We’ve all sat in THAT class. You know, the one where the professor lectured ad nauseum (or for three very long, dry hours, but who’s counting?) over the content they required you to read before class. The one where the students who “got it” rolled their eyes when those who did not asked (seemingly) endless questions. That class where, although the professor expected active engagement during their lecture, they never paused to ask a single question. The class where you frequently found yourself caught in the perpetual battle between struggling to pay attention and staring at the clock silently willing the Force to imbue you with Jedi powers so your mind could move the hand forward, making the last 15 minutes fly by in mere seconds.

I am willing to bet we’ve all been there, experiencing the frustration, and yet, I am equally willing to bet that the majority of us, standing in front of our first classroom, relied on that same comfortably uncomfortable pattern more than once. And, for that, I want to apologize to my earliest students.

Although I made my lectures story-like and engaging (I’m Southern and prone to exaggeration, after all), asked them deep and thought-provoking questions, ensured they worked in groups, and provided them with engaging activities and primary sources to study history beyond the textbook, they were my stories, my questions, my choices, and my expectations. And, for all that I, having grown up in a gifted program, knew differentiation was important, I aimed for but mostly missed the fully student-centered target.

I could make excuses, supported by the literature, that differentiation is time consuming, requires a steep learning curve, and the district in which I worked offered no related development (Weselby, 2014). The problem with excuses is that we go into teaching, putting countless hours into bettering our craft, hoping to offer our students the best possible opportunity to succeed. So, when their optimal success requires differentiation wherein we design and deliver instruction to best reach each student, these excuses lack validity (Tomlinson, 2001).

Differentiation is the delivery of content in a way that is both comfortable and challenging to students (Smith & Throne, 2009). It involves encouraging students to actively engage with and process the information they are learning in a variety of ways, including deep discussion, research, writing, inquiry, etc. (Smith & Throne, 2009; Tomlinson, 2001; Weselby, 2014). Students then take the content they have processed and demonstrate their mastery through the creation or completion of a product geared towards the upper levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Smith & Throne, 2009; Tomlinson, 2001; Weselby, 2014). Differentiated instruction also requires a learning environment that physically and psychologically supports students in these processes (Smith & Throne, 2009; Tomlinson, 2001; Weselby, 2014).

Differentiated instruction moves teachers into the role of facilitator and asks students to actively engage in inquiry and the creation of their own knowledge. It is proactive, organic, qualitative, and rooted in assessment, requiring teachers to observe students’ progress and modify content accordingly (Tomlinson, 2001). It requires students to develop both critical understanding, gaining the “skills and strategies necessary to analyze and understand perspectives [and] question the content of a subject itself,” and metacognition, “undergoing a personal initiation…into their perception on the realities of life [creating] an ongoing impression of who they are and how they fit into their world” (Bennett, 2015, p. 75).

 

Citations:

Bennett, M. (2015). The convergence into an ideal thought: Critical thinking and metacognition. Childhood Education, 92(1), 75-76. DOI: 10.1080/00094056.2016.1134249

Smith, G. & Throne, S. (2009). Differentiating instruction with technology in middle school classrooms. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology Education.

Tomlinson, C. (2001). How to differentiate instruction in mixed-ability classrooms (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Weselby, C. (2014). What is differentiated instruction? Examples of how to differentiate instruction in the classroom. Concordia University Teaching Strategies. Blog posted to http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/teaching-strategies/examples-of-differentiated-instruction/

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