The classroom as a microsociety

🏫 The classroom symbolically represents a microsociety in which children and adolescents forge experiences, learning, life events, character, and ways to face adversities. Each student processes this information in different ways, making the teaching exercise fundamental to equalizing opportunities and making learning more accessible.

During each school day, as students arrive in their classrooms, it is good to understand that each one comes with a unique backpack of strengths, opportunities for improvement, and ways of processing the world. In this scenario, the role of the teacher is absolutely fundamental to building a truly inclusive environment, where each child or adolescent has the opportunity not only to learn but to flourish and make the most of their innate potential. It is here where the WHO's definition of mental health, adapted to a school stage, makes sense:

Definition of mental health according to WHO

According to WHO, mental health is defined as:

"A state of well-being in which the individual is aware of their abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to their community."

Recommendations for teachers

Below, we provide some recommendations that may be useful for teachers to better understand and benefit when dealing with neurodiversity in the classrooms, thus favoring their pedagogical and well-being processes.

Often, neuropsychological reports reach the hands of the teacher and can generate uncertainty, fears, or doubts. However, it is vital to see them for what they are: valuable tools for understanding the specific neurocognitive profile of a student. It is not a document to label or stigmatize. On the contrary, a good report offers us a window of understanding about how that student’s brain works.

✍️ In other words, it provides information about what their strengths are and where the opportunities for improvement may lie. Some neurocognitive processes that are evaluated in a neuropsychology study include:

  • attention
  • memory
  • executive functions
  • visuospatial processing
  • intelligence
  • verbal fluency
  • phonological fluency
  • access to lexicon
  • naming speed
  • inhibition
  • perceptual reasoning
  • among other processes.

The above allows for informed pedagogical practice, enabling the teacher to design strategies, adapt materials, and adjust expectations in a realistic and personalized manner. It is shifting from “What is wrong with this student?” to truly understanding and comprehending 👉🏼 “How does this student learn and how can I better support them?”

Best pedagogical practices in the Panamanian context

In the Panamanian context, the Ministry of Panama's Procedural Manual already cites the concept of “best pedagogical practices”, which is defined as “actions by the teacher to respond to diversity in the classrooms”.

It is here where neuroscience offers us a path full of opportunities, allowing us to understand that all brains process information differently. For this reason, offering diverse sensory routes for students to demonstrate their skills and knowledge is a valuable tool for providing appropriate educational supports. Some practical examples that a teacher might consider:

Use of compensatory supports

In neuropsychology, the use of compensatory supports is well documented and offers the opportunity for students to compensate for skills through the use of organizers, checklists, visual agendas, and schedules that provide structure, anticipation, and prediction, which are predictive and essential elements for good learning.

Technology as a bridge to embrace inclusive education

👨🏻‍💻 Technology provides us with powerful tools to support diversity in the classroom. For example, Speechify is a tool that allows for quick text-to-speech conversion. It even allows for the transformation of PDF documents, Word documents, and other types of formats. This resource can be ideal for:

Another type of resource to implement in the classrooms could be Podcasts. For example, it can be planned through Google Drive that students develop an activity that meets the following requirements:

  • ✅ Create a Podcast and upload it to the cloud.
  • ✅ Share the Podcast among classmates. This can help each peer learn and reinforce knowledge with the material created by their peer.
  • ✅ Provide an opportunity to use metacognitive strategies, relating what was learned in the classmates' Podcast to personal experiences or future expectations. This allows the student to visualize the real utility of what they have learned, increasing the likelihood of acquiring meaningful learning for life.

Conclusion

🙏 Teaching involves an active commitment to inclusion. Awareness-raising spaces are key.

Building an inclusive classroom is a continuous process and an active commitment from educational centers and their internal policies for continuous improvement. It requires teachers not only to have the will but also the formative support that helps them acquire tools to facilitate their support for diversity in the classrooms. Educational neuropsychology provides us with a framework to understand neurological diversity, while pedagogical flexibility and the strategic use of technology give us the means to act on that diversity of brains found in the classrooms.

Remember that the Comprehensive Center for Educational Neuropsychology is an ally to support training processes, awareness-raising, accompaniment, and the development of competencies in schools, educational institutions, and school personnel interested in improving their competencies and skills related to educational inclusion. For quotes or requests for professional training spaces, remember that you can write to us or call +507 6535 6362, and we will be happy to respond to your needs.