This thesis is titled “Teachers’ perceptions and practices towards differentiated instruction in an intellectual school in south Kazakhstan”, and it puts forth the importance of using a differentiated teaching approach in the classroom with diverse learners.

Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools were established in 2008 to improve the education system in Kazakhstan, to provide learners with quality education and to develop the intellectual life of the country and are now being used as an experimental platform in putting the new updated curriculum into practice throughout Kazakhstan (SPED 2010-2020, 2010). According to the state program of education development (SPED, 2010), teachers are expected to use differentiated instruction in the classrooms to meet the diverse needs of learners. Most teachers undertook in-service trainings via the support of trainers from CoE (Center of Excellence), but the implementation of differentiated teaching into regular classrooms is still a controversial issue in most of the secondary schools (Diagnostic Report, 2014).

Furthermore, Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools admit students after Grade 6, after a rigorous selection procedure. The students who are admitted to NIS from other mainstream schools do have different levels of academic performance and this poses additional challenges to the teachers who work at these schools. Therefore, a differentiated teaching approach is one of the main approaches the teachers are required to use.

Within the context of this school, the research was conducted to identify how the inclusion is being implemented through the use of differentiated teaching approaches in regular classrooms and what the obstacles and challenges are for teachers in dealing with the issue.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore teachers’ perceptions and practices about differentiated instruction in one of the intellectual schools in south Kazakhstan.

This research aims to identify teachers’ understanding of differentiated instruction. The study also aims to investigate how teachers are using differentiated teaching approaches, and what challenges they are facing and how they are dealing with them in regular classrooms.

Research questions

The following question(s) are addressed in this study:

Main research question:

What are the teachers’ perceptions and practices towards differentiated instruction in an intellectual school in south Kazakhstan?

Subsidiary questions:

What are teachers’ perceptions towards differentiated teaching approaches?

What are teachers’ practices towards differentiated teaching approaches?

Definition of central phenomenon

The terms ‘differentiation’ and ‘differentiated instruction’ are frequently used within this research. A leading expert who did a lot of significant research on this topic, Tomlinson (2014), states that differentiation is not a strategy based on instructions, and there are no straightforward rules of performing it in the classroom. It can be better understood as a creative way of thinking about teaching and learning to respond to the needs of learners. As for Ober (2016) differentiated instruction is an effective method that makes it possible to reach all students, and encourages them to enhance their learning. Bajrami (2013, p. 149) describes differentiation as a very useful and inevitable approach in every day teaching.

In this study the participants got opportunity to be listened to and they may reflect upon their practices of differentiated teaching approaches. While reflecting on their practices, they may have further improved their understanding of differentiated instruction.

Findings from the research may potentially empower parents and children as well. Teachers' improved understanding of differentiated instruction may enable learners to get equal access to learning that meets their educational expectations, and satisfies the needs of parents with the teaching provided.

Findings of this research may also help the school leaders and administration to improve their practices upon learning about differentiated teaching and it may inform them about some measures that should be taken within the school.

To explore secondary school teachers’ beliefs, perceptions and practices, the research design applied in this study is a qualitative case study. For this research, the qualitative approach is more applicable as it enables a re- searcher to obtain the overall picture about the practice of using differentiation through lesson observation and semi-structured interviews. Direct investigation from an observation field provides a researcher with in-depth rich data (Patton, 2005). By attending the lessons and talking to teachers face-to-face the researcher could better detect the problem and its causes (Creswell, 2012). Creswell (2014) also identifies that when there are no variables it would be better to explore than to compare and contrast the numbers. Hancock, Windridge and Ockleford (2009) further extends this by mentioning that qualitative research empowers a researcher to observe and study the behavior of people in real - world settings. I selected one secondary intellectual school in southern Kazakhstan for my research. It is one of the 21 schools of Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS). The reason why I chose this school is that differentiated instruction is promoted at this school. To select participants in this study, I used maximum variation purposeful sampling. I decided to choose eight teachers as participants for individual interviews and five more teachers for focus group discussion taking into consideration their willingness to participate in the study. These teachers were from different subject departments, they had work experiences in the same school of no less than three years, and they had practiced using differentiated instruction in their classrooms. These were the main indicators of choosing participants in order to be able to gain a holistic picture of teachers’ perceptions and practices on differentiated teaching. The focus group discussion (FCD) added to my findings from the individual interviews and extended some responses of the teachers. I was able to compare the answers of the FCD with the main group consisting of eight people and determine the correlations and contrasts. I used observation as the third instrument of my research. I observed the lessons of different subject teachers to define how differentiation was being used throughout various subjects at school. In order to turn the raw material gathered through interviews into meaningful units, I transcribed them and the transcribed text was further used to do coding. Coding made it possible to obtain specific information that provided evidence to the main research question.

The findings of the study demonstrated that the teachers who participated in this study have ideas about what differentiation is, and in most cases they perceive it as the tiered assignments that they offer to different level learners. To differentiate their tasks they start from the easiest ones and slowly move to the more difficult types of tasks. They try to use differentiation to meet the demands of the learners so that they are able to make better progresses in their levels and reinforce their learning. Even though the teachers had work experiences of more than three years, they did not know the types of differentiation for sure, they had an understanding of some indicators and worked according to their own beliefs. Teachers felt that they needed to deepen their understanding of differentiation and tried to expand their knowledge about it, but the scarcity of relevant resources in Russian and Kazakh, and the lack of foreign language skills for reading research-based articles independently did not allow them to learn more and grow professionally. Teachers know some types of differentiated strategies and use them successfully in their classes, but they are not confident that they are using the differentiated instruction appropriately in their practice. Almost all teachers mentioned that they need extra support to use differentiated teaching approaches with confidence to better encourage their students to succeed. Moreover, teachers face some problems which prevent them from using differentiation in their practice. Lack of time, being overburdened with too many other responsibilities such as writing reports, preparing mini-summative and external summative tasks, and organizing extra lessons did not enable teachers to advance their practice of using differentiated activities in their classrooms.

Ary, D., Jacobs, L. C., Sorensen, K. S., & Walker, D. (2014) Introduction to research in education. London: The Routledge. Algozzine, B., & Anderson, K. M. (2007). Tips for teaching: Differentiating instruction to include all students. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 51(3), 49-54. Brighton, C., M. (2002). Straddling the fence: Implementing best practices in an age of accountability. Gifted Child Today, 25(3), 30–33. King-Shaver, B. (2008). Differentiated instruction: The new and not so new. California English, 13(4), 6-8. Lipsky, D. (2005). Are we there yet? Learning Disability Quarterly, 28, 156–158. Logan, B. (2011). Examining differentiated instruction: Teachers respond. Research in Higher Education Journal, 1(3), 1-14. Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2010). State program of education development in the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2011-2020. Retrieved from www.akorda.kz/upload/SPED.doc on 12.09.2018 Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education (2014) Development of Strategic Directions for Education Reforms in Kazakhstan for 2015-2020, Diagnostic report. Astana: Indigo print. Retrieved from https://gse.nu.edu.kz/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Executive-summary-09feb15.pdf Tomlinson, C. A. (2005). Grading and differentiation: Paradox or good practice?.Theory into practice, 44(3), 262-269. Tomlinson, C. A., & Imbeau, M. B. (2012). Common sticking points about differentiation. School Administrator, 69(5), 18-22. Tomlinson, C. A. (2014). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Ascd. Tomlinson, C. A. (2015). Teaching for excellence in academically diverse classrooms. Society, 52(3), 203-209. Tschannen-Moran, M., & Hoy, A. W. (2001). Teacher efficacy: Capturing an elusive construct. Teaching and teacher education, 17(7), 783-805. UNESCO. (2004). Changing teaching practices: Using curriculum differentiation to respond to students’ diversity. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001365/136583e.pdf. VanTassel-Baska, J., Zuo, L., Avery, L. D., & Little, C. A. (2002). A curriculum study of gifted-student learning in the language arts. Gifted Child Quarterly, 46(1), 30-44. VanTassel-Baska, J., & Stambaugh, T. (2005). Challenges and possibilities for serving gifted learners in the regular classroom. Theory into practice, 44(3), 211-217. VanTassel-Baska, J. (2012). Analyzing differentiation in the classroom: Using the COS-R. Gifted Child Today, 35(1), 42-48. Westwood, P. (2003). Commonsense methods for children with special needs: Strategies for the regular classroom (4th ed.). London: Routledge-Falmer. In: Westwood, P., & Arnold, W. (2004). Meeting individual needs with young learners. ELT Journal, 58(4), 375-378. World Bank. 2016. Kazakhstan - Program for International Student Assessment 2015 (English). PISA education brief. Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group. Yakavets, N. (2014). Educational reform in Kazakhstan: The first decade of independence. Educational reform and internationalisation. The case of school reform in Kazakhstan, 1-27.