The idea that all students learn at different paces and in different ways is not new, but finding ways to address this diversity in the classroom can be a challenge.
Effective differentiation, or “adaptive teaching” is a key factor in ensuring that all students are able to make progress in their education, regardless of their individual learning styles and pace.
But what exactly does good practice in this area look like? Following these four recommendations, drawn from research and classrooms, might help.
1. Minimise differences
Ofsted’s review of the research underpinning its framework highlights the importance of avoiding differentiation methods that involve “artificially” creating distinct tasks for some pupils, as this risks lowering expectations.
When children with special educational needs or lower prior attainment are given simpler or fewer tasks to complete, those pupils will be covering less curriculum content. In practice, this often means it is the students who are most at risk of falling behind who are being given the fewest opportunities to learn.
To avoid lowering expectations, try to use models and exposition that all learners will be able to access rather than creating distinct tasks for different groups of pupils.
Ofsted states that teachers providing a “good” quality of education “respond and adapt their teaching as necessary without unnecessarily elaborate or individualised approaches”.
Flexible grouping is a powerful tool for effective differentiation. This involves using data to inform your thinking about how to group students in the most advantageous way for teaching the specific curriculum content.
Differentiation in this context is about adding scaffolds and providing the necessary support within these groups for each student to succeed. That might mean the use of manipulatives, representations or adult support.
But what about those children who still don’t seem to be reaching the learning outcome despite your planning of groups and use of support?
Mila Muzard-Clark teaches Reception at Ark Conway. She says that her team makes sure to “plan in a lot of checks for understanding throughout the lesson”.
“So I’ll plan in my scaffolding for children who need it, maybe from me or from an extra adult, and then we’ll do some votes midway through the lesson,” she explains.
These checks, she adds, give her the opportunity to revisit her flexible grouping and support arrangements.
“If I feel that’s shown there’s a misconception or they’re not reaching where I’d like them to be, I can create another small group, I can work additional support into my free flow in the afternoon or I can make a note who might need interventions in future.”
3. Keep expectations high
All students need to have the opportunity to explore and apply the key concepts of the subject being studied and achieve success.
Research shows that teacher expectations play a critical role in student achievement. In one study, educational psychologist Jere Brophy asked teachers to predict student attainment after a month of working with a class of pupils.
When the pupils were tested at the end of the year, it turned out that the teachers’ predictions were pretty accurate. The pupils met the expectations set by the teacher - regardless of whether those expectations were set randomly, predicted little improvement or were set below the starting point of the year.
So when thinking about differentiation, it’s important to remember that having high expectations and communicating them to pupils really does matter.
4. Avoid labels
Finally, it’s important to approach differentiation without the constraints of labels or preconceived notions about what students are capable of.
Labelling pupils is another practice that can lead to low expectations and limited opportunities for learning. As John Hattie suggests in his book, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximising Impact on Learning, teachers need to “know the kids and let go of the labels”.
In practice, this means focusing on the strengths and needs of each individual student rather than their assigned label - just because a child is autistic doesn’t mean they will have the same needs as another autistic child you teach.
Support should be tailored not to a generic “condition” but to the specific strengths and needs you have identified.
Effective differentiation is essential to ensure that all students have the opportunity to learn and succeed. This can be done using minimal, flexible, ambitious and label-free approaches.
The evidence is clear: pupils’ different needs can often best be met through teachers applying the same tasks, curriculum and expectations for all.
Helen Drury is director of curriculum programmes at Ark Curriculum Plus
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