After I finished reading Markwell and Courtney's article, it was time to go through Chapter 8 of the handbook "Science Teaching Reconsidered" (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/5287.html). As Dr. Offerdahl mentioned last tuesday morning, this reading is "an oldie, but a goodie". The chapter condenses in seven pages why it is important to know your students; not only their names but their backgrounds. A fact that I related to our classroom was that the text states: "male students are more likely to be vocal in class". Last tuesday there were four round tables with students at class (I believe one table had only female students), and from each table it was a female student who took the lead of talking about the topics discussed.
I found interesting that the chapter gives hints on how to get to know your students, and by doing so helping them achieve their goals. We need to elucidate why each student is perfoming like they do. If they are performing well at class, there is no problem. But if their performance is poor, we may need to ask why. We need to do everything that is possible for each student to succeed. Maybe the student is extremely tired because s/he just became a parent; maybe the student feels isolated in a different culture, among other possible reasons. The thing that we should not do is to place a tag on the student without knowing her. This is highly detrimental for the learning process.
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