As early as one-room schoolhouse days, American educators were finding creative ways to shepherd diverse assortments of students through the curriculum. In his now-classic memoir of rural Appalachian education, The Thread that Runs So True , 20th-century educator Jesse Stuart recalled his realization that the real work of young children is play. Stuart reorganized his beginner class, which included a year-old student, around competitive academic games—while older students focused on classic "three Rs" activities.
Stuart divided his one-room school by age. In contrast, modern educators often divide a classroom by student interests, preparation, or strengths, and then create varied learning pathways for each group.
Note that differentiated instruction is not the same as dividing your classroom by ability. It is also not just small-group or team-based learning—although such activities are often part of a classroom applying differentiated instruction.
But where does this leave the college instructor, who is a specialist in their field, yet is not an expert in pedagogical theories? At Harvard University , Dr. Louis Deslauriers, Director of Science Teaching and Learning, discovered that both faculty members and students primarily experienced passive, lecture-based learning environments.
Why don't faculty and students get more active in their classes? And how can university educators translate the advantages of differentiated instruction into postsecondary classrooms? McCarty and Deslauriers decided to evaluate the benefits of differentiated instruction for students by dividing their classes into active and passive learning subgroups.
Learners in the active group claimed that they learned less than learners in the passive group. But when tested, the active learners retained far more information than their passive learner peers.
McCarty and Deslauriers attributed the learning perception gap to feelings associated with the increased cognitive effort required to learn in an active environment. Those feelings led students to believe they were learning less than if a superstar lecturer had simply handed them pre-digested information. This kind of student feedback often convinces lecturers that their passive teaching methods are more effective than they really are. If Harvard's students and teachers are defaulting to passive learning, then students and teachers at your school likely are too.
But colleges and universities are increasingly realizing the benefits of differentiated instruction in the classroom. With the help of modern technology, more universities are readily implementing differentiated instruction techniques. CBU's Dr. Stan Eisen , Professor of Biology and Director of Pre-Health Professional Programs, requires his students to write children's books as the final exam in his parasitology course.
Besides being an engaging project, the children's book is a more down-to-earth method of evaluating student mastery than the traditional exam. According to Dr. Eisen, only students who thoroughly understand parasitology can explain the subject in clear, concrete, and simple terms. The University of Maryland reorganized and updated its classrooms to be more amenable to a differentiated format.
Called TERP classrooms —TERP stands for T each, E ngage, R espond, and P articipate—these refurbished learning spaces make use of round tables, multiple screens, mobile student desks with tablet arms and integrated storage compartments, and multiple writing spaces on the walls.
TERP classrooms demonstrate the advantages of differentiated instruction by enabling a collaborative and flexible learning environment for students of all learning styles and backgrounds. At Assumption College, Dr. James Lang , Professor of English and Director for the Center of Teaching Excellence, is encouraging his faculty to use backward course design when creating new courses.
Lang says to begin with the question, "What do I want my students to have retained from this course 20 years from now? Differentiated instruction provides challenging, meaningful, and engaging activities for learners of all levels.
Writing for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development , Alexa Epitropoulos lists seven distinct advantages of differentiated instruction. Postsecondary students particularly benefit from differentiated instruction because of how diverse they are. Teachers must continually conduct assessments throughout the school year and move students among the groups as they master skills.
Oftentimes teachers tend to group students according to their ability in the beginning of the school year and then never change the makeup of the groups. This is not an effective technique, and this stagnation will only hinder a child from progressing.
Learning centers are stations that contain a variety of materials where students can explore topics or practice skills on their own. With a few adjustments, they can be a great way to differentiate instruction. Teachers can design centers with different levels of complexity or for different subject areas. Learning centers offer teachers the opportunity to present the same information in a variety of different ways that engage all students.
Whenever an educator presents information that engages all modalities, it increases the chances that he or she will reach every student in the class. An independent study is designed for students usually older ones that have mastered content. In order for an independent study to be successful, the teacher needs to be sure the student or students are proficient in the skills that are required to complete the study.
To help students choose a topic of study, it is wise to conduct an interest survey before they begin. Each student has a preferred learning style, and successful differentiation includes delivering the material to each style: visual, auditory and kinesthetic, and through words. This process-related method also addresses the fact that not all students require the same amount of support from the teacher, and students could choose to work in pairs, small groups, or individually.
And while some students may benefit from one-on-one interaction with you or the classroom aide, others may be able to progress by themselves. Teachers can enhance student learning by offering support based on individual needs.
The product is what the student creates at the end of the lesson to demonstrate the mastery of the content. This can be in the form of tests, projects, reports, or other activities. You could assign students to complete activities that show mastery of an educational concept in a way the student prefers, based on learning style.
The conditions for optimal learning include both physical and psychological elements. A flexible classroom layout is key, incorporating various types of furniture and arrangements to support both individual and group work.
Psychologically speaking, teachers should use classroom management techniques that support a safe and supportive learning environment. Teachers must be able to apply this intervention themselves in a regular classroom. In addition, the intervention is time- and cost-effective, meaning that it should not take excessive training or coaching nor use of external teachers in the classroom to implement the approach. Interventions in which ICT applications are used to support the teachers' instruction and can be controlled by the teacher e.
However, studies on the effects of fully computerized adaptive programs e. The design could be truly randomized or quasi-experimental or matched the control condition could be a group of other students in a between-group design, or students could be their own control group in a within-groups design 2. Additionally, large-scale survey designs in which within-class differentiated instruction is retrospectively linked to academic outcomes were eligible for inclusion compare Deunk et al.
Surveys have increasingly included been used in reviews of effectiveness, although one must keep in mind that no finding from a survey is definitive Petticrew and Roberts, Quantitative empirical study : The study contains quantitative empirical data of at least 15 students per experimental group compare Slavin et al.
Other studies such as qualitative studies, case studies with fewer than 15 students, or theoretical or descriptive studies were excluded. Secondary education: The study was executed in secondary education.
For example, in middle schools, high schools, vocational schools, sixth-form schools or comparable levels of education for students from an age of about 11 or 12 years onwards. In some contexts, secondary schools could include grades as low as five, but they usually start with sixth or seventh grades compare Slavin, a. Mainstream education : The study was performed in a mainstream school setting in a regular school, during school hours.
Studies that were performed in non-school settings e. Academic achievement : Academic achievement of students is reported as a quantitative dependent variable, such as mathematics skills, language comprehension, or knowledge of history. Language : The paper is written in English or Dutch all authors master these languages , but the actual studies could be performed in any country.
Differentiated instruction purpose: The study is about differentiated instruction with the aim of addressing cognitive differences e. Implementation : The intervention is at least partly implemented. If this was not specifically reported, implementation was assumed. Experimenter-made measures were accepted if they were comprehensive and fair to the both groups; no treatment-inherent measures were included Slavin and Madden, Effect sizes : The paper provides enough information to calculate or extract effect sizes about the effectiveness of the differentiated instruction approach.
Comparability : Pretest information is provided unless random assignments of at least 30 units was used and there were no indications of initial inequality. After the final selection of papers based on the criteria above, relevant information was extracted from the papers and coded by two independent reviewers in a pre-designed Excel sheet see Appendix B.
Discrepancies between the extractions of both reviewers were discussed until consensus was reached. Missing information regarding the methodology or results was requested from the authors by e-mail although only few responses were received.
The content coding was used additional to the full texts to inform the literature synthesis and to extract data for the calculation of effect sizes. We transformed all outcomes on student achievement from the selected papers to Cohen's d , which is the standardized mean difference between groups Petticrew and Roberts, ; Borenstein et al.
Methods of calculating effects using different types of data are described in Borenstein et al. When outcomes were reported in multiple formats in the paper, we chose the means and standard deviations to come to transparent and comparable outcomes. The effects were standardized using post-score standard deviations for measures where this was needed. For some outcome formats, CMA requires the user to insert a pre-post correlation. Since none of the selected papers provided this number, we assumed a correlation of 0.
This correlation does not affect the Cohen's d statistic but has impact on its variance component. For the papers in which multiple outcome measures were reported, we used the means of the different measures.
In case only subgroup means of subgroups within classes of schools were reported, we combined the outcomes of the subgroups with study as the unit of analysis to calculate a combined effect Borenstein et al. For one study in which the intervention was executed in separate schools differing in implementation and findings, we have included the schools in the analyses separately using schools in which the intervention took place as the unit of analysis.
Excluding duplicates, 1, papers were reviewed. See Appendix C for a flow-chart of the selection process. In total, 14 papers met the eligibility criteria for inclusion. Papers reporting on the same project and outcomes were taken together as one study.
The same applies to two other papers as well Vogt and Rogalla, ; Bruhwiler and Blatchford, Thus, in the end, 12 unique studies were included in our review and meta-analysis leading to 15 effects in total since for one study the four different schools in which the intervention was executed were taken as the unit of analysis.
In Table 2 , the characteristics and individual effects of the studies included in our review are summarized. The selection of studies includes eight quasi-experimental studies in which classes were randomly allocated to a control or experimental condition Mastropieri et al.
These studies covered a wide range of academic subjects, including science, mathematics and reading. However, note that all experiments had nested designs. Only the studies of Little et al. All studies were performed in secondary education, but the Vogt and Rogalla study represents a combined sample of primary- and secondary education students.
Table 2. Summary of contents of the selected papers and the effects of the individual studies on student achievement. To further reflect on the findings from the selected studies in respect to our research questions, we will give a more detailed description of the study designs, implementations and findings here. Although adaptive teaching does not necessarily include differentiated instruction, we found two quasi-experimental studies on adaptive teaching that to some extent matched our definition of differentiated instruction.
In the large-scale study by Vogt and Rogalla , teachers were trained in adaptive teaching competency to improve their teaching and, in turn, to maximize students' learning. In the project, teachers learned to focus on both adaptive planning prior to the lesson, as well as making adaptations during the lesson. Teachers of 27 primary school classes and 23 secondary school classes with students were recruited to learn more about adaptive teaching. They participated in a 2-day workshop, received several coaching sessions in the classroom and used the adaptive teaching framework in their classes for eight science lessons.
After the intervention, it was measured—among others—whether teachers differentiated to meet students' diverse skills and interests. Unfortunately, in the coaching sessions, teachers often did not discuss about issues of adapting to the diversity of students' skills and their pre-existing knowledge. The results of students in the experimental classes were compared to those of control students.
The authors reported that the secondary students in the experimental group outperformed their counterparts in control classrooms on a science achievement test after the intervention.
However, since we only had access to the means of the combined sample in primary and secondary education we used the combined sample results. The authors argue that more coaching may be needed to foster the implementation of adaptive teaching in the classroom, although it would decrease the cost-effectiveness of the approach.
In the study by Huber et al. Prevention of alcohol-, tobacco-, and other drugs is rather commonplace in secondary schools. For instance, in the US, students typically get into prevention programs more than once in their school career Kumar et al. Teachers attended a 1-day workshop about adaptive teaching by means of: modifying time, increasing or decreasing the number of items to be learned or completed, increasing the level of support, changing the input or the way the material is presented, changing the output, adapting the amount of active participation, changing to alternate goals and expectations, adapting the level of difficulty for each individual, and providing different instruction and materials.
In addition, teachers learned about alternative learning styles and disabilities. PALS materials were developed by the research team to match students' specific needs and related abilities. In a quasi-experimental study, four grade 6—8 teachers taught the 10 PALS intervention lessons to their classes and PALS team members taught another 24 classes.
School officials suggested a convenient comparison group receiving the traditional prevention program. These results were replicated in a second, within-group repeated measures design. Although the findings seem promising, more information is needed about how the approach was implemented; in the paper, it is unclear how teachers applied the information from the training in their instruction.
Moreover, replication of the findings in a study in which teachers teach all project lessons may also help clarify whether the effects of the intervention were affected by the fact that project staff taught most lessons in the experimental condition. We only selected two studies using a generic approach to differentiated instruction and the effects of the studies described above differ considerably regarding their intervention, school subject, and findings.
This makes it hard to estimate the overall effectiveness of generic approaches. The study of Huber seems promising, but unfortunately, the study of Vogt and Rogalla did not lead to positive achievement effects for students across the primary and secondary school group. More studies are needed to gain insight in how teachers could effectively and efficiently be supported or coached to master the multifaceted approach of differentiated instruction. Of these studies, the study of Richards and Omdal has the most robust design.
In this study, first year students were randomized over 14 classes and then classes were randomly assigned to conditions. Within the experimental condition, the science content for ability groups was adapted to students' learning needs by means of tiering.
To study the effectiveness of the approach, students were randomly assigned to classes in which the teachers used tiered content, while other students were in the control group that worked with the midrange curriculum for 4 weeks. Each teacher was assigned at least one treatment and one control class. After a pretest, students in the experimental condition were assigned to three ability groups: a low background knowledge group around the lowest scoring 10 percent of all students , a midrange group about 80 percent , and a high background group the highest scoring 10 percent.
One of the researchers produced the instructional materials for the study. To develop the differentiated materials, first core instructional materials were developed that were aimed at the midrange group. Next, the content was differentiated for the low and high background students.
Adaptations were made to the depth of content, the degree of teacher dependence and structuring, the number of steps, the skills, time on task, the product, and the available resources. Students were asked to work together within their tiers. The authors conclude that curriculum differentiation through tiered assignments can be an effective way to address the needs of low achieving students.
They recommend, however, that it should be accompanied by professional support and that teachers who design the tiers should have substantial subject matter knowledge and experience with learners with different needs. In the quasi-experiment, the authors compare an approach in which students solved mathematics problems on three levels differing in complexity using problem-based learning to a control condition.
Within the experimental condition, 88 secondary school students were assigned to three groups low- average-, or high-achievers based on an initial test, and then worked on adapted levels of geometry problems for 16 lessons before completing a final test.
An example of the differentiated materials in the paper shows that the three ability groups all received a different task which was a variation of the same task differing in complexity. Unfortunately, it is not described how the students exactly processed the content. In the control condition, 77 other students were taught in the usual, traditional manner. Subgroup analyses indicate that the approach was most effective for average ability students; students in the high achieving group did not outperform high achieving students in the control group.
Do note however that the high achieving groups were small 12 exp. More research would be needed to clarify to which extent the differentiated content improved the effectiveness of the problem-based learning approach.
A different grouping approach is one based on preferred learning styles. In the study of Bal , grade 6 students completed an algebra pre-test as well as filling out a learning style inventory kinesthetic, visual, affective learning styles.
Algebra-learning materials an activities are adapted for two tiers; for low performing students and high performing students, also adapted for different learning styles of students in the experimental group.
Despite the fact that there are reasons not to use learning styles as a distinction between students see e. Do note however that ANCOVA results were used to calculate the effects which may lead to some positive bias in this estimate. Based on information from student-interviews presented in the paper, it seems that students experienced success in learning and enjoyed the materials and activities developed for the experimental condition. It is unclear however, how the materials and activities were made more appropriate for students' readiness and learning style and how they differed from the approach in the control condition that used traditional teaching.
In that sense, it is difficult to judge what caused these positive findings. The data obtained from the inventory were used to determine the students' project topics, to select the teachers' teaching strategies, and to determine the relevant factors for motivating students. The effectiveness of the approach, which was originally designed for gifted students, was evaluated in a sample of 5 to 7th grade students in Turkey.
After pretesting, one class of students was allocated to the experimental condition and one class of the same grade formed the control group. However, it is difficult to discern what exactly caused this finding. Little information was provided about how exactly the teachers planned and executed the lessons and how students' activities and objectives were matched to their dominant intelligences, nor was there much information about possible confounding factors.
In addition, since the researcher who developed the multiple intelligences theory admits that the theory is no longer up to date Gardner, , one could question whether learning preferences could be better determined based on another distinction. In summary, from the studies we found on the effectiveness approaches to differentiated instruction using homogeneous clustering, we could infer that overall small to medium sized effects and in some cases also large effects of the approach on student achievement can be achieved in beta subjects.
However, before we can corroborate these findings, more information would be needed. When we look at the operationalizations of differentiated instruction in the two larger studies, we see that teachers used variations of learning tasks that were designed to better match the learning needs of different ability groups. In both studies, effectiveness for the high achieving group seemed negligible.
In two included studies, mastery learning was used to boost student achievement in physics and mathematics. The quasi-experimental studies reporting on mastery learning approaches in secondary education used randomization of schools to conditions and were both performed in African schools Wambugu and Changeiywo, ; Mitee and Obaitan, In the papers, the authors describe similar characteristics of mastery learning in their theoretical framework, such as specifying learning goals, breaking down the curriculum into small units, formative assessment, using corrective instruction for students who did not reach mastery, and retesting.
This process continues until virtually all the students master the taught material Mitee and Obaitan, , which emphasizes its aim of convergent differentiation. Wambugu and Changeiywo randomly divided four classes from four schools over the mastery learning or the experimental condition.
However, do note that pretests were only available for two out of four classes one control and one experimental. Unfortunately, the information on the mastery learning approach in the lessons is rather limited in both papers.
Therefore, it is difficult to judge how such large achievement gains can be reached by implementing mastery learning in secondary education. Nevertheless, we can extract a number of recommendations: First, both studies use corrective instruction for helping students gain mastery.
Secondly, in both studies the authors refer to some type of collaborative learning in the corrective instruction phase. Lastly, Wambugu and Changeiywo note that the time needed to develop the learning objectives, formative tests, and corrective activities is considerable so teachers may want to work together in teacher teams to achieve these goals.
More high-quality research is needed to replicate these findings and to gain insight in how teachers can apply this approach in practice. The large-scale quasi-experimental study on differentiated reading instruction in middle schools by Little et al.
Professional development of teachers included workshops as well as classroom support from project staff. The focus of the intervention was on phases 1 and 2. Teachers were expected to implement SEM-R on a daily basis for about 40 to 45 min per day or 3 h per week. In a cluster-randomized design executed in four middle schools with 2, students, the effectiveness of the approach was compared to that of traditional teaching.
The effects of the approach varied considerably across the different schools. The authors reported that, for the reading fluency outcome, SEM-R students significantly outperformed their control counterparts in two out of four schools. The authors conclude that the intervention was at least as effective as traditional instruction.
However, the wide range of implementations and effects on student outcomes between classes and schools illustrates the difficulty of implementing intensive forms of individualization in practice.
In the survey study of Smit and Humpert , the authors assessed which teaching practices teachers used to differentiate their teaching. Teachers responded to a teacher questionnaire about differentiated instruction. They mainly reported to make adaptations at the individual level by, for instance, providing students with individual tasks tiered assignments , adapting the number of tasks, or providing more time to work on tasks. Flexible grouping was less common and alternative assessments were very rare.
Peer tutoring occurred frequently, and tiered assignments were very common. The authors conclude that teachers in their sample, on average, did not execute very elaborate differentiated instruction.
Following the survey study, an intervention study was executed with 10 of the schools that were included in the survey-study. In this study that was not included in our selection since it was not published in an academic journal , teachers participated in workshops and team meetings and logged their learning experiences in portfolios. Teachers barely progressed in their differentiated instruction during the 2. Nevertheless, a high pedagogical team culture in schools was found to have a positive influence teachers' differentiated instruction Smit et al.
Overall, it seems that it is rather difficult to boost the achievement of the whole class by means of individualized approaches. However, as Little et al. A drawback of the approach may be that the requirements for organizing and monitoring learning activities by the teacher in individualized approaches could leave less time for high quality pedagogical interaction. Possibly, future research on individualization supported by digital technology may open up more possibilities for this approach to have high impact on student achievement Education Endowment Foundation, n.
One of the included studies used differentiated instruction within mixed-ability learning settings. In the study by Mastropieri et al. Peer-mediated differentiated instruction and tiering was used to adapt the content to students' learning needs within the groups. The authors developed three tiers of each assignment varying in complexity. Within the peer groups, students could work on activities on their own appropriate level and continue to the next level once proficiency was obtained.
All lower ability level students—including students with learning disabilities—were required to begin with the lowest tier. In the experiment, 13 classes with a total of students were assigned to the peer-mediated differentiated content condition or a teacher-led control condition.
The researchers divided the classes in such a way that each teacher taught at least one experimental and one control classroom. The effect is slightly higher, but this may also partly be affected by the use of adjusted means. In any case, more research is needed to disentangle the effects of the peer-learning and the differentiated content. In flipped classroom instruction, content dissemination lecture is moved outside of the classroom, typically by letting students watch instructional videos before the lesson.
This opens up more time for active learning inside the classroom Leo and Puzio, This format implies differentiation of learning time and pace before the lesson since students may rewind, pause or watch the video's multiple times according to their learning needs. However, whether the activities during the lesson encompass our operationalization of differentiated instruction see Table 1 varies.
Bhagat et al. Students in the flipped condition watched videos of 15—20 min before the lesson. During the lesson, students discussed problems collaboratively and, in the meantime, students who needed remediation were provided with extra instruction.
After the intervention, students from the flipped classrooms outperformed their counterparts on a mathematics test and were more motivated. The authors report a large effect of the intervention on students' mathematics achievement based on analysis of covariance. On average, experimental students of all abilities performed better, except for high achievers who did not significantly outperform the control group.
These differential effects should be interpreted with caution because of the limited number of students in the subgroups. The pro of this study is that it gives some insights in the benefits of differentiated instruction embedded in an innovative approach to teaching.
Yet, the authors did not specify clearly what the remediation and collaborative learning in the classroom consisted of and cannot disentangle effects of different elements of the intervention. More research would be needed to clarify the role and effectiveness of differentiated instruction in flipped settings. As we discussed in the theoretical framework, many variables may influence teachers' implementation of differentiated instruction.
We hoped to find evidence for this assumption in our selection of papers. However, in general, little information was provided about contextual and personal factors such as school, class, or teacher characteristics. In our sample of studies, differentiated instruction was mostly applied to teaching mathematics and science. Additionally, there were also papers on literacy and social sciences. No clear differences in effectiveness could be observed between the subjects.
Students varied in background characteristics across the studies. In the study by Little et al. In the studies by Huber et al. Student ages varied from about 11 to 17 years old see Table 2. Teacher characteristics were rarely reported. The only variable that is rather consistent across the studies is that teachers in the included studies relied considerably on external sources of information or support to help them implement differentiated instruction within their classrooms.
In most of the selected studies, the research team developed materials for students, and teachers were instructed or coached in implementing the interventions see Table 2.
Although we aimed to select practical interventions, little information is provided about whether teachers were able to successfully execute the differentiated instruction practices independently in the long run. Ideally, combining our narrative reflection on the included papers with a meta-analysis of the findings would give us an answer as to how effective within-class differentiated instruction in secondary education may be.
However, unfortunately, the number of papers that remained after applying our selection criteria is limited and the studies are heterogeneous in nature so meta-analyses of results should be interpreted with caution. To inform the readers however, we did add a forest plot with an overview of the average effect size of each individual study to the appendix see Appendix D. In Table 2 the effects and intermediate calculations for individual studies are described.
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