A group of students sit on the floor and identify different shapes. Next to them, with the help of a teaching assistant, a second group is sorting those shapes into Venn diagrams based on their characteristics.

On a large table, three more students measure angles and discuss internal shape properties.

The nationalities in this classroom are more varied than the shapes on the table, and the range of home languages is equally diverse. 

Supporting every pupil when there is a large diversity of attainment and need is tough. That’s why international schools have become beacons of differentiation.

The term differentiation may cause you to raise your eyebrows. It’s come under a lot of criticism, with Tes columnist Alex Quigley going as far as to say that differentiation is “dead” and that adaptive teaching - where a teacher responds to a student’s needs rather than “dumbing down” any tasks - has taken its place.

The reality is that adaptive teaching is actually a form of differentiation: rather than differentiating by task, adaptive teaching is about differentiating the same task for different access points. 

Ochan Kusuma-Powell, researcher and co-author of Making the Difference, Differentiation in International Schools, says differentiation in the traditional sense has been left behind: “As a profession, we have evolved in our understanding of differentiated practices beyond differentiating simply for content, product and process, to become increasingly aware and adaptive to student needs.”

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• Pedagogy: Differentiation is dead, long live adaptive teaching
• Education research: How to get adaptive teaching right

Many in international schools also use alternative terms - for example, at Tanglin Trust School in Singapore, senior school deputy head Claire Russell and head of learning support Gillian Sams use the term “responsive teaching” to describe the importance of meeting learners at their current level.

“The education world has come a long way since the days of differentiated worksheets or ‘some/most/all’ learning objectives,” they explain.

“Cognitive psychology has given us a greater understanding that while some students are better at learning than others, there are strategies we can use both inside and outside of the classroom to support students along the same journey, albeit in slightly different ways.”

Jennie Devine, head of primary at Montessori School Almeria in Spain, agrees wholeheartedly, noting that “no class is a monolith” and educators have to understand that they have a responsibility to adapt learning to give each child the best learning outcomes possible.

Differentiation and adaptive teaching

Adaptive teaching, responsive teaching, differentiation… however we articulate it, there seems to be a consensus that the international classroom demands a greater degree of flexibility when it comes to teaching and learning.

Previously, this personalised approach to learning might have been seen purely as a way to give struggling students or those with special educational needs more support. But increasingly it is also recognised as a way to challenge those students who are mastering skills more quickly - not least around language.

“Children who are struggling are more likely to use simple words and basic vocabulary, whereas the ones who have really grasped something can start writing more interesting sentences,” says Devine.

Of course, personalising learning is a good selling point for a school, as well as being positive for the pupil. And as the international market has become more competitive and attracted more diverse pupil cohorts, having staff who can differentiate effectively is no longer just desirable but essential.

So how are international schools rising to this challenge? To gain a sense of exactly what that looks like, Tes spoke with a group of leaders in different settings and countries and with myriad challenges to hear how they approach this area.

Separate learning strands

Being able to accommodate students with a vast array of languages is one of the key reasons why the international school sector continues to grow. However, it means schools have to be adept at working with these pupils and their varying language abilities - as per Devine’s point above.

This can result in a pretty strong version of differentiation. 

Matthew Topliss, executive head at Khalil Gibran School Rabat, in Morocco, explains how at a previous school, differentiation due to language ability began with assessing students before they entered the school.

Those who required further support to access English language would effectively run on a separate timetable, interacting with the main timetable depending on their language ability. 

For some subjects, it would be about adapting the course content. 

“You would water that course down for them,” he explains. “You would expect lots of repetition and you’re probably spending a little bit more time on things.”

For other subjects, they would leave their own timetable and join the main timetable. 

So, for example, depending on the linguistic capabilities of the student, they may be included in classes such as maths and science, where the emphasis on language is less, but for English literature, the route to joining the main curriculum may take a little longer.

The touch points between the main timetable and this supplementary one require constant interaction between staff to assess a learner’s abilities and ensure they are keeping pace with lesson content.

“You’ve got to keep them as close to the curriculum as you can,” Topliss explains, “so there’s got to be a liaison between the learning support teacher and the core subject staff.”

As well as ensuring a good line of communication between staff, it’s also vital to maintain a strong relationship between staff and parents on a pupil’s progress.

After all, as Topliss explains, parents’ academic expectations for a child attending a fee-paying international school may not take into account the initial language barrier, and so explaining that a student may need additional support needs to be handled carefully.

“All of this [differentiated teaching] is done with dignity,” he says. “It’s done with respect, it’s done with the ability to build that child’s confidence. The ability to explain this and build relationships [with parents] is absolutely crucial.

“Because if you’re teaching a child who’s 12 or 13 as though they’ve got the linguistic abilities of a six- or seven-year-old, that has to be handled sensitively.”

Deploying a cognitive toolbox

At Tanglin Trust School, Russell and Sams are teaching students explicit learning strategies, giving them the opportunity to reflect on their own knowledge and differentiate between strategies that work well for them. 

“We know from educational research that there are some common approaches that successful students use, and so our aim is to explicitly teach all of our students what these strategies are,” they say.

This approach, which Russel and Sams call “Learning to Learn”, gives students the power to differentiate themselves, using a toolbox of techniques. This might be through a task within a given subject in which they highlight a specific learning strategy, such as retrieval practice.  

For example, for homework pupils may be encouraged to used different study techniques and then back in class, different retrieval techniques. They would then evaluate which was more successful and in this way build a toolbox that works for them.

Russell and Sams explain that tasks such as these teach students to use a range of strategies independently.  

“At the start of the lesson following a retrieval homework task, students are required to reflect on their learning, identifying what they know, what they don’t know, and whether the retrieval strategy worked for them,” they say.

To further allow for different abilities, some of these exercises can grow in complexity as a student’s knowledge of a given topic grows; such as self-quizzing. 

Tanglin has also used assemblies to introduce other cognitive theories such Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve, and Daniel Willingham’s famous “Memory is the residue of thought” theory. 

“We are building in more regular reflection on these strategies for students through discussion in tutor time, and hope to build on this still further next academic year,” say Russell and Sams. 

Turning to technology

Of course, when it comes to differentiation and personalised learning, there is another tool that teachers can turn to - technology. This is something that Andy Puttock, principal at La Côte International School in Aubonne, Switzerland, says has become especially prevalent in his setting since the pandemic.

“We started to use technology much more powerfully as a way to feed back or share resources with students, which, of course, opened the way for even more personalised and differentiated learning,” he explains.

With over 40 languages used by pupils across the school, he says technology is especially useful when helping pupils overcome language barriers and enabling them to get their ideas across, such as by letting students use iPads for voice-to-text transcription and translation.

“This means that those students are able to explore the great ideas they have without the pressure of writing,” he says.

He says this also helps the teachers assess the level of understanding and insight a student may have on a topic, as they can answer with the full use of their vocabulary, rather than “writing something less ‘interesting’ than they would have tried to without the tool”.

“More and more, we see technology being used to help meet the needs of students on a differentiated and personalised basis”

Furthermore, the iPads are also used to provide students with access to the Seesaw platform that teachers can use to “create differentiated activities for students and allocate them on the platform at the same time”.

Puttock believes this not only means teachers can ensure that students are being set activities of the right intensity or focused on an area where they need to progress, but it also “removes the stigma some students feel when they are clearly given a different worksheet”.

What’s more, teachers can also use iPads to give pupils the chance to respond to a task in a way that takes into account any special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) they may have.

“[The iPad] allows students to record responses in different ways - eg, voice recording, text, drawing. This supports children with challenges such as dyslexia or fine motor skills, as they can still share their understanding without the barrier of writing,” Puttock explains.

This can be especially important to help nurture pupils who have “come from educational backgrounds where those needs were not met so well”, he says, and it is crucial to helping teachers incorporate them into a class while also allowing other pupils to progress at their own pace, too.

As well as this, the school’s SEND team helps teachers in this work by providing “strategies for individual students needs” to help teachers adapt learning plans as required, and there is even a school nurse who also supports students with medical needs in a classroom context.

Given many technologies such as artificial intelligence are also emerging on the scene, Puttock believes it is inevitable that tech will become even more central to differentiation efforts in international schools.

“More and more, in the classroom, we see technology being used to help meet the needs of students on a differentiated and personalised basis - as artificial intelligence develops further, I believe we will see this trend grow,” Puttock says.

However, he is keen to add that technology is only one part of their differentiation work and that “tried and tested methods of differentiation are as important now as they ever were” when it comes to helping students to progress on their own learning journeys.

To this end Puttock explains that “graduated reading and maths schemes to support students in progressing at their own pace” are used regularly and teachers are expected to ensure they work to understand students’ learning levels and how they can be supported.

“When I visit classrooms, I hear teachers talking about every child and where they are in the academic, social and personal [development stages],” he says.

Letting students set their own goals

Letting students set their own exam targets may sound like the extreme end of personalised learning, but it’s exactly what secondary principal Matt Seddon introduced at Bangkok Patana School in Thailand in August 2021.

He explained on the Tes International podcast last year that when he joined the school he felt it was not “being ambitious enough with data-driven student targets” for exam outcomes.

To change this he set about shifting the focus from teachers simply trying to help a student to achieve the grade they are predicted to achieve, to students setting their own targets and the teachers working with them to achieve this.

“Some students will look at [what the data shows] and say, ‘We’ll just go with that,’ and others who may lack confidence or have other issues at play want to set it lower,” explains Seddon.

“Then you get others who might be looking at targets that are perhaps over-ambitious.”

So as an example, he cites a student who would be tracking for a B grade outcome saying they want to set a target of an A*.

“The teacher should have that conversation and say, ‘It’s low probability but if you’re telling me that you’re committed to this and you really want to work on this, then let’s do this,’ and they would sign off on that conversation.”

Once this has been done, the teacher would then work with the student to set appropriate work that is tailored to their chosen learning outcomes - something he calls a “boutique experience” for students and one that requires necessary differentiation.

“Differentiation should be visible and evident in all lessons - through worksheets and homework - but also, where appropriate, personalised pathways through lessons should exist allowing for different activities to be selected,” Seddon says.

“For example, we will have different reading lists in subjects such as English and history that are focused appropriately to support students aiming for different grades, providing appropriate stretch and challenge.”