Re: [Phys-l] differentiated instruction

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

> Differentiated instruction has nothing to do with the non-research-based
> idea of learning styles.  It has to do with different levels of background
> knowledge, different levels of prerequisite skills, differences in
> language
> abilities, and differences in learning disabilities.  At least in Southern
> California, every classroom has at least one English Learner and one
> mainstreamed special education student.  They are generally the targets
> for
> differentiation, but every student eventually will need extra support.
>
> There are dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and plenty of workshops
> on
> the subject for those who really want to know what it means.  But they
> won't
> help those whose question is just a symptom of their resistance to change.
If differentiated instruction is aimed at precisely this group, then the
teacher often needs extra help to support these students.  LD is a different
issue because there are accommodations which can be used to help those
students.  For example a student who has the problem that reading is a
cognitive task has to use an aid such as a program that reads to them.  I
had a student who solved this himself by reading aloud into a tape recorder,
and then he could comprehend the text when he played it back.  Extra time on
tests is known to help some forms of LD, but has little effect on "normal"
students.

The universities are actually much better than HS because they will often
offer to pay for a note taker if that is what is needed.  The big problem
which is not solved by differentiated instruction is the wide range of
thinking skills.  This is only helped by use of the PER techniques and in
particular the learning cycle of Karplus.  Someone with low English
understanding may need some services of a translator.  Students who are hard
of hearing can have a wireless hook up to a mike that the teacher uses.

> From what I have seen differentiated instruction has been presented as
needed because of learning styles, and multiple intelligence differences.
So if the explanation above is what is meant by differentiated instruction,
there is still a problem.  If some students have low background, and others
high background, there is the problem that it is difficult to satisfy both
groups.  But that is where peer instruction and group work help because then
the higher ones can help the lower ones.  Sometimes the solutions are not
doing things differently for each student, but doing things that
automatically help all students.

Having been to some workshops on differentiated instruction, I have found
them to be fairly useless, and a waste of time.  But it may be that the
administration picked poor workshop leaders.  Actually most of the workshops
were aimed at humanities classes and the leaders had no concept of what is
needed in math and science.  In either case, a single day workshop or even a
week is inadequate in getting teachers the background necessary to implement
very different styles of teaching.  From what I have seen the administrators
come in and tell teachers things to do that they have no concept of how to
do, and that the administrators don't know how to do either.

Actually good teachers do provide some differentiation without much
prompting.  My son had a teacher that recognized he was just slower and
needed extra time, even though she did not know about ADD.  And there are
general things that one needs to do such as not giving timed tests.  There
is also the big problem of remembering what each of the 120 or more students
needs.  Even with notes it is very difficult, but elementary school teachers
do not have this problem because they deal with the same students all the
time.

Often the accommodations say things like preferential seating, or hand out
lecture notes, but these have no applicability in classes where there are
essentially no lectures.  There are other things that can be readily
implemented such as giving a student only part of a test at a time when
there is a difficulty with anxiety.  But again, the teacher often needs the
explicit support of a professional to let them know what the student needs.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX