The corona pandemic has brought about potentially fundamental changes in school and teaching – “at a speed that would have been unlikely in a normal situation” (Schratz 2020, n.p.). One of the biggest changes concerns the establishment of digital Learning Management Systems (LMS, cf. Breiter et al. 2021), for example for providing and organizing content, for structuring learning processes or for communicating among students, teachers, parents and other school actors. While studies suggest that LMS have “basically become our school building“ (Frohn & Pozas 2021, p. 95), as teachers have pointed out during COVID-19-related distance learning, it remains largely unknown what kind of changes in learning and teaching have taken place as a result of using LMS in schools.

Assuming that “a standard LMS supports an inclusive learning environment for academic progress“ (Bradley 2021, p. 68), this paper aims at analyzing how teachers use LMS for creating inclusive teaching and learning practices. In particular, we want to focus on the concept of Differentiated Instruction (DI) as a means of approaching student heterogeneity, which is widely assumed to provide fitting learning opportunities for a wide range of learning requirements (Tomlinson 2017). Following a proposal of a DI-taxonomy (Pozas & Schneider 2021), DI-practices include 1) providing tiered assignments, 2) intentionally composing student groups, 3) applying tutoring systems amongst learners, 4) offering nonverbal learning aids, 5) practicing mastery learning, and 6) granting autonomy to students.

When transferring these approaches to what we know about potential benefits from teachers using digital tools (Eickelmann et al. 2019), research results refer to students’ learning gains through working with LMS (Hammerstein et al. 2021) and the potential of LMS for student-oriented learning processes (cf. Schneider et al. 2021), also with regard to DI practices (e.g. Letzel et al. 2020; Schneider et al. 2021). However, which of the presented six categories are supported through the use of LMS and how they are adapted within the individual digital systems by individual teachers remains unclear. Previous research – before and during the pandemic – shows that teachers differ in how they use LMS and other digital environments (cf. Bertelsmann Stiftung 2017; Steel 2009) and to what extent they use digital means in the context of inclusion (cf. Beckermann & Neuman 2021). However, many teachers lack the skills to implement digital forms of learning for heterogeneous learning groups (cf. Eickelmann et al. 2019), while learners also perceive the possibilities offered by LMS differently (Horvat et al. 2015).

In order to shed light on how teachers use LMS for offering differentiated learning activities to heterogeneous learning groups, we follow a mixed-method approach (see below), combining quantitative and qualitative research methods to answer the following research questions:

• How (and how frequently) do teachers differentiate their instruction using LMS?

• Does the implementation of DI practices using LMS vary across school tracks?

• Which advantages or disadvantages do teachers see in using LMS when providing DI?

• Which functions of LMS enable teachers to implement which facets of DI from the DI-taxonomy?

• How can fruitful LMS-practices for differentiating instruction used in distance learning be implemented in hybrid formats of every day teaching and learning?

The research design follows a mixed-method concurrent single-phase design, where both quantitative and qualitative data are to be simultaneously collected. Following such a research design helps to obtain a broad overview on how teachers use LMS to differentiate instruction in Germany while also allowing for insightful details on the individual usages and practices carried out by teachers in Berlin. Quantitative: Data collection is being carried out via an online survey. Participation is voluntary, and thus, will require to be approved by the participants’ consent in order to proceed with the questionnaire. The online survey is being addressed to teachers working in the different school tracks (e.g. general secondary schools, comprehensive advanced secondary schools). The online survey consists of several subscales, such as: Implementation of DI practices through LMS, teacher’s readiness and preparedness to implement DI through LMS (adapted from Letzel et al. 2020), and teacher self-efficacy for using LMS, amongst others. Expected data analyses processes include descriptive statistics as well as mixed analyses of variance. Qualitative: In 2020 and 2021, 16 teachers from 13 schools in Berlin have participated in two qualitative studies on how the pandemic affects educational inequalities (Frohn 2021). In the spring of 2022, the same teachers will be interviewed again, using a semi-structured interview guide created from the international discourse on the use of LMS in inclusive school settings while leaving room for unstructured exploration (Bryman 2015). The sample’s selection is based on the school’s neighborhoods (twelve teachers work in socially deprived settings dependent on funding by the state of Berlin, four in privileged settings as a means of context) as well as their level of expertise. When composing the sample by contacting school principals, we asked for teachers with extraordinary competencies in the field of teaching and learning, for example shown through special positions and tasks among the faculty. Interviews will be conducted through video calls, then anonymized, transcribed and categorized through qualitative data analysis (Strauss 1987) by two individual coders. Using the software MAXQDA, the six categories of the DI-taxonomy serve as a deductive coding system that is to be differentiated through additional inductive categories derived from the material.

The present study is in the early stages, as a result, the data collection is still ongoing. Therefore, the findings, discussion and the implications of the study will all be presented at the conference. Nevertheless, in light of previous research conducted in the last years concerning distance learning, it is hypothesized that teachers report a low implementation of DI practices through the use of LMS (Letzel et al., 2021). In addition, the quantitative data could also indicate a low variance when it comes to the use of specific DI practices (e.g. implementation of tiered assignments). However, with previous research on LMS in mind (Bradley 2021), prestructured systems like moodle allow for a more predefined path in implementing DI practices, leading to the hypothesis that teachers might see a lot of potential in using LMS in inclusive settings. Given the in-depth analyses that the interview data allows for, it is expected not only to obtain information behind teachers planning, design and implementation of DI practices through LMS, but also to understand the challenges and benefits that teachers perceive from LMS in matter of DI. With a deeper understanding of these challenges and benefits, we hope for outlining possible ways to implement DI practices in LMS not only in explicit online-formats, but especially in hybrid formats of every day teaching and learning.

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