During the last decades, a renewed plea for differentiated instruction is heard in international educational research and policy because of the increasing diversity and heterogeneity of the student population. Tomlinson (1999) suggests that a higher degree of differentiated instruction, which isa set of strategies that will support the learning process of children so that each pupil can develop and perform at its best, can meet the manifest diversity in educational demands of students. These strategies cover both variations in the organisation of schooling at school level (external differentiation; e.g. ability grouping) as well as in the pedagogical handling of the learning content at classroom level (internal differentiation; e.g. pacing).

Although the importance of differentiated instruction is almost universally recognized, its implementation in daily classroom practice seems to pass off with difficulty for many (beginning) teachers. Teachers often use a one-size-fits-all approach in their classrooms, disregarding students’ individuality (Tomlinson, 2003). Furthermore, beginning teachers often experience difficulties to bring individualization and differentiation into practice (Holloway, 2000; Humphrey et al., 2006).

As a result, teacher education is blamed for insufficiently preparing teachers for the complex realities of daily teaching practice (Holloway, 2000; Korthagen et al., 2006; Tomlinson, 1999). Therefore, an innovative approach is needed in teacher education, whereby teacher educators must fully realize that “how we teach may speak more loudly than what we teach” (Russell, 1998, p.2). It may also be expected that teacher educators’ teaching practice can be regarded as the paragon of desirable pedagogical behaviour (Putnam & Borko, 2000 in Lunenberg, Korthagen & Swennen, 2007; Tillema & Kremer-Hayon, 2002).

Therefore, an answer to the problem of individualization and differentiation in compulsory education may be found in the principle of ‘congruent teaching’ in teacher education, which is defined as the process of modelling desired educational practice by teacher educators (Loughran, 2006; Loughran & Berry, 2005; Lunenberg et al., 2007; Swennen et al, 2008) and providing meta-commentary on it by explaining the underlying pedagogical choices and linking those choices to and underpin them with relevant theory (Loughran & Russell, 2002; Lunenberg et al., 2007; Swennen et al., 2008; Wood & Geddis, 1999).

These theoretical arguments were selected as a pretext for an ethnographic case study on the realization of differentiated instruction in teacher education, taking into account the principle of congruent teaching. The main aim of this in-depth ethnographic case study was to examine whether, how, and to what extent teacher educator Katherine (fictitious name) is providing differentiated instruction in a ‘congruent’ way. During data collection an answer was aimed for on five research questions:

(1)   What forms of differentiated instruction can be identified in teacher education?

(2)   Is Katherine paying attention to the diversity of student intentionally or rather unconsciously?

(3)   Is meta-commentary simultaneously provided by Katherine when she models differentiated instruction?

(4)   Is Katherine identified as a role model regarding differentiated instruction by student teachers?

(5)   Which – whether or not structural – factors interfere with congruent teaching regarding to differentiation?

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