Today’s world has become more and more diverse, and classrooms are a clear reflection of this reality. Despite the fact that school systems worldwide have responded to student heterogeneity by establishing, for example, tracking or streaming (Dupriez, Dumay, & Vause, 2008), teachers still report that the heterogeneity of the student population is substantial and continuously increasing (Dixon, Yssel, McConnell, & Hardin, 2014). Heterogeneity is not limited to performance, but encompasses cultural background, language competence, learning styles, and motivation (Valiandes, 2015). Teachers’ ability to effectively instruct “heterogeneous classes of pupils from diverse social and cultural backgrounds and with a wide range of abilities and needs” (European Trade Union Committee for Education, 2008, p.20) is considered as key pedagogical skill enclosed under the core competences stated by the European Commission (Caena, 2011), and thus, a challenge for educational systems across country boundaries.
In order to address students’ various needs, teachers are required to differentiate their instruction. Differentiated instruction (DI) has historically been an issue throughout the last decades (Klafki & Stöcker, 1976). DI is conceptualized as a toolbox of instructional practices which teachers can appropriately cater to students’ prerequisites and ensure successful learning inside the heterogeneous classroom (Pozas & Schneider, under review). Despite the extensive literature available on DI (Schumm & Vaughn, 1991; Smit & Humpert, 2012; Tomlinson, 2014; Wischer & Trautmann, 2012), existing DI frameworks tend to describe single exemplary DI practices, widely lack an empirical approach, and thus, provide little help to classroom teachers. In addition, none of these theoretical frameworks are appropriate for answering teachers’ practical questions regarding the concrete options they have at hand for differentiating instruction. In order to facilitate teachers’ instructional decisions, Pozas and Schneider (under review) propose a taxonomy of DI practices attempting to bridge the gap between educational theory and everyday instructional practice.
The taxonomy organizes DI practices into six categories:
(I) Tiered assignments: qualitative and/or quantitative variation of materials and tasks according to challenge level, complexity, outcome, process, product, and/or resources.
(II) Intentional composition of student working groups: establishing decidedly homogeneous or heterogeneous subgroups based on performance, readiness, interests, etc.
(III) Tutoring systems within the learning group: high ability students take up the role of teacher assistants and tutor low ability students. These roles may persist for a long term.
(IV) Staggered nonverbal learning aids as a scaffolding practice: carefully and purposely designed series of learning aids that range in complexity level. The learning aids must only contain the minimal information necessary for a student to overcome an obstacle. If they still are unable to deal with the task, a second aid with additional information and guidance is provided.
(V) Mastery learning: all instructional practices which ensure that all students achieve at least minimum standards (in combination with higher standards for the more advanced students). This involves close monitoring of students´ learning progress.
(VI) Open education / granting autonomy to students: Students are responsible for their own learning process and may autonomously decide on materials to work upon. Examples of such practices include: student choice of tasks, station work, project-based learning, portfolios, etc.
Following this taxonomy, our paper reports two studies using a qualitative and quantitative approach to answer the research questions:
- Which practices are applied as a mean for teachers to differentiate their instruction, how often do they apply such practices, and what intentions do they pursue?
- Does the use of DI practices vary across school tracks?
By exploring teachers’ use of DI practices from both a qualitative and quantitative approach, we aim to gain deeper insight into teachers’ preparation and actual in-class behavior, as well as, providing empirical evidence.
