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Can Novice Teachers Differentiate Instruction? Yes, They CAN!
Teaching calls on the professional to use a variety of skills in order to reach a wide range of learners. One of the most important skills for teachers to develop is the ability to differentiate instruction. Differentiation involves modifying the content, process, product or learning environment to effectively address the variety of student interests, learning preferences, affective needs and readiness levels in today's classrooms (Tomlinson, 2003).
As with other professions, teachers' skills develop and improve over time. Many experts consider differentiation of instruction to be a practice only used by veteran teachers, because it involves the "fine motor skills" of teaching, while many novice teachers - preservice teachers and teachers in their first year of teaching - are still trying to master the "gross motor skills" of teaching. Research on novice teachers indicates a focus on classroom management issues, teacher-centered teaching, and instructional planning, not to mention surviving the student teaching or first year experience, making it difficult to focus on differentiating instruction to meet student needs (Fuller & Brown, 1975; Hollingsworth, 1989; Hollingsworth and Lidstone, 1992; Tomlinson, et al, 1994).
Fuller and Brown (1975) found that novices proceed through three stages: survival concerns, teaching situation concerns, and pupil concerns. It is in this last stage that novice teachers focus on "concerns about recognizing the social and emotional needs of pupils" (Fuller & Brown, 1975, p. 37) as well as meeting individual instructional needs and fairness to students. This research indicates that novices do not typically attend to student differences until the last stage.
Lidstone and Hollingsworth (1992) conducted a longitudinal study of the first four years of teaching and found three stages of cognitive attention: management focused, subject/pedagogy focused, and student learning focused. Novice teachers begin with "rote knowledge of pedagogy." This is when the novice recognizes the concept but does not use it, uses it poorly, or has a superficial understanding of why it is worth using. The next stage involves routine processing. Now the new teacher applies the technique but only superficially and in specific contexts. The final stage is comprehensive knowledge when the teachers' beliefs are integrated with teaching performance, concepts are understood and applied across contexts, and they have cognitive space available for attending to student needs. While it is clear that novices have knowledge of pedagogy at the beginning stages of their teacher development, the implication is that novices can only begin to differentiate for varying student needs after four years of teaching.
When it comes to differentiating to meet student needs, Tomlinson et al. (1994) found that novice teachers did recognize differences among students but found it difficult to be responsive to those differences. Novices were unclear about the meaning of differentiation and did not know how to translate it into classroom practice. Other factors found to inhibit novices from differentiating included the lack of emphasis on differentiated instruction by cooperating teachers, principals, college supervisors, and college professors. This lack of emphasis continues to perpetuate the current "one-size-fits-all" method of teaching prevalent in so many schools today. Because schools continue to become increasingly diverse, differentiation needs to become a focus early in the novices' experience because, as they will soon discover, one size does not fit all.
With all of this research supporting the notion that novices do not typically meet varying student needs, how can novice teachers learn to differentiate instruction so that it becomes part of their repertoire from the beginning? We can use information gleaned from this research to inform our instruction in teacher preparation programs. In many teacher preparation programs, much time and emphasis is placed on class management and curriculum development for the average student.
Students take notes on how to be an effective teacher for all students; however, what constitutes effective teaching is vague and abstract. Very few teacher preparation programs differentiate for preservice teachers. Because novices do not even know how it feels to be a learner in a differentiated classroom let alone teach in one, many teacher preparation programs fall short in helping novices adapt curriculum and instruction to address learner needs effectively.
Education professors must "talk the talk" and "walk the walk." College professors can assess preservice teachers' readiness levels, interests, and learning profiles within their college classes. They can then model differentiated instruction of education course content, classroom activities, and products based on the results of needs identified by these pre-assessments. In addition, college professors must "think aloud" and let the preservice teachers know what is differentiated, how it is differentiated, and why they chose to differentiate the instruction the way they did.
Once the college students have experienced differentiation and understand how they differ as learners themselves, they can begin to understand how their future students differ from each other and what will be required in order to meet the various needs they will have in their classrooms. In addition, as early in their programs as possible, preservice teachers need to get into classrooms so they can see for themselves how students differ physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally in a typical classroom. By calling attention to these learner differences at the earliest stages of teacher development, preservice teachers can internalize the rationale for differentiation.
Then, in subsequent professional courses, preservice teachers can assess students in their practicum experiences to determine readiness levels, interests, and learning preferences in age appropriate ways. Because they will have had this assessment process modeled for them in every education class they have taken, novices will thoroughly understand the procedure. They can use resulting data to inform lesson planning.
Of course, the necessary foundation for sound differentiation is content expertise. Novices need to have clarity about what they want students to know, understand, and be able to do at the end of a lesson or unit. When novices are clear about the essential concepts and understandings within their disciplines, they can begin to see how the content can be differentiated to meet the needs of their students.
A strong base of research-based pedagogical techniques is also crucial for effective differentiation. When novice teachers have a sense of which methods of instruction would be most effective in teaching particular content to particular learners, they can begin to differentiate. Novices must be given examples of differentiation through reviewing differentiated lesson plans, seeing videos of differentiated lessons, and working with practitioners who are actually differentiating instruction with relative ease. However, understanding what differentiation is and actually doing it are two different things, so the teacher preparation program has more work to do.
Professors and college supervisors who are advocates for differentiation need to support preservice teachers' efforts by placing them, whenever possible, in field experiences and student teaching with a cooperating teacher trained in differentiation. Students need to teach and videotape differentiated lessons in order to receive helpful feedback and coaching from the cooperating teacher and the college professor. Novices need to use feedback and coaching to reflect on their own practice and its effectiveness at meeting student needs.
After feedback, coaching and reflection, when preservice teachers begin student teaching, they already have a degree of comfort and confidence with the coaching and reflective feedback processes, as well as with differentiation. In the case of a first year teacher, pairing the novice with a mentor teacher who differentiates can serve the same purpose.
When education professors model differentiation, teach how to differentiate, and place novice teachers with trained cooperating teachers and trained mentors support first year teachers in an effort to differentiate, novice teachers can differentiate instruction (Brimijoin, 2002). While this "forced maturation" process is not always an easy one, the benefits are rewarding, as an email from a recent teacher preparation graduate indicates. "Thank you, thank you, thank you… I guess I'm one up on everyone. Everything is going well and I actually feel like I'm ahead on all the ideas/strategies that are now being introduced."
This graduate admits that the "one-size-fits-all" curriculum that teachers are often asked to implement creates an obstacle to creativity and differentiation, because it requires more time and effort to create differentiated lessons. She adds, however, "I don't mind putting more time into planning and creating exciting, hands-on lessons when the children are going to get it" (E. Black, personal communication, August 9, 2004).
Many veteran teachers who have been effective in differentiating instruction declare that they would never go back to teaching the same way for all learners. Responsiveness has been incorporated into their way of thinking about teaching and learning. Differentiation needs to become a natural way of thinking about teaching and learning for novice teachers, because our children's education depends on it.
References
Brimijoin, K. (2002). A journey toward expertise in differentiation: A preservice and inservice teacher make their way. An unpublished doctoral dissertation. Charlottesville: University of Virginia.
Fuller, F. & Brown, O. (1975). Becoming a teacher. In K. Ryan (ed.), Teacher Education (74th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Part 2, pp. 25-52). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hollingsworth, S. (1989). Prior beliefs and cognitive change in learning to teach. American Education Research Journal, 26(2), 160-189.
Lidstone, M. & Hollingsworth, S. (1992). A longitudinal study of cognitive change in beginning teachers: Two patterns of learning to teach. Teacher Education Quarterly, 19(4), 39-57.
Tomlinson, C. A. (2003). Fulfilling the promise of the differentiated classroom: Strategies and tools for responsive teaching. Alexandria, VA: Association for the Supervision of Curriculum Development.
Tomlinson, C. A.; Tomchin, E. M.; Callahan, C. M.; Adams, C. M.; Pizzat-Tinnin, P., Cunningham, C. M.; Moore, B.; Lutz, L.; Roberson, C.; Eiss, N.; Landrum, M.; Hunsaker, S.; Imbeau, M (1994). Practices of preservice teachers related to gifted and other academically diverse learners. Gifted Child Quarterly, 38(3), 106-114.
Dr. Holly C. Gould, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Education at Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Virginia. Her professional experience includes eight years of teaching in Alaska. She has served as a consultant on differentiated curriculum and instruction to many school districts and has given numerous papers at professional conferences across the country. She can be reached at hgould@sbc.edu.
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