BASIC SCHOOL TEACHERS’ KNOWLEDGE AND USE OF DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION

Albert Amoakwah, Sylvester Donkoh

Abstract


The school as a microcosm of the society in which it is situated is as diverse as the society. Heterogenous classrooms pose a challenge to teachers. Teachers have to work hard to overcome the challenge posed by teaching learners with diverse learning needs. Overcoming this challenge calls for teachers to be creative, dexterous, and innovative in applying differentiated instruction. The study sought to investigate basic school teachers understanding and use of differentiated instruction. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. A stratified sampling technique was used to sample 95 basic school teachers, comprising 44 private school teachers and 51 public school teachers. Data was collected using Differentiated Instruction Assessment Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results indicated that teachers who participated in the study did not have a good knowledge of differentiated instruction and its application in classrooms. Most of the teachers had not attended workshops and in-service training on differentiated instruction. With respect to the use of pre-determined teaching strategies, it can be concluded that teachers do not mostly employ such strategies in their classrooms. The study recommended that teachers are trained through in-service training and workshops on differentiated instruction and its application, as well as using multiple teaching strategies in teaching learners with diverse needs.

 

Article visualizations:

Hit counter


Keywords


public school, private school, differentiated instruction, differentiating instruction, basic school

Full Text:

PDF

References


Agwagah, U. N. V. (2013). Improving the teaching of mathematics for the attainment of seven-point agenda: Implication for gender disparity. ABACUS. The Journal of the Mathematical Association of Nigeria, 38(1), 111-121.

Boştină-Bratu, S., & Negoescu, A. (2016). Differentiated instruction in mixed-ability groups the Jigsaw strategy. In International Conference Knowledge-Based Organization 22(2), 407-412.

Dixon, F. A., Yssel, N., McConnell, J. M., & Hardin, T. (2014). Differentiated instruction, professional development, and teacher efficacy. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 37(2), 111–127.

Flores, R., Ari, F., Inan, F. A., & Arslan-Ari, I. (2012). The impact of adapting content for students with individual differences. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 15(3), 251-261.

Gardner, H. (1983). A frame of Minds: Theory of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (2006). Multiple intelligences: New horizons. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Ginja, T. G., & Chen, X. (2020). Teacher Educators' Perspectives and Experiences towards Differentiated Instruction. International Journal of Instruction, 13(4), 781-798.

Magableh, I. S. I., & Abdullah, A. (2020). On the effectiveness of differentiated instruction

in the enhancement of Jordanian students’ overall achievement. International Journal of Instruction, 13(2), 533-548.

Melesse, T. (2015). Differentiated instruction: Perceptions, practices, and challenges of primary school teachers. Science, Technology, and Arts Research Journal, 4(3), 253-264.

Merawi, T. M. (2020). Differentiated instruction: Analysis of primary school teachers’ experiences in Amhara region, Ethiopia. Bahir Dar Journal of Education, 20(1), 91-113.

Morgan, H. (2014). Maximizing student success with differentiated learning. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues, and Ideas, 87(1), 34-38.

Muziatun, M., Virginia, T. M., & Jusuf, A. T. (2020). The implementation of write-around plus strategy to improve students’ writing skill. English Review: Journal of English Education, 8(2), 247-254.

Onyishi, C. N., & Sefotho, M. M. (2020). Teachers' perspectives on the use of differentiated instruction in inclusive classrooms: Implication for teacher education. International Journal of Higher Education, 9(6), 136-150.

Pozas, M., Letzel, V. & Schneider, C. (2020). Teachers and differentiated instruction: exploring differentiation practices to address student diversity. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs. 20(3). 217–230.

Roy, A., Guay, F., & Valois, P. (2013). Teaching to address diverse learning needs: Development and validation of a Differentiated Instruction Scale. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 17(11), 1186–1204.

Rytivaara, A. (2011). Flexible grouping as a means for classroom management in a heterogeneous classroom. European Educational Research Journal, 10(1), 118-128.

Sliwka, A. (2010). From homogeneity to diversity in German education. In Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; Centre for Educational

Research and Innovation (Eds.), Educating teachers for diversity. Meeting the

challenge (pp. 205e217). Paris: OECD Publishing.

Smale-Jacobse, A. E., Meijer, A., Helms-Lorenz, M., & Maulana, R. (2019). Differentiated instruction in secondary education: A systematic review of research evidence. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2366.

Smale-Jacobse, A. E., Meijer, A., Helms-Lorenz, M., & Maulana, R. (2019). Differentiated instruction in secondary education: A systematic review of research evidence. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2366.

Smets, W. (2017). High-quality differentiated instruction - a checklist for teacher professional development on handling differences in the general education classroom. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 5(11), 2074–2080.

Smits, T. F., & Janssenswillen, P. (2020). Multicultural teacher education: a cross-case exploration of pre-service language teachers’ approach to ethnic diversity. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 33(4), 421-445.

Tawali, T. (2020). Write around strategy upshot upon students’ writing skill competence. Cordova Journal: languages and culture studies, 10(2), 258-279.

Tobin, R., & Tippett, C. D. (2014). Possibilities and potential barriers: learning to plan for differentiated instruction in elementary science. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 12, 423-443.

Tomaswick, L. (2017). Active learning–jigsaw. Kent State University Center for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved 8th May, 2023 from http://www.kent.edu/ctl/educational-resources/active-learning-jigsaw/.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2017). How to differentiate instruction in academically diverse

classrooms. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum

Development.

Valiande, S., & Koutselini, M. I. (2009, June). Application and evaluation of differentiation instruction in mixed ability classrooms. In 4th Hellenic Observatory PhD Symposium (Vol. 25, p. 26). London, UK: LSE, London School of Economics.

van Geel, M., Keuning, T., Frèrejean, J., Dolmans, D., van Merriënboer, J., & Visscher, A. J. (2019). Capturing the complexity of differentiated instruction. School effectiveness and school improvement, 30(1), 51-67.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v10i10.5004

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2023 Albert Amoakwah, Sylvester Donkoh

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright © 2015-2023. European Journal of Education Studies (ISSN 2501 - 1111) is a registered trademark of Open Access Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library (Biblioteca Nationala a Romaniei). All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All authors who send their manuscripts to this journal and whose articles are published on this journal retain full copyright of their articles. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).