Different or Differentiated? Recoupling Policy and Practice in an Era of Accountability

Abstract

Differentiation is an instructional practice teachers employ to modify their classroom content, process, and products based on student readiness, interest, and learning profile. Many school districts recognize the benefits of differentiated instruction and thus mandate allotted classroom time for its implementation. In this article, we investigate how teachers in one such district resolved differentiation policy to practice in a high-stakes testing environment. We found, during the designated time for differentiation, teachers regularly remediated small groups but did not similarly address the academic needs of advanced students, thus not enacting the disciplinary standard for differentiation. We suggest teachers are recoupling practice and policy but misaligning it to the disciplinary definition of differentiation, which we contend has broader implications for instructional policymaking.

Confronting the Gordian Knot: Disentangling Gifted Education’s Major Issues

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Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technology to Support the Three Legs of Talent Development

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“…Broome (2020) noted pacing guides are currently a little-researched area of study and called for more research on effects of pacing guides on teacher autonomy. Our recent study on classroom differentiation (Kenney et al, 2023) revealed that teachers found district mandates for strict pacing guide adherence limited their enacted autonomy. Therefore, we probed this finding further in the current study by examining the reported perception and enactment of autonomy (e.g., Olivant, 2015; Parker, 2015; Sparks and Malkus, 2015) by elementary teachers in a diverse public school district in the southern United States.…”