Differentiated learning: from policy to classroom

TLDR

The audit focuses on how schools differentiate classroom learning, a practice also required of teachers in England since 2012, making Queensland’s audit relevant beyond Australia. This paper examines the impact of Queensland’s Teaching and Learning Audit on government schools. The analysis uses data from Red Point High School, one of 1,257 audited schools in 2010. The audit was implemented without clear guidance or support, increasing teacher surveillance, yet it also opened spaces for a social justice agenda, illustrating that differentiation is a complex concept difficult to translate from policy to classroom without better policy clarification and teacher support.

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of a Teaching and Learning Audit of all government schools in Queensland, Australia. This audit has a concern with the extent to which schools ‘differentiate classroom learning’. We note that in England, since September 2012, one of the standards that teachers have been expected to demonstrate is an ability to ‘differentiate appropriately’, and thus the lessons of how this particular audit was implemented in Queensland have relevance outside of Australia. The paper draws on data collected from Red Point High School, one of the State’s 1257 schools and education centres audited in 2010. We suggest that this requirement to differentiate classroom learning was implemented without appropriate clarity or support, and that it increased teacher surveillance in this school. However, we also argue that some spaces were opened up by this audit, and its concern with differentiation, to articulate a social justice agenda within the school. We conclude that differentiation is a complex concept which is not easy to shift from a policy to a classroom context, and requires more careful explication at policy level and more support for teachers to enact.