How I learned to love major differencesand work with others

What we call differentiation is not a recipe for teaching.

It is not an instructional strategy.

It is not what a teacher does when he or she has time.

It is a way of thinking about teaching and learning. It is a philosophy.

Students who are the same age differ in their readiness to learn, their interests, their styles of learning, their experiences, and their life circumstances.

The differences in students are significant enough to make a major impact on what students need to learn, the pace at which they need to learn it, and the support they need from teachers and others to learn it well.

Students will learn best when supportive adults push them slightly beyond where they can work without assistance.

Students will learn best when they can make a connection between the curriculum and their interests and life experiences.

Students will learn best when learning opportunities are natural.

Students are more effective learners when classrooms and schools create a sense of community in which students feel significant and respected.

The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student.

Differentiation is wary of approaches to teaching and learning that standardize.

Standard-issue students are rare, and educational approaches that ignore academic diversity in favor of standardization are likely to be counterproductive in reaching the full range of learners

Differentiation must be a refinement of, not a substitute for, high-quality curriculum and instruction.

Expert or distinguished teaching focuses on the understandings and skills of a discipline, causes students to wrestle with profound ideas, calls on students to use what they learn in important ways, helps students organize and make sense of ideas and information, and aids students in connecting the classroom with a wider world (Brandt, 1998; Danielson, 1996; Schlechty, 1997; Wiggins & McTighe, 1998).

Differentiation—one facet of expert teaching—reminds us that these things are unlikely to happen for the full range of students unless curriculum and instruction fit each individual, unless students have choices about what to learn and how, unless students take part in setting learning goals, and unless the classroom connects with the experiences and interest of the individual (Tomlinson, 1995, 1999).

Differentiation says, "Building on core teaching and learning practices that are solid, here's what you do to refine them for maximum individual growth."

We first need to ask, Is a given teaching or learning approach likely to have a positive impact on the core of effective teaching and learning?

When we are content with the answer, we can ask further, What is the effect of the practice on individuals in an academically diverse population?

The latter question always helps us refine the effectiveness of the former but cannot substitute for it.

Where the majority of classroom educators are now. Mainly due to NCLB and standardized testing.

For many teachers, curriculum has become a prescribed set of academic standards, instructional pacing has become a race against a clock to cover the standards, and the sole goal of teaching has been reduced to raising student test scores on a single test, the value of which has scarcely been questioned in the public forum.

Teachers feel as though they are torn in opposing directions: They are admonished to attend to student differences, but they must ensure that every student becomes competent in the same subject matter and can demonstrate the competencies on an assessment that is differentiated neither in form nor in time constraints.

To examine the dichotomy between standards-based teaching and differentiation, we must ask questions about how standards influence the quality of teaching and learning. What is the impact of standards-based teaching on the quality of education in general?

Then we can assess ways in which standards-based approaches make an impact on gifted or academically challenged students whose abilities are outside the usual norms of achievement.

Do the standards reflect the knowledge, understandings, and skills valued most by experts in the disciplines that they represent?

Are we using standards as a curriculum, or are they reflected in the curriculum?

Are we slavishly covering standards at breakneck pace, or have we found ways to organize the standards within our curriculum so that students have time to make sense of ideas and skills?

Does our current focus on standards enliven classrooms, or does it eliminate joy, creativity, and inquiry?

Do standards make learning more or less relevant and alluring to students?

Does our use of standards remind us that we are teaching human beings, or does it cause us to forget that fact?

Then …

(W)e can look fruitfully at how to make adaptations to address the needs of academically diverse learners. If our answers are less than satisfactory, we should address the problems.

Such problems inevitably point to cracks in the foundation of quality teaching and learning, and we diminish our profession by failing to attend to them.

Differentiating curriculum and instruction cannot make up for ill-conceived curriculum and instruction.

I have too many different needs in my class(es); there is no way I can be expected to differentiate!

Overwhelmed by the task, a teacher recently pleaded, "I have all these students with all these different needs; how can anyone expect me to differentiate in my classroom?"

Odd as the comment sounds, she spoke for many of us.

The more complex the task, the more inviting it is to retreat to the familiar—to find a standardized approach and cling to it.

"I know I'm missing lots of my students, but if I don't hurry to cover all the standards, how will they succeed on the test?“

Or, "I know it would be good to involve students in thinking and problem solving, but there's just no time.“

The deeper issue is about what happens when we use any approach that allows us to lose sight of the soul of teaching and learning.

A secondary factor is that such approaches make it difficult to attend to individual differences.

Of course they do. Whatever practices invite us to be paint-by-

number teachers will largely fail students who do not fit the template.

Paint-by-number approaches will fall short for all of us—teachers and students alike—because they abandon quality.

Paint-by-number approaches will fail teachers because they confuse technical expedience with artistry.

They will fail students because they confuse compliance with thoughtful engagement.

Any educational approach that does not invite us to teach individuals is deeply flawed.

Confronted by too many students, a schedule without breaks, a pile of papers that regenerates daily, and incessant demands from every educational stakeholder, no wonder we become habitual and standardized in our practices.

Not only do we have no time to question why we do what we do, but we also experience the discomfort of change when we do ask the knotty questions.

Nonetheless, our profession cannot progress and our increasingly diverse students cannot succeed if we do less.

The What?

What is an essential question? An essential question is – well, essential: important, vital, at the heart of the matter – the essence of the issue.

Think of questions in your life that fit this definition – but don’t just yet think about it like a teacher; consider the question as a thoughtful adult.

What kinds of questions come to mind? What is a question that any thoughtful and

intellectually-alive person ponders and should keep pondering?

One meaning of “essential” involves important questions that recur throughout one’s life. Such questions are broad in scope and timeless by nature. They are perpetually arguable – What is justice?  Is art a matter of taste or principles? How far should we tamper with our own biology and chemistry?  Is science compatible with religion? Is an author’s view privileged in determining the meaning of a text? We may arrive at or be helped to grasp understandings for these questions, but we soon learn that answers to them are invariably provisional. In other words, we are liable to change our minds in response to reflection and experience concerning such questions as we go through life, and that such changes of mind are not only expected but beneficial. A good education is grounded in such life-long questions, even if we sometimes lose sight of them while focusing on content mastery. The big-idea questions signal that education is not just about learning “the answer” but about learning how to learn. 

A second connotation for “essential” refers to key inquiries within a discipline. Essential questions in this sense are those that point to the big ideas of a subject and to the frontiers of technical knowledge. They are historically important and very much “alive” in the field.

“What is healthful eating?” engenders lively debate among nutritionists, physicians, diet promoters, and the general public.

“Is any history capable of escaping the social and personal history of its writers?” has been widely and heatedly debated among scholars for the past fifty years, and compels novices and experts alike to ponder potential bias in any historical narrative. 

There is a third important connotation for the term “essential” that refers to what is needed for learning core content. In this sense, a question can be considered essential when it helps students make sense of important but complicated ideas, knowledge, and know-how – findings that may be understood by experts, but not yet grasped or seen as valuable by the learner. In what ways does light act wave-like? How do the best writers hook and hold their readers? What models best describe a business cycle? By actively exploring such questions, the learner is helped to arrive at important understandings as well as greater coherence in their content knowledge and skill.

causes genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas and core content;

provokes deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions;

requires students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers;

stimulates vital, on-going rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons;

sparks meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences;

naturally recurs, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.

How well can fiction reveal truth? Why did that particular

species/culture/person thrive and that other one barely survive or die? 

How does what we measure influence how we measure? How does how we measure influence what we measure?  

Is there really a difference between a cultural generalization and a stereotype? 

How should this be modeled? What are the strengths and weaknesses of this model? (science, math, social sciences)

The most commonly asked question type is factual – a question that seeks “the” correct answer.

In a history class, teachers are constantly asking questions to elicit recall or attention to some important content knowledge:

“When did the war break out? Who was President at the time? Why, according to the text, did Congress

pass that bill?”

Such questions are clearly not “essential” in the sense discussed above.

Rather, they are what we might call ‘teacherly’ questions – a question essential to a teacher who wants students to know an important answer.

No! There are all sorts of good pedagogical

reasons for using a question format to underscore knowledge or to call attention to a forgotten or overlooked idea.

But those questions are not “essential” in the sense of signaling genuine, important and necessarily-ongoing inquiries.

Teachers have to be careful not to conflate two ideas: “essential to me in my role as a teacher” and “essential to anyone as a thinking person and inquiring student for making meaning of facts in this subject.”

Essential questions ask you to make a decision or choose among various plans, strategies, or courses of action. Instead of asking, "What is acid rain?" you might ask, "How does acid rain affect air quality and how can those effects be changed?"

Did your teacher provide a checklist or rubric?

Did your teacher define the project? Is this type of question relevant to what I

am learning: past learning, present learning or is it applicable to ‘future learning’?

How can I use this question to further my understanding of the subject?

     What is your general topic?      What is a narrower term?      What is a broader term?      What do you want to find out?      Will your answer be best presented in

compare/contrast, chronological, or analysis format?

Your turn …

Please divide into subject groups Discuss among yourselves which types of

essential questions you would like to write. Write 3 ‘essential questions’ for the group. Discussion will follow in the large group.

Carol Ann Tomlinson (2000) How to Differentiate Instruction, Reconcilable Differences? Standards-Based Teaching and Differentiation, September, Volume 58, Number 1, Pages 6-11 (http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/sept00/vol58/num01/Reconcilable_Differences%C2%A2_Standards-Based_Teaching_and_Differentiation.aspx)

Grant Wiggins (2007) What Is an Essential Question? Nov 15, http://www.authenticeducation.org/ae_bigideas/article.lasso?artid=53

Define: Essential Question. http://secondary.oslis.org/learn-to-research/define/define-essential-question-wp