ESETEC 5291
Student-lead discussion #4, 7 July 2014
Differentiation
Jamie E. Teeple
Copyright July 2014 - Jamie Teeple
Differentiation by Jamie E. Teeple is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Before Definitions…
• A question:
• Would anyone like to share an anecdote about you or
someone you know being “behind” others in content
and/or being excluded from others in some way when in
school?
• In what grade and subject did you/your peer feel behind
and/or excluded and what eventually happened to
your/their relationship with the material - or even peers
and schooling itself?
• How did/might being (left) behind and/or excluded feel?
A Thought Experiment: “Our Approaches”
• Taking on the role of the educator now, let’s imagine we are all serving
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as 5th grade educators, each responsible for classrooms of
approximately 25 students.
(1) What strategies or approaches would we utilize to prevent our
students from falling behind in our classes?
(2) What strategies or approaches would we utilize to assist our students
who have fallen behind in our classes?
Let’s pair up into groups of two or three to discuss possible approaches
to these quintessential pedagogical concerns.
Please use one of the computers here to record your responses to these
questions, and title your documents with your group members’ names
(i.e., Jack and Jill). When you have finished, please send your document
to me, teeple.16@osu.edu.
We can take approximately 10 minutes in our small groups and then
reconvene to discuss our approaches.
What is “differentiation”?
• According to Zorfass and Wasson (2007), differentiation,
or when practiced, “differentiated instruction (DI)”, is “…
the planning and delivery of classroom instruction that
considers the varied levels of readiness, learning needs,
and interests of each student” (Zorfass & Wasson, 2007,
slide 5).
How might DI be achieved?
• The authors continue, “Teachers can do this most
effectively by using a range of technology tools to engage
learners at varying levels of readiness in multiple ways
and by offering students options for demonstrating their
understanding and mastery of the material” (Zorfass &
Wasson, 2007, slide 5).
Two Ways to Differentiate
• Zorfass and Wasson (2007) identify two
overarching ways to differentiate:
• Teacher-Dependent Ways
• By Content
• By Process
• By Products
• Student-Dependent Ways
• By Interests
• By Profile
• By Readiness
“Key Practices” for DI
• Zorfass and Wasson (2007):
• “Embrace student differences
• Use assessment data to guide instruction
• Use choice to engage and motivate
• Offer flexible groupings
• Expect a variety of products to demonstrate learning” (slide 9).
Edutopia Video on DI
• Link: www.edutopia.org/stw-differentiated-instruction-
learning-styles-video
Thoughts on the Video
• What did you think about the Forest Lake Elementary’s NASA
Explorer School’s use of DI (Edutopia.org, 2010)? Any criticisms?
• How was “formative assessment” used in this experiment with DI?
(Edutopia.org, 2010).
• Do you think this program satisfied Zorfass and Wasson’s (2007)
“Key Practices” for DI?
• “Embrace student differences
• Use assessment data to guide instruction
• Use choice to engage and motivate
• Offer flexible groupings
• Expect a variety of products to demonstrate learning” (slide 9).
A Consideration for Student Difference
• The Metropolitan Center for Urban Education, NYU
(Steinhardt) (2008):
• On “… a culturally responsive pedagogy”… (Metropolitan
Center for Urban Education, 2008, p. 4)
• “The principles of differentiated instruction lend itself to the
culturally responsive pedagogical approach because it
creates opportunity for a myriad of investigations into one
lesson or topic at the same time. With differentiated
instruction, students of color can explore a topic through a
teaching approach that best meets their learning style, while
examining the values, beliefs, and ideas that shape their
experiences” (p. 4).
“Universal Design” and Ties to DI?
• The “Universal Design (UD)” of products and services suggests a
thorough consideration of the recipients’ holistic needs - i.e.,
automatic doors for a building (Burgstahler, 2004).
• “Universal Design of Instruction (UDI)” relates to UD in the sense
that the former utilizes the latter in assuring that curricula are
appropriate and conducive to the learning of all students, or
amenable to the diverse needs of every individual - i.e., an
instructor considers the ordering of larger print texts if upon review
of the class roster they notice the matriculation of a student within
the blind community (Burgstahler, 2004).
• A question: Is UD/UDI commensurate with DI? In what ways?
Evaluating “Our Approaches”
• Or, to what extent were our approaches commensurate
with DI and UDI?
• To what extent were they not?
• To what extent might they be altered to better fit with DI
and UDI?
Concluding Thoughts
• Did you notice any problems associated with
implementing or maintaining differentiated instruction or
universal design of instruction in the classroom?
• What are our concluding assessments of DI and UDI?
References
• Burgstahler, S. (2004). Universal design of instruction. University
of Washington. Retrieved from
http://www.washington/edu/doit/Faculty/Strategies/Universal/
• Edutopia.org (2010). Use formative assessment to differentiate
instruction. Retrieved from www.edutopia.org/stw-differentiatedinstruction-learning-styles-video
• Metropolitan Center for Urban Education. (2008). Culturally
responsive differentiated instructional strategies. NYU Steinhardt.
• Zorfass, J. & Wasson, J. (2007). Differentiated instruction using
technology. Center for Implementing Technology in Education.
Let’s Be Creative…
• Let us now imagine that we are serving as undergraduate-level instructors for
a class on “Introductory Researching Methods” and have approximately 25
students.
• You discover at the outset of the course using a diagnostic assessment (a
survey, for example) that you have five groups of students (five students in
each group) that reflect five differing levels of “research prowess”:
• Group 1 has no to little knowledge of database use and citing
• Group 2 has some knowledge of database use and citing
• Group 3 has good knowledge of database use and citing
• Group 4 has very good knowledge of database use and citing
• Group 5 has excellent knowledge of database use and citing
• Recalling what we have discussed today, how might you apply DI and/or UDI
when developing the curricula for this diversely skilled group? Let’s divvy up
these five groups individually and take 5 minutes to brainstorm some
approaches…