"There is incumbent upon the educator the duty of instituting a much more intelligent, and consequently more difficult, kind of planning. He must survey the capacities and needs of the particular set of individuals with whom he/she is dealing and must at the same time arrange the conditions which provide the subject-matter or content for experiences that satisfy these needs and develops these capacities. The planning must be flexible enough to permit free play for individuality of experience and yet firm enough to give direction towards continuous development of power."
- Experience and Education (Book by John Dewey)
What tools do we currently have or can have to:
Q.1) "survey the capacities and needs of particular set of individuals" and then
Q.2) "provide the subject matter or content for experiences that satisfy these needs and develops these capacities"
Look forward to valuable insights from seasoned professionals in this so important area of education!
Many thaks for raising this vital question. I am agree with you that each individual of the same participant group requires some special attention in some areas and that differs. We have implemented the same in our online learning platform using the Personalized eLearning (PeL) Mode. You can learn more on the same in the following article.
Article Learning nuggets, personalized eLearning (PeL) and product t...
As you said, a professor is expected to provide equitable professional service to his/her students. To this end, he/she has to know the entry behaviors of the students under his guardianship. Once he/she knows the students, he/she has to do a detailed plan that provides varied opportunities for different learners. That is, the professor should varied contents, activities, assessments, and what you name. Then, he/she is expected to conduct lessons using the plan as a guide. That is what it means by differentiated instruction.
M. Sohaib Ali Siddiqui Thank you for this important question. You are pointing in the direction of John Dewey. I like that! Dewey has still a lot to contribute with. I would suggest, that what he points to here, and how to handle this challenge is elaborated in "Democracy and Education" (1916) and "Schools of To-morrow" (1915). The former is more theoretical and the latter is practical. I think Dewey is showing us a way of differentiated learning through collaboration, through connecting to the interests of the pupil/student, through dialogue and through developing an education that is relevant for the situation and the relations the pupils/students live in. Differentiated learning is not so much observing the pupil/student to "diagnose" and find a solution, as interacting with the student/pupil. "Schools of To-morrow" and "Democracy and Education" are surprisingly up to date on these issues. One educator to follow up on Dewey is William Ayers in his books https://www.bookdepository.com/Teaching-Personal-Political-William-Ayers/9780807744611 and the comic (yes comic) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7870276-to-teach Solomon Mengistie Shirshendu Roy
Well said Kjartan. Another place Dewey emphasises that "There is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying "; he seems to connect this point to curriculum development or objectives formulation by the teacher and the importance of including the student as he is the main stakeholder. Loads of thanks for the links!.
While integrating scaffolding strategies is centered around the class as a whole, providing structures to clarify learning objectives, differentiated instruction provides individual students with specific steps towards taking control of their learning experience.
1. Create a differentiated learning environment
2. Prepare thoughtful lessons backed by data
3. Tailor assignments based on students’ learning goals
4. Adjust your lesson content based on student needs
In a class of thirty different pupils, we may have students having very divergent learning styles as shown by Tony Grasha (1972) in attached file. Is teacher making sure he has a different strategy for each personality or at least a plan for say, the avoidant type student? As avoidant type student is probably losing out in learning very much? Look forward to practising teachers' thoughts!
(Table extracted from book Blueprint for Learning; also attached)
You raised a very current issue. In practicing DI we need to know where our stands are in terms of subject mastery and overall characteristics. This is possible by making a formal needs assessment and/or checking students' overall growth in the process of t-learning and thereby align our contents, methods, activities to students' current needs. Of course, this is not as easy as we say it.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Statistics
- Survey