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Differentiated Instruction

By Dr. John Rohwer, Health Professor, Bethel University, St. Paul, MN

No two students enter a classroom with identical abilities, experiences, and needs. Regardless of their individual differences, however, students are expected to master the same concepts, principles, and skills. Differentiated instruction is the key. This instructional theory emphasizes providing students with multiple options for learning.

What is the Theoretical Basis for Differentiated Instruction?

Brain research suggests that all types of learners can progress, including students with disabilities, gifted students, and typical students. There is emerging consensus that learning must be challenging but in a non-threatening environment with an emphasis on active, authentic, inclusive learning. Differentiated instruction is based upon the belief that students learn best when they make connections between the lesson and their diverse interests and experiences, and that the greatest learning occurs when students are pushed slightly beyond the point where they can work without assistance.

Rather than simply "teaching to the middle" by providing a single avenue for learning for all students in a class, teachers using differentiated instruction match tasks, activities, and assessments with their students' interests, abilities, and learning preferences. A teacher who is comfortable and skilled with the use of multiple instructional strategies is more likely to reach out effectively to varied students than is the teacher who uses a single approach to teaching and learning.

How Can Differentiated Instruction be Applied in the Health Education Classroom?

Many instructional strategies in differentiated instruction allow students to work in small groups or independently. The following are among the scores of instructional strategies and techniques teachers can use individually or in combination in the health content area to differentiate instruction in a mixed-ability class:

1. Providing interest centers within each unit, tailored for students of different levels of achievement, interest, and/or learning styles. For example, students with advanced reading levels use material that is on the same topic, but more difficult, challenging or complex.
2. Allowing students to choose via portfolios, with the teacher's guidance, ways to learn and how to demonstrate what they have learned. For example, in a unit on alcohol, some students might write a children's story illustrating what they have learned; others might create a media presentation.
3. Permitting students to opt out of material they can demonstrate they know and to progress at their own pace through new material via tiered assignments. For example, students who have mastered certain concepts on the pharmacology of drugs may be permitted to move beyond that material; students who need more time to master the same material are permitted to move at a slower pace.
4. Structuring the class assignments so they require high levels of critical thinking but permit a range of responses through learning contracts. For example, students may be asked to speculate on the nature of the abortion law in the US, explain cause and effect, justify their ideas, and anticipate alternative viewpoints.
5. Implementing flexible grouping, students are responsible for teaching each other material as in jigsawing. For example, each member in a group is given a different assignment on the topic of nutrition. Experts from different teams meet together to discuss their expert areas. Students then return to their teams and take turns teaching to his/her group members.
6. Creating learning centers with activities geared to different learning styles, levels of thinking, levels of interest, and levels of achievement. For example, at one center students may see a video on CPR; at another center they read vignettes on how lives have been saved through CPR; and at a third center the students may practice the skills necessary in performing CPR.
7. Providing students with opportunities to explore topics in which they have strong interest and find personal meaning via independent projects. For example, individual and small-group investigations of real problems are an option for students who have mastered certain material or an activity for all students.

Practicing differentiated instruction, matching teaching to the needs of each learner, is an ideal way to help diversity thrive. Many teachers mistakenly think that differentiation means teaching everything in at least three different ways. This is not differentiation, nor is it practical. A classroom in which teaching is tailored to the individual needs of students does look different from a one-size-fits-all classroom, but often these differences are less dramatic than teachers believe.