Differentiation- the what and how according to Geoff Petty

A few decades ago the world of education was very excited by the forerunner of differentiation which was called ‘mixed ability
teaching’.  Then people began to realise it was not just ability that could be “mixed’’ and that teachers had to cope with a plethora of differences: learning style, age, motivation, prior learning
and experience, gender, specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, and so on.  Consequently the term ‘mixedability’ began to be replaced by the less vivid term: ‘differentiation’.  But what does differentiation mean exactly?

Differentiation is an approach to teaching that attempts to ensure that all students learn well, despite their many differences. Catch phrases which go some way to capturing this concept include:

‘Coping with differences’.
Learning for all’ or

‘Success for all’.

There are a number of common misconceptions about differentiation. Some believe that it is something ‘added on’ to normal teaching and that it just requires a few discrete extra activities in the lesson. In fact, differentiation permeates everything a good teacher does and it is often impossible to ‘point’ to a discrete event that achieves it.  It is not what is done often, but the way it
is done that achieves differentiation. For this reason differentiation may not show up on a lesson plan or in the Scheme of Work.  However some teachers try to show their intentions to differentiate by setting objectives in the following format:

 All
must….

Some
may…

A few might…

This may help novice teachers to think about the diversity of their learners, but having such objectives does not guarantee differentiation.  It is the
strategies, not the objectives that achieve differentiation, and this should be the focus of our interests.

Differentiation is not new, good teachers have always done it.  However, it does chime with a new conception of the teacher’s role.  Once we teachers taught courses, subjects and
classes.  But no more.  Now we are teaching individuals. 

Once education was a sieve.  The weaker students were ‘sieved out’ and they left the classroom for the world of work, while the able students were retained for the next level.  ‘Drop outs’
were planned for, and seen not just as inevitable but as desirable.  Put bluntly, the aim was to discover those who could not cope, and get rid of them.

But now education is a ladder, and we expect every learner to climb as fast and as high as they are able. ‘Drop outs’ are seen as a wasted opportunity, for the learners, and for society as a whole.

Underpinning these conceptions of education as being a sieve or a ladder, are assumptions about the capability of learners and the nature of learning. Once learners were thought to have a genetic disposition for learning, or not, which was measured by their ‘IQ’. This placed an upper limit on their possible achievement.  Some students were thought to reach their
‘ceiling’ after which further teaching would be in vain.