Differentiation and the Brain - David A. Sousa

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classrooms are still teaching with the focus of “one for all and all for one.”… Traditional school structures … make the idea of differentiating to maximize learning a mountain still to be climbed. But we must [climb it].

      —H. Lynn Erickson

      At an education conference focused on teaching and learning, a veteran teacher shared that she was teaching a multi-age class for the first time in her twenty-plus-year career as an educator.

      “That must be quite an adjustment for you,” said the younger educator seated beside her. The more senior teacher reflected for just a moment and responded, “Actually, it really hasn’t been an adjustment for me. I’ve taught a multi-age classroom every year. But this is just the first time someone put the sign on my door.”

      What we now call differentiated instruction is not new. It simply asks educators to recognize what teachers have known for centuries: students do not arrive at school as matched sets. Because the pace of brain development varies among children, it is likely that in any third-grade class, some students are reading much like first graders and others like sixth graders. A third grader who reads like a second grader may be ready to do fractions in mathematics well before most of her classmates. In other words, the fact that all students in a particular classroom share a similar birth date is no indication they all learn at the same rate, in the same way, and with the same support systems.

      Few educators seriously debate whether a particular chronological age is a trustworthy predictor of a student’s academic accomplishments. Most of us who have taught have ample evidence that academic variance is a given among students of any grade level—preschool through graduate school. The fundamental question each teacher has to answer is whether to respond to those differences—and if so, in what way.

      A great number of teachers plan and teach as though all the students in a given classroom are essentially alike. When it becomes evident that some students are confused, lost, or bored, some teachers quickly try to offer additional encouragement, support, or work as a means of addressing the mismatch between lesson and learner. Others simply follow their initial instructional plans. After all, they remark, there’s a lot of material to cover.

       A Case in Point

      It was just the first week of school, and already Mrs. Worrell felt tired. Her class enrollment was higher this year than last. The students in front of her came from several different language groups, from a broad spectrum of economic groups, and with a five-year span of achievement in reading and mathematics. Her job was to get all the students ready to pass the same test on the same day under the same conditions. She had nine months to do that. The year stretched ahead of her like a bad movie. She had too many students, virtually no planning time, no one to help in the classroom, a single textbook for each subject, too few supplies, too much content, and a mandate to make sure everyone would look competent on the test that loomed ahead of them all. She looked at the students as they left the room to get on the afternoon school buses. They looked as weary as she felt. She wondered if everyone in the building felt that way.

      Differentiation stems from the research-based perspective that students will engage more fully with learning and learn more robustly when teachers proactively plan with their differences—as well as their similarities—in mind (Tomlinson, 2017; Tomlinson et al., 2003). Such an instructional model is learner centered; it accepts the premise that a teacher’s role is not simply to cover material or expose students to content, but rather to maximize student learning. Therefore, if a student is missing knowledge or skills from the past necessary for success with current learning expectations, the teacher’s role is to help that student move both backward and forward with essential content. If a student already knows what a teacher is about to teach, the teacher’s role is to help that student move beyond current learning expectations so growth will continue. Similarly, differentiation operates from the premise that if a student is not learning efficiently or effectively in one mode, a wise teacher looks for another pathway to learning that will work for that student, and if content seems irrelevant to or disconnected from a student’s world, the teacher seeks to build bridges between critical content and student interests.

      The bedrock of differentiation is a five-part argument foundational to effective teaching.

      1. The environment students are asked to learn in must invite learning. That is, it must be safe, challenging, and supportive for each student. To that end, the learning environment calls for a teacher who has a growth (fluid) mindset (Dweck, 2006), who forges meaningful connections with each learner, and who brings students together in a mutually supportive community or team of learners.

      2. A teacher should be able to clearly delineate what constitutes essential knowledge, understanding, and skills in a content area, unit, and lesson. In addition, both instruction and assessment should have a central focus on student understanding, lessons planned for high student engagement, and a curriculum designed to teach up (that is, to begin with a curriculum that challenges advanced learners, and follow with plans to scaffold other students to enable them to work with that rich and powerful curriculum).

      3. The teacher should persistently assess student status relative to the essential knowledge, understanding, and skills throughout a segment of study. Using assessment information to help the teacher and students understand a learner’s current proximity to essential knowledge, understanding, and skills is the compass for differentiation.

      4. When ongoing assessment data indicate a student is confused, has learning gaps, or has already mastered essential knowledge, understanding, or skills, the teacher should use that information to plan upcoming instruction to move each learner ahead. The idea is to address those needs that, if left unattended, will most likely impede student growth.

      5. In order to have the flexibility necessary to work differently with individual students at least some of the time, the teacher needs to guide students in understanding the nature and purpose of a differentiated classroom, work with them to establish and maintain effective norms for classroom operation, and manage classroom routines that balance the predictability and flexibility necessary to address a range of student differences.

      When we look at differentiation in these terms, we see it is neither revolutionary nor something extra. It is simply teaching mindfully and with the intent to support the success of each human being for whom we accept professional responsibility. It moves us away from seeing and teaching students as a unit toward reflecting on and responding to them as individuals, as well as to the needs of the group as a whole.

      Differentiation is neither revolutionary nor something extra. It is simply teaching mindfully and with the intent to support the success of each human being for whom we accept professional responsibility.

      Differentiation, therefore, is not a particular set of strategies, but a way of thinking about teaching and learning. It provides a framework for planning and carrying out learner-focused instruction. While a substantial differentiation model will offer instructional tools and strategies that facilitate attention to varied learner needs, it will also counsel teachers to use approaches that work for their particular students, content, and strengths and proclivities as professionals.

      Figure 1.1 presents one model of differentiation (Tomlinson, 2014, 2017). Its five key components—(1) an invitational environment, (2) rich curriculum, (3) assessment to inform teaching and learning, (4) responsive instruction, and (5) leading students and managing routines—which we regard as the nonnegotiables of effective differentiation, will serve as the foundation for this book. The components are nonnegotiable in the sense that they stem from what we know about how people learn and how strong teachers teach. Each of the model’s components is part of an interdependent system of classroom elements, and thus when any one of them is weak, the other elements in the system will suffer. Classrooms in which all the elements work together effectively are classrooms likely to work for a broad range of learners. The remainder of this chapter briefly

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