Differentiation: A Five Strand View on an Unfashionable Topic
Paul Wade
23-July-2020
Anyone who has been teaching long enough, will happily tell you that we have tried everything before, and every fashion comes back around at some point.
Topic based teaching? Did that in the early 80s.
Rote times tables learning and dictation? 1950s all over again.
House systems and merit badges? Come around every ten years or so.
Daily whole class reading? Oh, purrlease!!
And just as trends come, they also go. Things fall from fashion, are found to be ineffective through dint of research, become too expensive, run out of trained specialists or become so universally unpopular that teachers start to wonder why they ever did them in the first place. And so it is with differentiation - education’s new dirty word. I have lost track of the number of articles and Twitter threads I have seen completely rubbishing the idea of differentiation, some serious characters have weighed in against it (Roy Blatchford, of the Education Policy Institute for example), and the current trend for mastery certainly makes differentiation seemingly hard to defend.
Or does it?
For a lot of teachers, differentiation, at its most basic, means setting three different tasks for upper, middle and lower attaining groups in their class. And herein maybe lies the problem. We seem to have lost sight of what differentiation is really about and become far too narrow in our focus on what it can look like.
Back in my class teaching days, I remember planning formats in a number of schools featuring dreaded differentiation boxes and struggling to think of ways I could set upper, middle and lower tasks for teaching kids how to sing nursery rhymes in tune or use adjectives to describe a setting.
But differentiation, back then, was an unquestioned mantra, and I cracked on. Twisting lessons and learning objectives inside out to make sense in terms of the different attainment levels (or abilities as we often called them) in my class. And I didn’t complain because it did actually make sense. I knew there were kids who needed things taught differently from others and some who needed more challenges and who would simply kick off if I gave them something as hard/easy as the next kid on their table. And I got pretty good at it. I could set targeted work for any learning level with relative ease. I helped colleagues. I thrived on differentiation.
So much so that, when leading at subject level (Primary maths, if you must know) for my local education authority, I was asked to put together a session on differentiation for the borough deputy heads’ conference. Three hours with a break in the middle. Crikey, I thought. So I sat down to really interrogate my understanding of differentiation. I asked colleagues for their thoughts, brainstormed with teachers at a couple of schools that I supported, and, you know, ‘did some research’. What I concluded somewhat startled me. And here’s why.
If we consider ‘pedagogy’ to be ‘the stuff we do in the classroom’ it turned out that differentiation was ‘the stuff we do in the classroom to make sure kids at different attainment levels can access the pedagogy’. It was way, way more than three worksheets in each lesson and I had to go back to the drawing board on my initial plans for the training session. I mean, I knew this anyway, but I had never actually put it into words, unlike Kevin Collins of the EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) or the ever brilliant Dylan Wiliam who both say almost everything better than I ever could and have put half a lifetime each into actually writing this stuff down. What I eventually came up with, through a bit more chatting with colleagues, background reading and trying stuff out in classrooms (mostly with very accommodating Newly Qualified Teachers) was something like this:
There are five strands of differentiation. All of which can be seen as interacting in some way and some of which cross over quite profoundly, but which, when considered together, not only encompass all of the ways in which we work in the classroom to ensure that everyone accesses the learning, but also account for almost every aspect of how we teach. The strands are:
Task
Input
Resource
Support
Outcome
And they work a little but like this:
Task- perhaps the one that most teachers will be thinking of when they discuss (and complain about) differentiation, although, as David Didua discovered during his research and I have also uncovered during training sessions, once teachers start to properly talk about differentiation, they know it is far more. Everything from setting those ‘three different worksheets’, to creating little challenge tasks, to having optional (stacked) success criteria. What we ask the pupils to do, if it is not all exactly the same as each other, counts as differentiation by task. Now it has become increasingly unpopular to do the ‘three tasks’ model, and probably rightly so, but there is still room to think about how you ask the children to achieve the learning in different ways so that they get where you want them to go. And it is also worth remembering that setting tasks differently doesn’t mean putting them into groups or, deep breath people, setting. But that’s another article entirely. Once you accept that it is OK to set tasks differently, you will probably realise that you do it anyway, without thinking about it. Which brings me on to...
I
nput: Or as I like to put it, ‘the stuff you teach the kids before you ask them to start the tasks you have set for them’. This can be anything from letting some kids start the task early, as you know they pretty much got the idea yesterday but no one else did, to deciding to do a specific input session during assembly for a couple of kids who will be bored out of their mind if they have to do the same maths as the rest of the class but do actually need to be taught the method they are going to attempt before being given work to do. Some schools call it popcorn teaching, some schools set aside specific sessions for differentiated input, some even have clubs for extra teaching. You can also plan your input to accelerate the learning of students who struggle to pick up concepts quickly, thus helping to close the gap to their peers. With a little more thinking, we can also adapt our input to try things like mirrored teaching, whereby you split the class roughly in half, face one half ‘the other way’ and a teaching assistant essentially mirrors your teaching at the other end of the room, while adapting it slightly to the students they are working with - it sounds daunting, but it can be great way to deliver differentiated input within a tight time frame. Whatever it gets called or however it is done, varying your input is most definitely differentiation and many of us do it without thinking. What we might think about more though is...
R
esource: Otherwise known as ‘the stuff you give kids so they can do the task’, this often gets planned quite carefully without teachers necessarily thinking that they are differentiating at all. That group will need access to rulers so they can remember which order the numbers go in. This kid is going to have to keep going long after the others have come back to the carpet just so they can get a decent amount of work done and feel successful. The whole front row are in the front row because that is where they need to be able to access the learning and, in some cases, actually see the whiteboard because they always forget their glasses. Resource is not just the stuff from the resource cupboards, but also time, room setup, quiet background music, extra homework, a tablet for research, whatever you need to change for different kids so that they get the learning. You can even argue that resource and input intersect quite strongly and I would not tell you that you are wrong. You could also argue, perhaps even more strongly that resource intersects very much with...
S
upport: Once students are working on the tasks that you have set them, you need to decide how much help they need to achieve the task. By this I mean, for the most part, help from people. The two main sources of differentiation by support will be either when you, the teacher, decide to step in and support a pupil or group who is finding the task challenging, or when you ask another adult in class to do the same. This may be planned in advance or emerge, organically as part of the teaching process. It is not the same as input, as it is a remedial measure, rather than proactive teaching and it also acts to bring kids along with the tasks that they are already doing rather than preparing them for the task they are going to attempt. You may also use peer support or use specific technologies, but this crosses a little but too much into ‘resource’ territory, so I’m going to cheat and move on.
O
utcome: When I started teacher this was the big baddie. You couldn’t just set tasks and judge the outcome afterwards. Naughty teacher! But actually, using tasks or tests, where most or all pupils attempt the same thing, is an excellent way to differentiate your teaching, if done with the right motivation (I want to know what they have learned so I can adapt for next time) rather than the wrong one (I can’t be bothered differentiating today, they can all do exactly the same while I hyperventilate in the corner because SLT want me to complete another questionnaire on work:life balance). As part of your formative and summative assessment processes, some differentiation by outcome can be a powerful thing. Using technology such as Google Forms to set one minute quizzes or rapid writing tasks is a great way to quickly pick up on where everyone is with their learning and allows you to go back and differentiate for those students who need it. In essence, differentiation by outcome is a cornerstone of the formative assessment agenda - which has to make it a good thing, right?
So there we have it. My five strands of differentiation.
Perfect? No.
Useful? I certainly hope so.
I also feel that, among the five above you will find almost everything you do or want to see done in the classroom to ensure that students get the learning they need. They are also very likely to achieve some mastery along the way. So next time you hear someone complaining about differentiation or state that ‘we don’t do differentiation in this school, we want to challenge every child’, ask them exactly what they mean by ‘differentiation’ or, better still, show them this article and then open up a new a more positive discussion about differentiation in your school.
Paul Wade
Vice Principal
Sunny Canadian International School, Prague
Paul is an early years trained educator with over twenty years of experience in Primary, Secondary and Higher education in the Uk and internationally. He has been a senior leader in education for more than ten years, holds a BA in Psychology from Bangor University, a PGCE in Primary and Early Years and a MA in Special and Inclusive Education from the Institute of Education. Paul retains a passion for inclusive practice, high quality differentiation and enjoys training adults as much as teaching students.
Resources
Articles dismissing or attacking differentiation:
Differentiation Doesn’t Work, James R Delisle, Education Week, 6.1.15
Why We Need to Ditch Differentiation, Anonymous, TES, 9.6.19 (also look at the comments thread)
https://www.tes.com/news/why-we-need-ditch-differentiation
Differentiation is Out. Mastery is the new classroom buzzword, Roy Blatchford, The Guardian, 1.10.15
How “Differentiation” Became a Dirty Word to Teachers, Jennifer Osborne, The Medium, 3.4.19
https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/how-differentiation-became-a-dirty-word-to-teachers-dbf4f3c176a3
Articles on how teachers actually view differentiation:
What Do Teachers Think Differentiation is?, David Didau, Learningspy.co.uk, 24.4.17
https://learningspy.co.uk/research/teachers-think-differentiation/
Differentiation; A Lesson from Masters Teachers, Jennifer Carolan and Abigail Guinn, in Supporting the Whole Child, ed. Marge Schere and the Educational Leadership Staff, ASCD.org
