The phrase “differential education” was coined by Dr. Virgil Ward to describe his ideas about providing appropriate education for gifted and talented students. Ward’s thesis is that we can best maximize student success by beginning our work with children based on where they are right now (what they know and how they best are able to learn), and helping them to progress from there. Although Ward’s concept is premised on the needs of gifted learners, it is applicable to all students. In the nearly 50 years since these ideas were first developed, numerous researchers have explored the branches of differentiation, and attempted to put them into practice for classroom use.
Differentiated instruction has garnered increasing attention since 2004, when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) introduced the Response to Intervention (RTI) approach to early identification and support of students with learning and behaviour challenges.This concept assumes that literacy teachers differentiate their instruction as a matter of course, both within the general classroom as well as in more specialized instruction. Within this framework, differentiated instruction is an important step on the road to referring students to special educational services, as well as fostering overall student success.
More recent theory extends the principles and practices of differentiation into the general classroom, primarily through the efforts of Dr. Carol Ann Tomlinson who suggests the following four guiding principles at the heart of differentiation:
- Intelligence is variable
- The brain is malleable
- The brain hungers for meaning
- Humans learn best with moderate challenge
These guidelines bleed into all areas of differentiation: content, process, product, and learning environment. Tomlinson invites us to think about artful teaching as a triangle composed of students, teacher and content; if one side is not taken into account, the triangle is incomplete and learning will not be as effective.
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