
address difference. So the following analysis only comprises a series
of possible starting points for responding to all forms of diversity.
How they might play themselves out depends very much on your
own reading of your own students and classroom environments.