Capturing the Essence of Differentiation
Oh boy! Even though differentiation is non-negotiable, it is currently a HOT TOPIC that is widely discussed in every classroom, conference, meeting,and professional development workshops.
Differentiation is tailoring the instructions to meet the needs of various students either through content, process, or product. That is basically the definition that everyone knows about. However, learning in our last module that modifying the standards is what we refer to as differentiation in an advanced level was a bit an extension to the norm for me. A lot of teachers would confuse accommodating their assignments and assessments by keeping the same standards and expectations in place but altering certain variable as opposed to modifying the standards of the curriculum to meet the students’ needs. As you can see that there is a big difference. But does it really matter?! I have always had the best interest of my students in my mind. This is my “standard”. It is not about teaching “all” the standards embedded in the curriculum but I extend everything to make it student-friendly. Students are our biggest accomplishments. So all being unique, even the normal mainstream of learners would receive certain accommodations or modifications during their learning journey as the needs are.
Diana has done that in our modules by giving us extra time whenever we needed or extra and backed us whenever we asked for help. This is differentiation at a graduate level! I have done it before and always will do it. From extending time, changing the setting to have less distraction, supporting the students with help, allowing them to use open books or calculators or researching for the information they wanted, to modifying the load of the content and thus the product was different to altering the goal of the assignment to adapt the expectation outcome I was targeting. I have done that before not to just hoping that the students would learn at their own pace but I wanted to accept their different psychological needs having their best interest and inner health at heart. So I wanted to encourage them to be confident in what they learned. Sometimes our students do not struggle because they have an academic gap or so but they tend to suffer academically because they are being distracted to focus on their academic goal that they miss to meet our expectations.
Going back to Maslow’s philosophy, if the learners’ basic needs are not met at home, they will not be able to function in their seats and the story goes on and on to widen the academic gap and the deficiency in their proficiency starts to scream out! They are basically shouting for HELP! While school teachers on every level are great at differentiating their instructions, university professors fail to do so. They are not able to adapt the needs of ALL the students in a bid to teach ALL of them. No one should be left out of satisfying their learning needs. Every student regardless of their level of education, should receive the same attention and care they deserve to learn whether at their own pace and according to his current needs or whatever the reason is. Our STUDENTS are our STANDARDS. Nothing matters but them, the students, the learners who are the next generation of humans on earth. Education is a cycle that never stops at any point in our lives and it should be looked at as a unified mission to support the survival of US, HUMANS, on our planet EARTH.
Comments