In this hierarchy, the relationship between the preparation of a lesson period, a lesson, the enactment of a lesson, and the lesson evaluation is essential for differentiating instruction during a lesson. 0000004386 00000 n Furthermore, in order to determine the deliberateness of the choices, teachers could be interviewed and a subject-matter expert could judge whether these choices are accurate given the achievement, progress, and instructional needs of the students. Capturing the complexity of differentiat .... : Teaching quality from a conceptual and a methodological perspective, Differentiation as part of teaching quality, https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2018.1539013, https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/14812458/bosker.pdf, https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/binaries/rijksoverheid/documenten/rapporten/2015/04/15/de-staat-van-het-onderwijs-onderwijsverslag-2013-2014/de-staat-van-het-onderwijs-onderwijsverslag-2013-2014.pdf, https://www.ou.nl/Docs/ICO/Oratie_Van_Merrienboer.pdf, Flexible grouping is used (e.g., heterogeneous, homogeneous, cross-age, between-class, within-class), Varied student groupings: individuals, pairs, small groups, How difficult is: using different materials for struggling learners. Depending on the goal of the assessment, feedback based on the insights from these different sources and assessors can be shared with the teacher. Such insight is required to measure differentiation as an aspect of teaching quality. By analyzing expert performance, we were able to capture the complexity of this task in practice, enabling us to design curricula and develop assessment instruments that truly relate to this practice. (2018) even stated that adapting instruction is “a cornerstone of effective instruction” (p. 206) and “considered the gold standard teachers should strive for” (p. 206). Differentiation skill hierarchy. During the expert meetings, it was verified whether the interpretation of the data by the researchers was in line with the interpretations by the teachers and/or subject-matter experts. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. Grades. The outcomes of the CTA can be used to design such a training or inform curriculum adjustments. To identify the factors influencing the complexity of differentiation, the list of complexity factors developed during the first expert meeting was used as the starting point. We know that the assessment of professional competencies is very complex as a competency comprises the complex integration of knowledge, skills, and attitudes (Baartman, Bastiaens, Kirschner, & Van der Vleuten, 2006). These instruments cannot be used to assess the actual quality of the applied differentiation strategies. Example items per category within “adapting instruction” scales. A CTA leads to an integrative, coherent description of the prerequisites for performing professional tasks adequately (Van Merriënboer, 2010). Knowledge about the subject (mathematics, in our study) was regarded as important during all phases of differentiation: for setting proper goals, for connecting to students’ prior knowledge, and for identifying students’ zones of proximal development (ZPD) and adjusting instruction to fit this ZPD. Figure 1. 3–5, 6–8, 9–12. Teachers generally prepare a lesson period of 6 to 12 weeks. As is for the majority of primary school teachers in The Netherlands, these expert teachers taught mathematics based on instructional plans in which they describe the instructional approach they planned to follow for several ability groups (Inspectie van het Onderwijs, 2010). Our empirical study is guided by the following research questions: (1) Which constituent skills are required for differentiated instruction? This information was extended with the systematic approaches as described by the teachers during the expert meeting. Systematic approaches and (especially implicit) strategies that teachers apply when they differentiate were gathered by means of an activity in which teachers used post-its to first describe and later sequence their actions during a lesson. Three of these play a role prior to instruction: mastering the curriculum, identifying instructional needs, and setting challenging goals. Professional development and the redesign of teacher training curricula therefore seems desirable. (Hess, 1999). For assessing the quality of differentiation, a comprehensive set of assessment instruments can be developed that account for the complexity factors based on the skill hierarchy and the performance objectives. What differentiated instruction means. In order to make these deliberate and accurate choices, two types of knowledge are considered essential: knowledge about the students and subject-matter knowledge. No matter how you slice it, differentiated instruction is going to add to that workload, at least in the beginning. The second goal of the expert meeting was to identify teachers’ activities and decision-making processes during a differentiated mathematics lesson. This is in line with the work of Parsons et al. The CTA focused on the actions and reasoning of teachers exposed to real-life classroom situations requiring instructional differentiation. Parsons et al. Furthermore, the performance indicators showed that effective differentiation is not only complex due to the interrelatedness of these chronological phases, but also because the core of differentiation is in deliberate and accurate choices. Based on the insights of this CTA, professional development trajectories can be designed and a comprehensive assessment instrument can be developed, enabling researchers and practitioners to train, assess, and monitor teaching quality with respect to providing differentiated instruction. The classroom observations were used as a basis for the interviews and were therefore not analyzed. Table 3. To acquire a comprehensive conceptualization of differentiation, each teacher was asked a number of more general questions about the classroom composition, the course of events during the lesson in general, lesson preparation, how differences between students were addressed during the lesson, the evaluation of student work, and the complexity of differentiation. (2008) have been conducted in the present study. Differentiated instruction: theses database, expanded education academic of differentiated instruction. The goal of this meeting was twofold. Although numerous CTAs have been conducted in a variety of contexts within different domains (Clark, Feldon, Van Merriënboer, Yates, & Early, 2008), a CTA of teacher behavior in primary education, as far as we know, is novel. However, items assessing this match explicitly are lacking. Differentiated Instruction is an effective way for educators to provide learning opportunities to their students regardless of their diverse needs. Assessing differentiation adequately will therefore require information from multiple sources, as well as much time and effort from skillful assessor(s). The first goal of this meeting was to make an inventory of differentiation complexity factors. After this trajectory, a comprehensive analysis was conducted, leading to the results presented in this paper. Theory suggests the practice of inclusion is congruent with social justice, but evidence suggests mixed results regarding academic … First, nine primary school teachers, considered to be differentiation experts, were identified through a network of school inspectors, educational consultants, school boards, and teacher training institutes. The transcribed conversations with subject-matter experts were read and coded by the three researchers. The procedure illustrated in this study can serve as an example for other studies on various complex teacher skills and in various contexts. This compromise is needed since an assessment such as the one described here would be unfeasible in terms of the required effort and costs. For measuring this performance indicator, it is suggested to let the teacher explain what (s)he was doing and why, and to check school policy documents or consult the math coordinator to check whether instructional content, material, and strategies align with school policy. Data collection and analysis were conducted iteratively in which each stage of data collection was followed by a (short) analysis providing input for the next stage. Criteria for inclusion were that they were teaching in Grades 1 to 6 in regular primary schools (precluding Montessori, Jenaplan, and Dalton schools) in which regular mathematics textbooks were used. The core of differentiation is in teachers’ deliberate and adequate choices concerning instructional approaches and materials, based on well-considered goals and thorough analyses of students’ achievement, progress, and instructional needs, combined with continuous monitoring during the lesson. A more detailed analysis of the distribution of items across these scales and factors showed that adapting instruction proved to be the major focus of the instruments we studied involving 124 out of 294 items. Basic information about students is often represented in an overview that teachers compose at the start of a lesson period. Each of these definitions stresses the adaptation of aspects of instruction to differences between students. With this set of instruments, the various constituent skills of differentiation may be assessed in different ways, and when a teacher appears to master a specific skill at a specific complexity level, this aspect might not need to be assessed again. Ideally, teachers should not use a one-size-fits-all basis but differentiate instruction activities deliberately so that students receive instruction that matches their needs (George, 2005). By means of stimulated recall, a retrospective approach that can be used for clarifying decision-making processes (Vallacher & Wegner, 1987), a semistructured interview was conducted after each classroom observation. This model proposes a rethinking of the structure, management and content of the classroom, inviting participants within the learning context to become engaged in the process, to the benefit of all. Our analysis of various instruments identified six overarching categories of skills. (2006) stated that “it seems to be impossible to assess a competency using only one assessment method” (p. 154). In Table 1, an overview of these categories and some examples from different instruments are presented. Step 1, collecting preliminary knowledge required for conducting the CTA, encompassed a literature study on differentiation, and focused on inventorying real-life situations and tasks requiring teacher differentiation skills through classroom observation and interviews. Next, the subject-matter experts were consulted with the goal of verifying and expanding the data collected from teachers (Step 4 according to Clark et al., 2008). Moreover, the required constituent knowledge was identified, as well as the factors contributing to the complexity of executing the task. Furthermore, ensuring a safe learning climate or being able to create an orderly classroom atmosphere can be regarded as prerequisites for providing differentiated instruction (e.g., Van de Grift et al., 2011). Finally, the quality of differentiation is highly dependent on the degree to which teachers make deliberate and adequate decisions when attempting to adapt to student needs. The skill hierarchy and required knowledge can be used in the development of a professional development trajectory or the redesign of teacher training curricula. Next to analyzing student work, a teacher gains insight into these kinds of instructional needs by observing students during class and by asking them questions. The findings from the classroom observations, interviews, and the expert meeting with teachers were presented to 10 subject-matter experts during a second expert meeting. Providing differentiated instruction (DI) is considered an important but complex teaching skill which many teachers have not mastered and feel unprepared for. The sixth category consists mainly of general teaching dimensions. Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2017 Differentiated Mathematics Instruction: An Action Research Study Melinda A. Cannon University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Curriculum and Instruction Commons This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. Within each of these stages, several constituent differentiation skills can be distinguished, as depicted in Figure 1. Factors like “teaching a multigrade class” or “many students with behavioral problems in class”, for example, were coded under the overarching complexity factor “group composition”. Foundation of differentiating instruction complexity of differentiated instruction the Graduate school of education at the time of the expert... Areas: strategies for Reading, Thinking, and two researchers intervention, Her... The key to success climate can be made in the subsequent stage of data collection describes differentiated.... Objectives, the interrelatedness of all phases and skills became apparent it is clear there. 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