I enjoyed reading the 2019 report produced by the Teacher Pay Teachers website about differentiation. The site surveyed teachers and principals about their feelings about the importance and effectiveness of differentiation as well as the various strategies being used.
One thing that jumped out at me was how teachers and principals responded to questions about impediments to differentiation. It seems to me that teachers think that schools and districts need to spend more money on hiring more teachers and providing more materials to promote more differentiation. On the other hand, principals seem to comparatively favor more training and professional development which is more immediately implantable and probably less costly. I have never believed that education is somehow inherently different than other industries. Management is always looking for ways to limit costs while labor is trying to get more (more money, more time, more resources) for themselves.
I also was surprised at some of the strategies teachers implement to differentiate their lessons. I never considered scaffolding as a differentiation strategy. To me, that is a basic teaching strategy. Same with the idea of individual or small group instruction. Perhaps I have been blinded by the excellence of my coworkers, and I am taking for granted how good we are in our classrooms. The differentiation strategies that I considered “real differentiation” such as student choice and options to show learning were used the least.
In the end, the report made it clear that time is one of the largest barriers to differentiation. The report quoted many teachers and principals who laid out how much extra time they need to spend preparing if they want to differentiate well. In my opinion, the only way to get this extra time is to attract more people to the teaching profession to give teachers fewer classes and more preparation time.
The Keasy Depot 