Differentiated instruction: the diversity of teachers’ philosophy and praxis to adapt teaching to students’ interests, readiness and learning profiles

ABSTRACT

Differentiated instruction (DI) addresses academic diversity in order to maximise learning. Although it is theorised as both a philosophy and as a praxis of teaching, it is rarely measured as such. This study examines teacher profiles on differentiated instruction relating to their philosophy and self-reported praxis. The data stem from an exploratory study on differentiated instruction, which served the purpose of creating a valid instrument to measure teachers’ philosophy and teaching approaches relating to academic differences in interests, readiness and learning profiles, namely the DI-Quest instrument. The results reveal three teacher profiles based on five DI-related factors. The patterns are almost identical in primary and in secondary education. Interestingly, if more frequent adaptations to students’ differences in interests, readiness and learning profile are what differentiated instruction aims for, both philosophical factors (namely growth mindset and ethical compass oriented to students) need to be present. Lacking one of these factors, will have less adaptations as a consequence. This study displays the predictive power of teachers’ philosophy about Differentiated Instruction for their daily classroom practices. Consequences for future research, professional development and teacher education are discussed in detail.

KEYWORDS:

• Differentiated instruction
• teachers’ philosophy
• teacher practices
• DI-Quest instrument
• cluster analyses

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Esther Gheyssens

Esther Gheyssens obtained her doctoral degree at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2020, with a dissertation titled “Adopting differentiated instruction to create inclusive classrooms”. She is affiliated as a teaching assistant at the Teacher Education Department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and as a guest professor at the faculty of psychology and pedagogy of Ghent University. Within her research Esther focuses on differentiated instruction, diversity in education, inclusive education and teacher education.

Catherine Coubergs

Catherine Coubergs was affiliated as a researcher at the Department of Educational sciences of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research focused on differentiated instruction. Currently she is co-founder and co-owner of a digital co-creation company called 'Content and Coffee'.

Júlia Griful-Freixenet

Júlia Griful-Freixenet obtained her doctoral degree in 2020 at the Department of Educational Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, with a dissertation titled “Learning about inclusive education: Exploring the entanglement between Universal Design for Learning and Differentiated Instruction”. Currently, Júlia is doing research at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel on pre-service teachers’ beliefs and practices on inclusive education.

Nadine Engels

Nadine Engels is professor and head of the Teacher Education Department at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research today is mainly in the domain of professional learning and development of practitioners in education.

Katrien Struyven

Katrien Struyven is an associate professor at Hasselt University and at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Creating inclusive learning environments which address student diversity in a positive way are key to her work (differentiated instruction, PAL, assessment for learning, feedback). Katrien teaches instructional science courses to students inthe Teacher Training Program (UHasselt), Bachelor of Science in Adult Education and the international Master of Educational Sciences (VUB).