Nowadays it is broadly accepted that not attending to students’ different characteristics, difficulties and needs will jeopardize one main mission of the school, which is to promote students’ individual and collective development within the community (Prud'homme et al., 2011). Thus, inclusion has been urging the schools to respond to students’ diversity by presenting appropriate learning paths for each one of them (Ainscow, 2020; Pozo-Armentia et al., 2020). Differentiated instruction (DI) is an approach to teaching that emerges as an adequate response to students’ diversity (e.g., Tomlinson, 2014), as it seeks to create opportunities for every student to access a high-quality curriculum, and to actively participate and succeed with learning (Pozo-Armentia et al., 2020). In this sense, at the classroom level, DI is a good response to an inclusive education (UNESCO, 2004). 

However, despite the positive results that DI has on students’ participation and learning (e.g., Konstantinou-Katzi et al., 2013; Pablico et al., 2017; Yavuz, 2020), teachers do not implement it as often (e.g., Pozas et al., 2020; Smale-Jacobse et al., 2019). Several reasons have been pointed out for this situation, namely teachers’ insufficient knowledge about DI and the lack of resources and support by the school administration (Lavania & Nor, 2020). Teachers’ mindsets have also been identified as barriers to the development of DI (e.g., Brighton, 2003; Coubergs et al., 2017; Gheyssens et al., 2020; Roose et al., 2019). Teachers’ mindsets are assumptions, expectations, and beliefs that guide their behaviour and their interactions with others; in particular, these mindsets involve implicit ways of understanding students’ characteristics and teaching-learning processes that result in routine responses to daily classroom situations (Sousa & Tomlinson, 2018). In the particular case of DI, some studies have revealed that certain implicit ways of understanding students’ diversity are associated with difficulties in differentiating instruction and, therefore, in responding to the diversity of students’ needs and characteristics (e.g., Dixon et al., 2014; Jager, 2013). Similarly, teachers who hold constructivist beliefs regarding teaching and learning tend to differentiate instruction more often (Pozas et al., 2020). In addition, teachers with growth mindsets about students learning and development more easily accept DI and adjust their instruction to students’ different interests, readiness level and learning profiles, as opposed to teachers who hold fixed mindsets (Gheyssens et al., 2020). 

Notably, studies mostly explore teachers’ assumptions, expectations, and beliefs regarding their students and teaching-learning processes; however, it is also important to understand how teachers’ mindsets regarding DI itself are associated with how they implement it and the difficulties they perceive in their implementation. And indeed, some founding principles of DI (as proposed by Tomlinson, 2014, 2017) require teachers to develop new understandings of their routine practices (Tomlinson et al., 2003). For instance, curriculum planning involves creating a sequence of lessons or learning experiences designed to ensure that students achieve essential learning goals, which emphasizes proactivity and flexibility, a focus on collecting information about students’ characteristics and a clear acknowledgment of learning goals (Sousa & Tomlinson, 2018; Tomlinson & Imbeau, 2010). This understanding of curriculum planning requires a revision of beliefs and assumptions regarding planning (Tomlinson et al., 2003). Therefore, it is important to identify which teachers’ mindsets might constitute barriers to the development of DI and which can be facilitators, as well as to identify conditions that promote changes in teachers’ mindsets. In particular, the goal of this communication is to identify teachers’ mindsets regarding curriculum planning, and to examine its relationship with the nature of teachers’ perceived difficulties regarding DI.

For exploring teachers’ mindset, an in-service sixty hours training program was developed during a whole school year. The program was organized in ten sessions of three hours each and thirty hours of autonomous work. The current study is a multiple case study (Yin, 2018) of six research cases involved in the training program, in a natural context, limited in time, space and organizational aspects (Cohen et al., 2007). Each of the research cases have an intrinsic investigative value (Yin, 2018) that results from the unique meanings that each one derives from his/her singular experiences in the specific context of training and teaching (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). Participants were six research cases purposely selected from the larger group of teachers of the in-service training, in order to ensure maximum variation regarding different schools’ subjects and grades (Etikan et al., 2015). Participants were, on average, 47.8 years old (SD = 8.42), and most of them were female (n = 5). They were teaching different school grades (from pre-school to basic and secondary education) and taught different school subjects. In average they had been teaching for 22 years (SD = 9.55). Data was collected through reflective portfolios (Brown, 2001), written during the program, and fully organized and delivered at the end. Portfolios were analysed by means of an inductive method (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). Initially, the first author read them all and made an initial categorization. Afterwards, the second author used the initial categorization to analyse one of the participant’s portfolio. Through this process, the definition and properties of the initial categories were discussed, and decisions were made regarding definitions, properties and its organization. Using the new categorization, the first author re-read and re-analysed all the portfolios. After a few adjustments, both researchers agreed upon the final categorization. The final categorization is formed by two categories: a) perceptions about curriculum planning, considering what teachers want their students to learn and how can they arrange the teaching-learning process in order to facilitate students’ learning; b) perceived difficulties regarding curriculum planning, which are related to the model of differentiated instruction itself and to teachers’ educational context, and its specific conditions and circumstances. The study was approved by the Ethical Committee of the Instituto de Educação da Universidade de Lisboa. All the participants were aware of the study and gave their informed consent in the first session of the in-service training.

Curriculum planning is a routine practice mentioned by all the teachers. However, they usually plan their lessons in a different way than the requirements of differentiated instruction (DI). Indeed, teachers’ plans typically focus on schemes of delivering content, having in mind the number of pre-established hours for each curricular topic; yet DI requires teachers to plan their lessons having in mind learning goals and, as such, also students’ characteristics and needs. Consistent with the focus on content, teachers tended to plan their lessons without collecting systematic information about their students’ characteristics and needs, leading them to perceive DI itself as a difficult approach to teaching, and to perceive students’ diversity a main barrier to curriculum planning. During the training program, teachers had the chance to develop a new understanding regarding curriculum planning and DI. Despite the difficulties, when they implemented their plans and afterwards reflected on their lessons, they realized that proactively planning their lessons considering their students’ characteristics in the end made their teaching more efficacious. Importantly, although perceived difficulties associated with planning and teaching remained, difficulties became understood within their space of action and responsibility. Consistently, students’ diversity was no longer perceived as a barrier to planning or teaching, but the very heart of it, and curriculum differentiation a necessary option. In conclusion, despite its small dimension this study makes an important contribution showing that involving teachers in curriculum planning for supporting DI makes them aware of students’ diversity, allows them to review their mindsets, and to consistently envisage changing teaching practices. This is particularly important as studies have been showing that teachers’ awareness of diversity is associated with willingness to develop teaching strategies that meet the diverse students (e.g., Acquah et al., 2016), which is an essential step for developing inclusive education (Ainscow, 2020).

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