Differentiation and the Secondary Curriculum

Debates and Dilemmas

Susan Hart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415132015
• eBook ISBN: 9781134788163
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Differentiation is a key part of effective teaching and is currently an INSET priority for many secondary schools. By giving real-life examples, this book makes links between the theory of differentiation and some of the wide range of good practice already happening in schools. It explores the meaning and issues surrounding terms like 'differentiation' and 'equal opportunities' and offers practical strategies for tackling this often difficult area. The text provides helpful case studies written by practising teachers and gives useful examples of tested INSET activities.

Part I: What is differentiation?

Chapter 1: Differentiation and equal opportunities

Susan Hart

Without ‘equality’ there can be no ‘quality’ of education

(Runnymede Trust 1993)

INTRODUCTION

Since the introduction of the National Curriculum in the late 1980s, the notion of ‘differentiation’ has entered our professional vocabulary and become widely accepted amongst many teachers and other educators as an essential feature of ‘good practice’. Any scheme of work or collective learning experience must be ‘differentiated’, it is claimed, if it is to provide appropriate and challenging learning opportunities for all children.

But what exactly is meant by ‘differentiation’ and what does it entail in practice? Is it just a new word for what teachers have always done to take account of the diversity of learners in their classes? If so, why do we need a new term for it? Why does it need to be made such a priority issue for discussion and development in schools? If not, how is it different from what we have always done? What else does it imply that we need to do or think about? Where does this imperative come from and why is it important?

These are some of the questions that we set out to examine at the start of the in-service course which led to the idea of this book. Course participants were attempting to clarify their understandings of the term by relating it to their previous experience and to their existing thinking and practice. As course tutor, my aim was to encourage debate, rather than impose my own interpretations. Nevertheless, I felt that it was relevant to share with participants my own difficulties in coming to terms with the new focus on ‘differentiation’, if only to demonstrate that it was legitimate, within the course, for contrary view points to be voiced and debated in an open, exploratory and constructive way.

This is again the spirit in which this chapter is written. In it, I outline my own understanding of the meaning and origins of the term ‘differentiation’ and engage in debate with these meanings based on my own previous understandings and experience. I explain why it has been problematic for me to assimilate it into my own ways of thinking, and make explicit the particular meanings which I need to invest in it in order for it to fit with, and constructively serve, my own aspirations for children’s learning. Again, the intention is to encourage discussion and examination of alternative perspectives, rather than to try to impose a particular view or way of interpreting ‘differentiation’ in practice. I am not speaking on behalf of other contributors to the book. They will elaborate their own perspectives and ideas, and the particular questions which they felt it important to pursue, in their own chapters.

Briefly, I had problems in coming to terms with the emergence of ‘differentiation’ as a new discourse of ‘good practice’ because all my thinking about teaching and learning, throughout my professional life, had been developed within a framework which identified ‘differentiation’ not as a solution to but as a major cause of inequality and underachievement. My ways of conceptualising and responding to ‘differences’, and my perceptions of the scope available to teachers for enhancing learning and achievement, were informed by, and developed explicitly to counteract, the adverse effects that my training and professional experience had led me to associate with ‘differentiation’ practices in schools. This concept of ‘differentiation’ was clearly born of a different era, a different political agenda, a different set of debates. Yet it raised questions and concerns about entitlement and opportunity which seemed to me still to have power and relevance today, and particularly since many of the old tensions between selective and comprehensive principles have emerged afresh in the debates surrounding current legislative reforms.

In this chapter, then, I explain how I have tried to work through these problems and reach a new understanding of ‘differentiation’: one which not only acknowledges and addresses my original concerns but also extends and enriches my earlier thinking. I hope that exploring these links and tensions between the idea of ‘differentiation’ and my own previous thinking and practice will provide a stimulus for readers to review their own understandings and join with me in grappling with the more problematic aspects.

ORIGINS OF THE TERM

My research suggests that the new focus on ‘differentiation’—as a discourse of ‘good practice’—has its origins in a series of reports by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI) following surveys carried out in secondary schools in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Department of Education and Science (DES, 1977, 1978a, 1978b, 1979, 1984). These reports expressed concern that much of the teaching observed was insufficiently challenging for pupils of all abilities. Teachers’ expectations were often too low; teaching approaches were too narrow, exam-focused and overly directive; teaching tended to aim at the middle (however pupils were grouped) rather than seek to accommodate successfully a broad range of attainment and prior experience. The term ‘differentiation’ was used by HMI to try to pinpoint what it was that was felt to be lacking: namely that the ‘more able’ and ‘less able’ pupils in the group were inadequately catered for; in some cases, even the ‘middle’ group remained under-challenged because expectations of the notional average underestimated what pupils were really capable of achieving.

Although mixed-ability classes were not the sole target of criticism, the problem was noted to be particularly acute in ‘mixed ability’ situations because the range of ‘ability’ was so wide.

It was surprising to find that in a large number of cases mixed ability classes were taught as though they were homogeneous groups. The work was usually pitched at a level thought appropriate for the majority of the class, and inevitably this was unsuitable for pupils at each end of the spectrum. Sometimes, the level aimed at was below what the average pupil could attain, and the result was a slow pace, undemanding work and general underachievement.

(DES 1978a p. 49)

However, ‘teaching to the middle’ was observed to be a common practice, whatever the mode of grouping. Grouping by ability, per se, was not a sufficient basis for ensuring that pupils’ abilities were appropriately provided for. A ‘gifted’ child was not catered for, simply by being placed in a top stream or set (DES 1977), nor were the ‘least able’ children necessarily appropriately helped by being taught together in a selected group:

They frequently had the advantage of being taught in smaller classes, with the possibility of receiving greater individual attention, but the programmes offered to them were seldom successfully pitched at a level which both retained interest and demanded worthwhile achievement.

(DES 1979 p. 40)

Where explicit steps had been taken to adapt teaching to accommodate differences within a teaching group, these had in many cases succeeded only in catering for a different pace of working. HMI noted, too, that the use of worksheets and individual assignments often had the effect of reducing opportunities for genuine intellectual challenge, for using personal initiative and for engaging in independent thinking:

Even when they were genuinely matched to the abilities of pupils—and this was rare—the assignment sheets had certain disadvantages. They had to be explicit to enable work to proceed without reference to the teacher, and as a result were often over-directive and reduced opportunities for pupils to think for themselves and to use resources. For the same reason, they tended to over-emphasise transfer of information and to encourage intellectual conformity rather than intellectual curiosity and independence of thought. By asking for a written response to a written stimulus they reduced opportunities for discussion, with the result not only of limiting progress in oral skills but also of restricting opportunities for the development and understanding of concepts that can arise through talking round a subject.

(DES 1978a p. 54)

In setting their expectations of pupils, teachers needed to bear in mind that ‘more able’ pupils often disguised their capabilities from teachers, levelling their performance down to the average of the group. The limitations of the teachers’ own experience could also lead them to underestimate pupils’ potential:

A not inconsiderable number of teachers had no experience of the level and quality of work that can be achieved by able pupils in setted or streamed groups, and found it difficult to appreciate their potential and meet their needs when they encountered them as individuals or as a small minority in a mixed group.

(DES 1978a p. 51)

Equally, it was important to ensure that children perceived as ‘less able’ were not underestimated and given an impoverished curriculum, either because of their weaknesses in the ‘basics’ or because it was felt that they could not cope with challenging tasks:

It is not merely a matter of seeing that a range of subjects appears on their timetable but that they, as much as any other children, maintain contact with stimulating experiences…. Academically less able pupils need to have plenty of opportunity to exercise their imagination and reasoning power through a variety of subjects.

(DES 1984 pp. 44–6)

Thus, HMI’s concern about ‘lack of differentiation’ in teaching was in effect a concern about entitlement and opportunity at all points of the notional ability range. What was being proposed did amount to quite a significant departure from teachers’ existing practice. It involved a concerted effort to develop practice at two levels. At the level of method, the task was to introduce greater variety and flexibility into teaching approaches in order to cater for differences (here defined in terms of notional ‘ability’), and in a way that would genuinely enhance the quality of learning opportunities provided for all children. At the level of expectation, the question was how to ensure that demands made on pupils were sufficiently challenging: neither underestimating their capabilities nor making unrealistic demands that would prevent them from participating fully and gaining a sense of achievement in their work.

In the wake of these surveys, ‘differentiation’ became a recurring theme in HMI documents during the course of the 1980s. It was seen as a necessary corollary of the simultaneous move towards greater coherence, commonality and continuity in the curriculum provided for all children throughout the years of compulsory schooling:

Enabling all pupils to achieve a comparable quality of education and a comparable quality of adult life is a more subtle and skilled task than taking them all through identical syllabuses or teaching them all by the same methods. It requires careful assessment of children’s capabilities and continuing progress, and selection of those experiences and activities that will best enable them to acquire the skills and knowledge they need in common and to develop to the full their potential.

(DES 1980 p. 2)

These concerns and recommendations for enhancing ‘differentiation’ were clearly influential in the debates about educational standards which preceded and precipitated the governmental drive toward reform. The document Better schools (DES and Welsh office 1985a), which presented government’s view of what needed to be done to raise standards of achievement generally, includes ‘differentiation’, alongside ‘breadth’, ‘balance’ and ‘relevance’, as one of four key principles to be reflected in the curriculum offered to every pupil:

there should be careful differentiation: what is taught and how it is taught need to be matched to pupils’ abilities and aptitudes. It is of the greatest importance to stimulate and challenge all pupils, including the most and least able: within teaching groups as well as schools the range of ability is often wide.

(ibid., p. 15)

‘Choice’ and ‘diversity’, two key themes of ‘differentiation’, were to be the means of achieving equality of opportunity for all:

I want to ensure that we actively recognise pupils’ differing abilities and aptitudes and create the means for this diversity to flourish. That is the way to genuine equality of opportunity

(John Major, speech, 1992)

ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW?

However, HMI’s critique of existing practice and recommendations for improving teaching were not themselves without their critics. The report on mixed-ability teaching, for example, was taken to task by Simon (1979) for its treatment of children ‘as segments of “the whole ability range” [who] must be given an education “appropriate” to their place in this range’ (p. 54).

A leading critic of theories of IQ and intelligence testing, Simon argued that schools (or their teachers) who had made a conscious and deliberate move to nonstreaming would be unlikely to think of their pupils in these terms:

Such a move is based on the concept that the child develops in the process of his [sic] education, and that it is highly undesirable from an educational point of view to predetermine that development by forming teaching groups based on a judgement (however made) as to the child’s present level at a given moment in time. Groups so formed determine the child’s scope for development by ensuring differentiated environmental stimuli. This is why Douglas, Vernon (and others) found over 20 years ago now that stream placement affected intellectual development, the differences between streams becoming exacerbated over time.

(Simon 1979 p. 54)

The idea that in order to provide appropriate and challenging teaching for all requires that teachers categorise their pupils by ‘ability’ in their minds ‘misses the whole point of unstreaming’, Simon argues, and indeed is ‘in contradiction to its very purpose’:

Certainly there should be scope for the pursuit of individual (or group) interests, and each child encouraged to make his own unique contribution. But that contribution cannot be pre-determined on a rigid classificatory model—the unexpected may occur and should be allowed for; particular children may develop particular interests and enthusiasms. In short, the situation must allow for growth, for developments which cannot be predicted…. This concept differs fundamentally from the structuring of ‘programmes’ for differing levels of ability as the pre-condition for success in the non-streamed situation.

(Simon 1979 p. 54)

The case for differentiation argued in the reports was not, of course, concerned solely with provision for diversity in unstreamed or mixed-ability groups. Nevertheless, Simon’s principle that our ways of formulating and responding to diversity must ‘allow for (unpredictable) growth’ helps clarify and confirm my own sense that we were working with a different conception of ‘differences’ and their significance for teaching and learning, which did not involve comparing and fixing children’s abilities in our minds or ranging them along an imagined continuum, as a strategy for organising and planning ‘appropriate’ teaching.

Working with this conception of ‘differences’ did not mean ignoring differences of attainment, but rather taking them into account in a way that would leave every opportunity open and, hopefully, spur the child on to transcend existing limits. It meant keeping a resolutely open mind about every child’s capabilities and therefore looking for approaches to teaching which would avoid prejudging outcomes in ways which might be limiting. Hargreaves (1972) summed up the principle as follows:

All teachers are committed to the improvement of their children. It seems that improvements can occur, even dramatically and contrary to the evidence, if the teacher can go on believing that the potentiality for improvement is always there within the child waiting to be released. And an important part of promoting the release of these potentialities consists in the teacher’s communication of his faith in the pupil to the pupil.

(Hargreaves 1972 p. 68, my emphasis)

Indeed, more than just communicating faith, it was about taking active steps to try to engage children’s learning powers more fully. One of the challenges of this way of approaching the task, however, was how to ensure that children did in fact take up and pursue all the opportunities which the topic presented rather than being satisfied with a minimum contribution. It could be that what HMI saw and condemned as ‘teaching to the middle’ was in fact teachers’ not-yet-entirelysuccessful attempts to develop approaches to teaching which deliberately sought to avoid prejudging capability based on existing attainment. The opportunities for more challenge may have been present in the teacher’s mind and planning, but not realised in practice because the material did not succeed in engaging learners’ interest in sufficient depth for the more challenging aspects of the topic to be opened up. The success of the approach depended upon winning pupils’ interest and willingness to take up and pursue as fully as possible the learning opportunities provided.

Thus, if it had been part of HMI’s brief to probe teachers’ own analyses and agendas for development at the time, it might have been noticed that there were other ways of conceptualising the problem of underachievement and the scope available to teachers for addressing it, based on less problematic assumptions. Certainly, it was not difficult to believe that most children (even those deemed academically successful) were capable of far more than they currently achieved in the context of formal schooling. An enduring experience for me of working with secondary age children was that most engaged only a fraction of their available resources most of the time in the tasks of school learning. In many cases, the energy and emotional investment in school work was minimal. To borrow Mead’s (1934) analogy:

It is as if a generator with enough electricity...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• FIGURES AND TABLES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I: WHAT IS DIFFERENTIATION?
• PART II: DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH SMALL GROUP LEARNING
• PART III: DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH FLEXIBLE TEACHING
• PART IV: DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH SUPPORT
• PART V: DIFFERENTIATION AT A WHOLE-SCHOOL LEVEL
• APPENDIX DEVELOPING PRACTICE IN SCHOOLS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY