Death by differentiation

‘Differentiation is one of the darkest arts in teaching’

- David Didau

There’s been a ton of time wasted on differentiation. We need to keep under constant review the impact of the things we do. And the impact of differentiation is limited and often detrimental to learning. These are the reasons why differentiation doesn't usually work:

First, differentiation anticipates in advance what children are capable of - by giving them prepared worksheets according to their ability we are limiting what they might be capable of because the work usually puts a cap on what they can do.

Second, the materials prepared for differentiation are usually closed exercises. So, all that children have to do is complete these. Completion of a prepared materials does not allow them to interrogate the material, struggle with it and make sense of it on their own terms. This applies to all those with materials differentiated in advance.

Third, it cuts down on the possibility of addressing misconceptions. Because the materials have been prepared in advance so that the children can complete them, they usually have less cognitive challenge in them. Cognitive challenge is at the heart of learning - if a child does not have the chance to struggle with demanding material, they are not really gaining new knowledge and developing skills.

Fourth, the completion of the worksheet is often regarded as the work. Children finish something and are praised for it, without checking for sure that they have properly understood something. It is too easy to complete work which has been prepared in advance by guessing, prompting or copying from someone else. This places very little demand on them but has the superficial attraction of making them appear busy. Busy is not the point, learning is.

Finally, they create a lot of extra work for teachers. Extra work is fine if it results in better outcomes, but is a waste of time when it doesn’t.

Above all, differentiation goes against the heart of the principles of the  curriculum which is that all children should be following the same course of work, are entitled to do difficult things and are supported on the way. What then, is the difference between support and differentiation? Well, support consists of the live conversations and additional unpacking of the material during the lesson. Differentiating materials in advance predetermines what children are able to do.

This places different demands on the teacher. Instead of staying up half the night to prepare different coloured resources for the different groups of children, they get a decent night’s sleep. They have time for family and friends rather than slaving over resources. Instead, they use the text or the problem or the big idea and use that as their starting point for the lesson. All children are entitled to the richness and difficulty of authentic material. They talk about it and then ask children to engage with the material, whether it is inferring some important aspects which might not be immediately apparent, and ask them to show what they know and can do with the material. The expectation is that all children will work on this. And the support comes through live conversations with those who haven't grasped it or who are struggling. It expects children to do more with less. And it expects children to think and to do something with it on their own terms. This is light years away from completing a prepared sheet.

A very good example of this was in a maths lesson. What was interesting about this was that the pupils were told ‘This is a beautiful problem’ - note the way that the teacher describes their work as beautiful. He is signposting that this is intriguing, elegant and worthwhile. In talking through with the pupils how to work out a complicated angle between two polygons, he carefully goes through with them how to work out the angles, pausing to take the answers from them. All are listening, concentrating and contributing. It becomes clear that one pupil is not clear how to combine two angles to arrive at the answer. He quickly opens another page on the board and goes through a simpler example, asking her to tell him what the steps are. Then he returns to the main problem and she is able to see what to do. Now what was interesting about this is that the whole group benefited from this additional exercise in working out the angles. It was an efficient way both of addressing one pupil’s misconception and reinforcing at the same time the procedure for the rest of the group. What was interesting that there was a sigh of pleasure from the class when the pupil realised what to do. There is no way that this could have been achieved through a pre-prepared worksheet. Her misconception would have gone unnoticed until the work was taken in. What was happening here was that the feedback was live, the individual and the group benefited.

There are similar examples where the teacher has realised that pupils did not understand the meaning of ‘infer’. Although this had been discussed and checked, it was apparent as she went around the class as they were inferring what the writer intended that they were not going deep enough but only gathering surface information. Again, the class was stopped so that they could go through the difference between surface information which is important but which only takes us so far, and the deeper meaning implied by the writer. This gave a chance for contributions from those who were more secure in this, providing an opportunity for them to consolidate their work on inference and also supported those who were not clear about how to read a text more deeply. Again, there was no way that this could have been anticipated in advance and any pre-prepared worksheets would have masked the fact that some pupils would struggle with this.

True differentiation is a paradox. It is about having incredibly high expectations for every child. It’s about regarding these as an entitlement. It is about offering demanding, concept rich, complex work. And the differentiation bit comes in through ‘unpacking’. This means through high quality talk, questioning, checking for understanding, modelling, explaining. The most effective form of differentiation is through Dylan Wiliam’s responsive teaching – preparing for the top and supporting pupils to get there, rather than deciding in advance which pupils will perform which tasks.

We must resist the temptation to dumb down.