Capturing the complexity of differentiated instruction

TLDR

Providing differentiated instruction is an important yet complex teaching skill that many teachers feel unprepared to master. The study aims to design professional development activities by questioning whether existing instruments adequately capture the complexity of differentiated instruction. The authors reviewed international literature on differentiation assessment instruments and conducted a cognitive task analysis to depict the skill’s complexity. The study presents a differentiation skill hierarchy, identifies required knowledge and complexity factors, and proposes professional development trajectories and a comprehensive assessment instrument to train, assess, and monitor teaching quality.

Abstract

Providing differentiated instruction (DI) is considered an important but complex teaching skill which many teachers have not mastered and feel unprepared for. In order to design professional development activities, a thorough description of DI is required. The international literature on assessing teachers' differentiation qualities describes the use of various instruments, ranging from self-reports to observation schemes and from perceived-difficulty instruments to student questionnaires. We question whether these instruments truly capture the complexity of differentiation. In order to depict this complexity, a cognitive task analysis (CTA) of the differentiation skill was performed. The resulting differentiation skill hierarchy is presented here, together with the knowledge required for differentiation, and the factors influencing its complexity. Based on the insights of this CTA, professional development trajectories can be designed and a comprehensive assessment instrument can be developed, enabling researchers and practitioners to train, assess, and monitor teaching quality with respect to providing differentiated instruction.