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The most common sentiment among readers of books on differentiated instruction (DI) is that DI is just good teaching. It's whatever conscientious teachers do to increase students' learning over that which otherwise could be achieved by a one-size-fits-all approach. Simultaneously, DI builds learner dexterity and self-advocacy so students can handle anything that is not differentiated for them.
If it's so constructive, why would anyone declare differentiated instruction a corruption of curriculum and instruction, as education author and consultant Mike Schmoker did in his September 29, 2010 Education Week article, "When Pedagogic Fads Trump Priorities"? Schmoker's declaration, combined with University of Virginia professor Daniel Willingham's denouncements of learning styles as unsubstantiated by research and hurtful to students' learning ,leaves educators in flux: Do we differentiate instruction, assessment, and curriculum, or not?
Although questioning conventional techniques is a hallmark of professional practice and necessary for school vitality, this round of questioning created misinterpretations and misguided responses. More than a year later, confusion lingers, and some teachers have used the suspicions raised by these authors to justify unresponsive teaching practices and to declare students' classroom failures as the fallout from diluted curriculum and over-hyped fads.
Setting the Record Straight
Let's correct these misrepresentations and put educators' minds at ease: Differentiated instruction is highly effective practice. Students learn more with it than without it. To knowingly omit differentiated instruction from our classroom instruction is a willful act of educational malpractice.
Consider the following examples of differentiation instruction and where you would find fault with the teaching:
* Mrs. Hunt provides three examples of a math algorithm successfully applied because her student, Eric, doesn't understand it after just two.
* Mr. Grebing draws upon his knowledge of Kira's background in baseball to construct an analogy that helps her understand the world of geometric planes.
* Uri is encouraged to use one of three other methods to learn his content vocabulary after experiencing frustration using flash cards alone.
* Nicole demonstrates close to 100% mastery of the unit goals on the pre-test, so Mr. Lounsbury truncates the first few days of learning for her and provides a satellite study that allows her to take the topic much deeper than that planned for the rest of the class.
* After a...