What is Differentiated Instruction? (4 Types Explained)

hey everyone chris here from

helpfulprofessor.com and today we're

going to have a look at what is

differentiated instruction so let's get

straight into it with

a definition of differentiated

instruction

so differentia differentiated

instruction involves teaching in

different ways to different students

to match their individual needs so it

recognizes that every student in the

classroom

has different needs and therefore we

can't teach the exact same way

or even the exact same content to every

student and expect them all to get

the best outcomes they can get some

students might need

additional support while other students

might need the teacher to withdraw a

little bit to let them

go ahead and just build on their own

curiosity in their own interests

some students might be visual learners

while other students might be more

interested in learning through reading

so we need to differentiate the way we

teach to all the students in our

classroom to get the best out of each

and every individual student

and that's that's the essence of this

concept of

differentiated instruction

so at that bottom point there it is

considered a student-centered approach

because the focus is not on how the

teacher teaches

but it's on how the students learn and

it's the teacher's teaching has to

respond

to students learning so let's move into

a couple

of scholarly definitions so if you're a

university student or even a

university teacher you might want to use

these scholarly definitions

in an essay or in powerpoint slides when

you're presenting

differentiated instruction as a lecture

the best definition you probably want to

use is tomlinson's

tomlinson i think it's carol ann

tomlinson she is the originator of this

concept of differentiated instruction so

it's usually a good idea to

find out who came up with the concept

and cite them because they're our

sort of our seminal source or our most

authoritative source on the topic

so here's carol ann tomlinson she says

differentiated instruction is whenever a

teacher reaches out to an individual

or small group to vary his or her

teaching in order to create the best

learning experience possible so you

might want to use that quote in an essay

or something

here's another definition from dixon at

al differentiation offers different

paths to understanding content

process and products considering what is

appropriate given a child's profile of

strengths

interests and styles so here again we're

looking at the child and what the child

needs all the students so maybe if you

know if you're teaching adults

differentiated instruction still works

just looking at what their strengths

interests and styles are and teaching

accordingly all these uh

people who are cited if you use the link

in the description to go to the blog

post about differentiated instruction

i've got all of the references in apa

style format at the bottom of that blog

post so here's the third one

differentiation is responsive

instruction designed to meet unique

individual student needs so we're making

sure our teaching is different to each

individual student

i think you've got the core idea of it

so let's look at it and break it down a

little bit more

with carol ann tomlinson's four ways to

differentiate

instruction so again this is a a

framework of thinking of differentiated

instruction that comes from the person

who came up with this concept in the

first place

carol ann tomlinson she says there's

four different ways it's bearing the

content

the learning process the assessment and

the learning environment so let's go

through

each of them one at a time and have a

look at some examples

so the first one is varying the content

so varying the content doesn't mean

dumbing things down and this is really

important one of the biggest

weaknesses people have when they're

implementing differentiated instruction

is they

they think that they need to give more

difficult content to more advanced

students

and less difficult content to less

advanced students

so the more advanced students can end up

knowing more at the end of the day than

the less advanced students

that's not ideally the way that we do

differentiated instruction

although it is one way in which it

occurs

often varying the content simply means

getting students to choose an

aspect of the topic that will sort of

bring them into the learning

and get them excited about the learning

so let's have an example

of varying the content if we had an

assigned learning outcome that

we needed to tick off but the students

have learned this learning outcome

and it was a broad learning outcome like

the student can explain

elements of 19th century history there

is some freedom there that the students

and yourself as the teacher can have

to helping the students uh learn this

information

you can let your students decide on a

19th century figure for example so maybe

a soldier a dancer a politician and

maybe a

female sort of an inspirational female

figure from the 19th century if it's if

you want to sort of inspire some girls

in your classroom

to let them choose someone who they're

really interested in and get them to be

able to

explain elements of 19th century history

through the lens of looking at

a specific figure in history that that

inspires them

or letting you students choose a decade

in the 19th century to focus on so

maybe you want to choose the 1880s and

1880s obviously

all around sort of the the freedom of

slaves in the united states for example

if people are really interested it's

really interested in that one student

can go

down that that route of choosing a

certain decade to focus on but another

student might say actually i'm really

interested in this president from the

19th century so i look at this president

another person might say i'm interested

in this explorer so

all the students are still learning

around the same assigned learning

outcome

but they're doing it through different

content

okay the next one is varying the

learning process so it involves changing

the activities involved

in the learning to meet students

individual needs

so this is focused on activities and not

content so for example all

students could learn the exact same very

specific thing

but one of them might be learning it

through watching a video

and another one might be learning it

through reading this is

this varying the learning process thing

is all about how different students have

different

ways of learning that are different so

some students prefer to watch things

some students might

prefer to do physical activity some

students might prefer to read books in

silence

and letting them all choose the way in

which they approach

that learning content so the way in

which they are

learning the content can help you to

differentiate your classroom

so one thing you might do is say here's

four learning stations

in each learning station there'll be a

focus on something different like

a visual element a maybe a listening

element

a physical activity and something else

maybe watching a television show or

reading a book or something

and students can choose the station that

they go to

in order to learn in a way that they are

most excited about but they're all

learning the same content at each

learning station it's just the process

of learning that's a little bit

different here

so when we vary our learning process as

teachers we'll often use the concept of

scaffolding so when we scaffold our

learning we look at what the student is

up to and then we as a teacher think

okay what's the next step that we need

to take to help them

process proceed to you know the next

level of learning

so oftentimes community teachers need to

sit down with the student and have a

look at how they're learning

and then sort of think in our heads well

what's the best thing that i can do

to help students move forward in this

process

okay the next one is varying the

assessment this one's very very common

especially these days when we have

students with additional needs so say we

have a student who comes up to us

and they have a dyslexia diagnosis so

they have a lot of trouble

reading things in the past we might have

said

you know a student which dyslexia is not

intelligent because they can't read as

well

um but today we generally consider that

you know a student with dyslexia might

be just as intelligent as every other

student in the classroom

it's just that they're having a bit of

trouble uh consuming the content through

reading

and through writing for through they

might have trouble in an assessment for

example if it's an

essay that they have to write so maybe

we can give them a different

way of being able to be assessed to

prove their knowledge they're more

comfortable with maybe they could give a

presentation

create a poster or do a demonstration

i've also had this with students in my

classrooms who've had

anxiety and they've actually had you

know come to

me with with notes from the university's

support saying look this student

struggles a lot with anxiety and we're

helping them work through it but

at the moment can you vary your

assessment so that they don't have to

stand and do their presentation in front

of

you know 100 other students maybe you

could get them to do the presentation in

front of five close friends

to help them develop their presentation

skills but

not in such an intimidating environment

so varying the assessment

is to help students show and prove their

knowledge

in a way that is most comfortable for

them

okay the next one is varying the

classroom environment

so when we're looking at our classroom

environment the layout and then maybe

the ways that desks are

positioned what books are available for

them what informational technologies

like computers are available to them

how is our classroom environment

teaching our students certain things

if we have our students all sitting in

groups then it's a

social classroom environment and we're

encouraging them to talk to one another

and learn from one another

if they're in rows well maybe we're

encouraging them to learn directly from

the teacher and not talk to one another

so if we varied our classroom

environment so that the students

strengths or preferences can be

fostered then maybe we can help

differentiate our learning so you could

say for example okay students

we're in the library today for today's

session if you want to go

and you want to carry on on your own

inquired

there's some area over in the back there

that you can see there and you can

choose to sit there and

and work on this project quietly but if

you're more of a social learner

well we've got these group desks over

here and you can go over to the group

desk and you can talk to one another and

learn from one another

so each student has their own sort of

situation or environment where they can

learn

the best possible way so

let's have a look at some pros and cons

at the end here now that you know what

differentiation is we've had some

examples here are some of the things

that we say are positive so obviously

the first positive that i've already

mentioned is it is very student centered

it focuses on well what is the student's

needs and how can i as a teacher

meet that student's needs it also

strives for equity so

that all students have the the what

is what they need in order to succeed so

we're not giving everything

everyone the exact same thing instead

we're saying well

this student over here they might not

need much support for this lesson

because

they're doing really well but a student

over here needs a lot of extra support

so maybe

i'm going to make sure that i give that

student some extra books or some extra

or a different piece of content that

they can learn from

or a different way in which they can

learn so it strives to make sure that

all students get what they need to

succeed

it acknowledges difference in the

classroom it gives students

choice very commonly when we

differentiate our instruction missable

you can choose the way that you learn

best so long as that you're focused on

the learning

it can increase engagement you know if

instead of giving

content to students that they find very

boring oftentimes differentiation is

trying to find a backdoor into getting

students excited

about the content and then it inc

it is increasingly possible nowadays

with technology so

when we think about the cons of

differentiation and i'll show you this

on the next slide one of the biggest

cons is

what how can i differentiate instruction

for 30 students or 25 students in my

classroom

do i have to write a separate lesson

plan for every student it's very

difficult

to differentiate and make sure every

student's needs

are met for every single lesson nowadays

with technology that's becoming

increasingly

possible we've got things like

educational

software that students can use and they

can sort of

find their own way through like a like

when i was a kid we used to read those

goosebumps novels where you choose your

own adventure at the end of the novel

a lot of technologies nowadays have got

different differentiated instruction

built into them to help us as teachers

to differentiate

okay some cons of differentiated

instruction the first one is it is

incredibly time consuming and resource

intensity for us as

educators it takes a lot of our time

to change up the way in which we teach

things for different students

it often leads to dumbing down the

content and i've talked about this a

little bit before when we talked about

differentiating content

try not to dumb down the content but

rather develop

content that's unique for each student

but helps them to

eventually meet the same learning

outcome

it cannot be done for every student it's

just impossible to differentiate and i

think i've already made that clear it's

impossible to differentiate

all the time every single day we do our

best but it's just such a time consuming

thing

it's unrealistic in the context of

standardized

testing it is 100 unrealistic sometimes

when we're told well you need to have

all of your students by the age of eight

to sit this test and they have to know

do these exact quizzes and they'll have

to sit in the line and not talk to each

other when they do these exact quizzes

standardized testing and differentiated

instruction butt heads because we know

as educators

that different students might thrive in

different assessment environments and we

just can't differentiate assessment

we've got standardized tests

being sort of rammed down our throat by

administrators

learning styles concept is unproven i'll

do a video on this separately

if you like and subscribe you'll

probably be able to get a

announcement when it turns up or maybe

i've already released it by the time you

watch this and you can follow

you can go to my youtube channel and see

but learning styles as a concept

even though everyone loves to talk about

them and say oh you know my learning

style is i'm a visual learner or i'm a i

like to learn through reading or i like

to learn through physical activity or

social interaction

there are so many different ways we can

break up learning styles when

when it comes down to it a lot of that

research especially by cofield in in

scotland

it ends up being that well it's not

styles of learning but it's

preferences that we're talking about no

one is naturally inclined to learn in a

certain way

we just have certain preferences for

learning in certain ways and there's

difference between saying

i cannot learn through reading i can't

learn from reading

if we say no that's a preference you can

learn through reading

everyone can learn in every different

way you just have a preference for one

or the other it helps students to

understand that you know they they have

the capability and possibilities to

learn through many different methods

so they don't always have to watch a

video in order to learn

i hope that made sense but if it doesn't

make sense you can watch the full

learning styles video when it comes out

and the last one is students need to

learn need to

need to learn in all different ways so

if we differentiate our instruction we

say to students you're always going to

be

learning through watching a video

because you love watching videos and

that's the best way to get you engaged

in learning

well maybe their reading will become

worse and worse and worse and i'll fall

behind a lot more in their reading so

differentiating instruction by focusing

on students strengths

isn't necessarily always a good thing

because we also need to focus on our

weaknesses

and improve upon our weaknesses so as

teachers we need to be really aware of

that

when we're differentiating instruction

that when it comes down to it students

need a broad

ability to learn through very many

different methods

okay that brings us to the end of this

little lecture on differentiated

instruction i hope you found it useful

if you're a university student i hope

this can help you with your assignment

go to the blog post it's in the

description below you'll be able to find

a lot more information in that blog post

if you're a teacher i hope this has been

a good refresher for you

and good luck with your teaching in the

future