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Differentiated Instruction

Parents and other laymen sometimes walk into a Readington classroom and are startled by what they see and hear. Instead of the neat rows of desks and hushed voices they remember from their own experience in public schools, they encounter groups of students in various clusters of activities, desks bunched up every which way, and children seemingly off in every direction, using all of the air in their considerable lungs. Is this the pandemonium it appears to be?

It is different from what many are accustomed to seeing in a classroom, but it isn’t pandemonium. Since the very beginnings of the American educational system teachers have struggled to accommodate the various levels of ability, plus differences in learning style and development, in their classrooms. In the one-room schoolhouses of old, children would be of widely mixed ages in one classroom; a teen sitting next to an eight year old. Even in current times, though, children of the same physical age in an elementary classroom can exhibit levels of development and learning style that would make one wonder if they do indeed belong in the same grade.

The solutions to this issue have been wide-ranging. Teachers in one-room schoolhouses would often have older students teach the younger students the lessons they already absorbed. Schools in the seventies and even right on up to today practiced forms of “tracking”, where children were separated into groups according to ability or according to what educators thought they would be able to accomplish as adults. Another more egalitarian and developmentally appropriate response has been to make adjustments for individual students within the existing educational structure. In the late eighties, for example, teachers could be found creating “resource centers” within their classrooms that allowed them to better address the needs of individual children by customizing their experience without labeling them as “low”, “middle” or “high.” Unfortunately, this approach would sometimes veer off toward just that when the utmost care was not taken to administer the program.

In the late nineties, this approach became more defined and better understood. It became known as differentiated instruction. Carol Ann Tomlinson, a professor of educational leadership, foundations and policy at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, is one of the strongest proponents of this approach and she has done much to define it. In a 2004 Education World interview, Carol Ann described it this way:

“On some level, differentiation is just a teacher acknowledging that kids learn in different ways, and responding by doing something about that through curriculum and instruction. A more dictionary-like definition is ‘adapting content, process, and product in response to student readiness, interest, and/or learning profile.’”

A differentiated classroom does not attempt to individualize curriculum for all 25 children in the room, but, rather, finds on any given day perhaps three or four clusters of learners who can use the same route toward an educational goal. The key to a differentiated classroom is flexibility, so that children themselves can be involved in how they work individually toward an educational goal common to the whole class. This helps preclude the old problem of remedial work for the “low” kids, fluff for the “high” kids, and attention given primarily to the “middle” kids.

Carol Ann writes:

“Teachers can differentiate at least four classroom elements based on student readiness, interest, or learning profile: (1) content--what the student needs to learn or how the student will get access to the information; (2) process--activities in which the student engages in order to make sense of or master the content; (3) products--culminating projects that ask the student to rehearse, apply, and extend what he or she has learned in a unit; and (4) learning environment--the way the classroom works and feels."

In the area of content, an elementary teacher might provide materials at different levels of difficulty or use audio books. Small classroom reading or discussion groups might be formed spontaneously in order to capitalize on individual needs or strengths. In the area of process, tiered activities allow children to reach the same goal but with different levels of support. Activity centers or individual student agendas, plus a flexible schedule allow students to find their own way toward the common goal. In the area of products, encouraging students to define their own assignment or projects, while still requiring standard elements, gives students the choice on how they express what they have learned. In the area of learning environment, setting aside areas for quiet study and collaborative group study, defining daily routines that allow children to progress on their own without the teacher hovering over them, and generally allowing room for individual styles are the basis for further differentiation.

These examples just scratch the surface of a differentiated classroom, but already the layman can better understand that what appears at first to be chaos in the classroom they visit is actually an example of children who are engaged in learning that is tuned to a large degree to their own style and ability. The children are visiting different centers, working in different groups, and concentrating on different personal agendas—but they are all aiming toward the same educational goal. The beauty of the differentiated classroom is also in the fact that this tuned learning is all going on in one classroom. No longer are the “high” and the “low” shipped off down the hall to a “special” class. Now all the children have the benefit of the same flexible environment, their social development will ensue on equal footing, and there are no self-fulfilling prophesies of children pre-ordained for the college track or the industrial-arts track.

It sounds wonderful, but what is the downside? Very simply, differentiated instruction is a hell of a lot harder to pull off than the “jug and mug” style of teaching where teachers are the jugs pouring out facts and students are mugs being filled with facts. Of course, as many have pointed out, very often things that are more worthwhile are also more difficult to do. Clearly it is one thing for teachers to understand differentiated instruction and quite another thing for them to translate the theory into daily classroom structure. In comparison to other forms of instruction, differentiation requires extensive planning that is front-loaded. Teachers must know well in advance the goals and the potential pathways to those goals for each instructional day. Assessment must be continual and habitual—there can be no waiting for a standardized test once a year. Principals, the administration and parents must all understand the kind of support and training that teachers need in order to be successful. Additional planning time, refined rubrics, and diverse materials are all needed. Proponents of differentiated instruction suggest that districts move in defined baby-steps toward full implementation for these very reasons. Teachers will reach a level of comfort at different rates, just like their students. Staff development, mentoring and continuing training are necessary for differentiation to be successful district wide.

While differentiated instruction has existed in Readington for some years, we could certainly be doing a better job of supporting the idea district wide. As a start, when parents and laymen are startled by the differences in the classrooms of our children from the classrooms of our own youth, we can take a step back and examine the seeming pandemonium now better informed. Are the students engaged and busy? Is there a certain rhythm to the classroom? Are some students working in groups and others alone? Are some working at centers and others at their desks? Are the materials they are using diverse and stimulating? With a little attention can you establish that the students are all aiming toward the same goal? Then relax, because the children in this classroom are benefiting from differentiated instruction that will greatly increase their chances of personal growth.

In a 1999 article published in School Administrator, Carol Ann Tomlinson noted:

“Differentiated instruction is not a strategy. It is a total way of thinking about learners, teaching and learning. It is, in essence, growth toward professional expertise. There is probably no such thing as an expert teacher who is insensitive to individual need and ineffective in adapting instruction in response to learner need. To develop a growing number of effectively differentiated classrooms is to foster development of a cadre of expert teachers.

If that is the goal of a district, planning for differentiation is forever. It cannot be the focus of a year--or even of five or 10 years. It must be a central, predominant and lasting goal.”

Readington has exhibited various levels of differentiated instruction throughout the district, but now is a good time for us all to come to a better understanding of the practice and to better support our teachers and administrators in implementing the practice.

For further study:

http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-2/elementary.html

http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/chat/chat107.shtml