Differentiated instruction inspires love in some educators and loathing in others. In a recent editorial for Education Week, educational consultant James Delisle came down firmly on the loathing side. He said that “differentiation in practice is harder to implement in a heterogeneous classroom than it is to juggle with one arm tied behind your back.”
Let’s set passions aside for a moment and address two important questions. Does differentiation work for students? And is there any way that teachers can implement it while maintaining their sanity?
Image via Flickr by Lexie Flickinger
One-Size-Fits-All Education is Falling Short
The typical teacher has 30 students with abilities that span multiple grade levels. Can we expect them all to be appropriately challenged by the same textbook?
In his editorial, Delisle argues that schools would do better to place students in homogeneous classrooms based on ability.
Eileen Murphy Buckley, is a proponent of differentiated instruction. She agrees with Delisle that homogeneous groups benefit high-achieving students, but points out that struggling students often fare worse when separated from peers. Indeed, a University of Chicago study has shown that when algebra students are grouped by ability, high-level students soar, while low-level students sink further. In fact, putting students into the same class and giving the same assignments can be boring for the higher level students, and utterly bewildering to lower-level students. Buckley suggests that we imagine we are a struggling student seated beside a gifted student. A teacher tells all of us to read a passage and then asks a question about it. The high-achieving student is likely to finish reading first and raise a hand.
“They raise their hand, and they reiterate everything that I, low-level reader, thought I gleaned,” Buckley says. “And pointed out things that I’d never heard of, used words that I’d never been exposed to, and understand it way better than me. Well, I’m not going to raise my hand now.”
When students at vastly different levels are given the same material, teachers spend a large portion of their time trying to reach struggling students. In a survey by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 86 percent of teachers said that students deserve an equal amount of one-on-one attention from the teacher regardless of ability. Yet, 60 percent of teachers said that academically struggling students were the top priority at their school. Only 23 percent of teachers said that academically advanced students were a priority.
Those numbers suggest that most teachers recognize the need for differentiated instruction. Implementation is the problem. This is a reality echoed in Delisle’s Education Week article, in which he cites a 2011 Education Next article that says very few teachers were using differentiated instruction even after they received professional development and coaching. And yet the article goes on to describe a school that has successfully implemented differentiated instruction and has seen students at all levels excel. So, differentiated instruction can work, but its success might depend on taking a whole-school approach.
Differentiated Instruction Needs to be Engaging — for Teachers and Students
If customized learning is so important, why not send students off to learn on their own private platforms? Because the social aspect of school is important.
“There’s a reason that we come to physically the same place, and that is for social and collaborative learning,” Buckley says. “Otherwise, we could just say, ‘OK, everyone’s getting the same curriculum, and we’re going to pipe it into your house by TV or computer.’”
Students benefit from the social aspect of school when they are all engaged in discussion and questioning. Buckley asks that we think about the best teacher we’ve ever had.
“The thing about the teacher that made them great, more often than not, was their ability to engage everybody in the room,” Buckley says.
In the past, Buckley says, differentiated instruction has often been done based on Lexile level, which hasn’t proven to be the most effective method. Students were given the same text written at different levels, so advanced readers might have the original text while low-level readers had a version with shorter words. This was even done with Shakespeare. And, clearly, a lot is lost when Shakespeare is rewritten.
This approach gets in the way of that crucial element of engagement, Buckley says, because it’s hard for teachers to muster enthusiasm about a re-written version of their favorite text.
“They actually probably like the subject that they teach and are really motivated by getting kids to like that subject,” Buckley says.
A successful curriculum needs to harness that enthusiasm, Buckley says, but also needs to place a reasonable level of demand on teachers teachers, given their full presentation day, grading papers, searching for texts, and aligning to standards.
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