11 How Do I Differentiate Instruction?
It had taken her years, but Michelle had finally managed to offer students multiple approaches to learning her course’s unit objectives. At first, Michelle had taught all students and topics the same way, using the methods that she trusted the most and with which she was most comfortable. Yet as sound as her instruction was, in every course that she taught Michelle still saw some students struggle. At first, she blamed the students. But gradually, Michelle began to see that if she just changed her instructional approach for those students, they, too, could succeed. Michelle walked a fine line between maintaining a coherent teaching style, while differentiating her instruction for those struggling students. She didn’t want to muddle through units with a confused instructional approach. Still, in time, Michelle found ways to maintain a consistent approach while offering students substantial instructional options, to the point that she was no longer failing multiple students every term.
Differentiation
As a prior chapter introduced, educators generally recognize the value of differentiating instruction for different learners. The good old days of a single approach to instruction are long past. Multiple studies and long experience have taught that students benefit from varied instructional approaches and from selecting the approach most suited to their needs. The above chapter on the several popular teaching theories didn’t mean to indicate that one theory is always better than another. To the contrary, one theory may work well for a certain topic, objective, or student, while another theory works better for another topic, objective, or student. Experiencing multiple instructional methods may give a student a stronger grasp than a single method, while multiple methods can also give a student a choice among methods, lending motivation through the sense of self-directed learning. Recognize the value of differentiating your instruction.
Sensitivity
Also recognize which students or groups of students may benefit from different instructional approaches. Your sensitivity to student needs and preferences can go a long way toward improving student outcomes. When your instruction fails several students every term, the indictment isn’t necessarily on the administrators who admitted unprepared students, the teachers who taught those students poorly in the prior term, or even the students themselves for lacking discipline and motivation. The problem can also have something to do with the insensitivity of your instruction to students’ needs. Observing students closely to discern and meet those different needs is a teacher’s responsibility. Watch for the students who struggle with initial comprehension, don’t know how to prioritize and organize new information, get too easily overloaded and distracted, need more processing time, could benefit from more memory coaching and rehearsal, prefer the stimulation of working collaboratively, or need to take charge of their own learning. Be sensitive to student needs.
Training
Your teaching can also include instruction in learning methods and disciplines, and metacognitive practices. You need not restrict your teaching to the units and topics. Students can benefit from your coaching and training in how students learn. You need not leave to your school’s student services, student advising, or remedial education staff members, that training in how to learn. You, too, can coach and train students how to learn using multiple methods based on different teaching and learning theories. Especially early in a term, you may include in your presentations, daily tips and strategies on how students best learn. You may also offer student practice employing those tips and strategies, around your course topics. Your course can help students learn not only the knowledge, skills, and ethics your course objectives have committed you to teach but also your insights on student best learning practices. The knowledge, skills, and ethics your instruction imparts are important. But the larger goal of your school, program, and course is to foster a lifelong learner. Even while you differentiate your instruction, help students learn to differentiate and strengthen their own learning approaches, methods, and tools.
Implementation
Your challenge thus shouldn’t be in recognizing the value of differentiating your instruction. Your challenge is instead in the implementation of multiple instructional methods. One way to differentiate instruction is to do so across units and topics. You don’t have to teach all units and topics in the same manner. You may instead employ different methods with different units and topics. You might, for instance, lecture on one topic, demonstrate on another, employ Socratic examination on another, work problems on another, and require paired work or group work on yet another unit or topic. You may, for another example, teach traditionally with a reading before class and a lecture with questions in class for one topic, but then flip your classroom for the next topic, having students watch your lecture before class, to come to class prepared for solving problems, performing experiments or analyses, preparing group presentations, or writing group outlines. To differentiate your instruction, you don’t necessarily have to offer multiple approaches on a single topic. When you use different approaches across different topics, you can show your sensitivity to all student needs and preferences, while also showing students that they can learn from multiple methods.
Strategies
You can also differentiate instruction around different student learning strategies. You may, for instance, discern that some students prefer to learn reiteratively, focusing on a single bit of information and repeating it until they have it firmly in mind before moving on to the next item. These students may be the ones who prefer to learn inductively, from the details first fixed firmly in mind, and only then upward through the larger picture and structure to the principles of the topic. Other students may prefer to learn elaboratively, taking the new concept to compare, contrast, test, and apply it, even before they have it fully defined and firmly in mind. These students may be the ones who prefer to learn deductively, from the big picture and principles downward to the details, with which they are much less concerned. Make your own survey of students, but about two thirds of students typically prefer a deductive, big-picture approach, while one third prefer an inductive, details-first approach. To differentiate your instruction to serve both strategies, top down and bottom up, your presentation might briefly give the big picture before focusing on a single detail, and then divide students into two groups of their choosing, to explore either the detail or big picture relationships. Differentiating instruction around learning strategies is possible.
Processes
You may also be able to differentiate instruction around the stages of the student learning process. Learning involves the four steps of concrete observation, reflective comprehension, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation. Students first see or hear stimuli such as the lecture, then think about it to the point of comprehension, then distill it into recallable concepts, and then actively use those concepts to give them utility and relevance. Students vary in their capacity for and predisposition toward each step of the process. Divergent learners tend toward concrete observation and reflective comprehension, while convergent learners tend toward conceptualization and experimentation. Assimilative learners rely on observation and conceptualization, while accommodative learners rely on experience and experimentation. To serve these different learners, your instruction might initially balance all four stages of learning, from lecture to reflection, conceptualization, and experimentation but then offer students a choice of deeper dives on any of those four stages. You may, for instance, record and re-offer your lecture or provide lecture notes with additional details for the concrete and reflective learners, while also offering optional organization and recall exercises, and hypothetical scenarios, for the assimilative and accommodative learners. Differentiating instruction around learning stages is possible.
Preferences
You may also be able to differentiate instruction around student preferences for learning approaches. Some students are collaborative and social learners who prefer peer-centered instruction, such as in small group discussion, paired work, and group projects. Other students are competitive learners who prefer instructor-centered instruction, such as lecture, note taking, and quizzes, tests, and exams. Likewise, dependent learners may benefit from lectures and demonstrations, whereas investigative learners benefit from interacting, questioning, and modeling, and independent learners benefit from facilitation, freedom to act, and feedback. Similarly, some students prefer developmental learning-oriented methods while others prefer instrumental grade-oriented methods. Your instruction can incorporate and balance all these approaches. You may even find opportunities to offer alternative competitive or collaborative, or dependent or independent, approaches on a single unit, either inside the classroom in different groups, or outside the classroom as additional assigned or optional learning activities.
Classroom
Just as you can differentiate your instruction to accommodate different student strategies and to emphasize different stages of their learning process, you may also be able to differentiate your instructional delivery. Not everything must pass through the same, single funnel. You need not hold the attention of all students together at one time, directing them through a single instructional method. Instead, in the classroom, you may be able to offer them multiple instructional streams, each of their own choosing. For instance, after a brief presentation to the whole class, you may be able to divide your classroom up into two, three, or four large groups, each working through your unit objective using a slightly different or grossly different instructional method. One group may work on comprehension, using your worksheets or other guided designs for that purpose. Another group may work on fluid recall, with pairs of students testing one another with flashcards or queries. Another group may work on elaborating and applying the topic through hypothetical scenarios, again using your guided designs. You can monitor all groups while even intervening and leading groups on occasion. Multiple learning stations can serve the same purpose. You can differentiate instruction, even in the classroom.
Outside
You can also differentiate instruction outside the classroom, in either assigned or optional activities. Your school may, for instance, use a learning-management system that gives you an online course platform available to students outside of class. If so, you may be able to design both collaborative resources and competitive resources to post on that platform. Collaborative, learner-centered resources might include discussion boards, chat rooms, group projects, study group support, prompts for students to serve as study mentors, or prompts for collaborative outlines. Competitive, instructor-centered resources might include individual online multiple-choice and true-false questions, problems to work and answer, and digital flashcards, all with automated scoring. You don’t have to create all these resources at once. You may instead accumulate them on your course platform over years of instruction, until you have developed a richly differentiated instructional program. Exercise your full creativity and pursue your full commitment through differentiated instruction. Differentiated instruction is a license to do the best you can for every student.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how differentiated do you feel that your instruction already is? Can you discern ways to further differentiate it? Do you perceive students every term whom you suspect that your instruction is not reaching and serving adequately? Are you referring students to student support services whom you could just as well or better serve with your own differentiated instruction? If you frequently refer students for outside support, what support are they getting that you could provide through your own differentiated instruction? Are you able to recognize differences among your students in their learning strategies, needs, and preferences? Do you coach and train students in learning methods and approaches, along with your subject-matter instruction? How do you implement your differentiated instruction in the classroom? How do you differentiate your instruction by offering outside resources? Does your course’s learning-management system platform include differentiated resources for both collaborative and competitive learners? What is the clearest example of differentiated instruction you could give to someone who asked you if you differentiate your instruction?
Key Points
Differentiating instruction serves students with different needs.
Develop sensitivity for discerning the different needs of students.
Train students in learning strategies while teaching your subject.
Differentiating instruction requires sensitive implementation.
Differentiate instruction to serve different student learning strategies.
Differentiate instruction across the student learning process.
Differentiate instruction to meet student learning preferences.
Differentiate instruction in the classroom using group work.
Differentiate instruction outside the classroom online.
Read Chapter 12.