Implementing the 2025 curriculum changes in classrooms will require leaders and teachers to think carefully about how they will approach curriculum delivery and teaching.
In many New Zealand schools, composite classes of two-or-more year levels add complexities to planning, teaching and assessment to respond to the needs of every learner. Now is the time to consider how implementing the refreshed curriculum can strengthen differentiated teaching and learning in your school.
Why differentiation matters
‘Differentiation’ is the process used to maximise student learning by matching the students’ individual needs and the curriculum. Teaching environments and practices are tailored to create appropriately different learning experiences for different students.
In this article we break down four key considerations when looking to meet the differentiated needs of your learners:
- knowing your learners
- identifying areas for learner progress
- choosing your strategies, and
- knowing how effective your practices are.
Differentiation key #1: knowing your learners
The need for teachers to know their students really well is fundamental for effective differentiation.
What we mean by this is that teachers knowwhat each student knows and can do at a given moment. To achieve this, teachers need to:
- build a trusting relationship with each student
- set work that is appropriately challenging and connected to things that matter to them
- provide opportunities for student voice to be expressed and heard
- develop in their students’ self-awareness of their learning and progress, so they better know themselves as learners.1
Insights from ERO that may help you:
ERO’s evaluations of teaching practices that work in primary and secondary settings found that in high performing schools, teachers make use of valuable information about students’ cultural backgrounds to plan programmes that celebrate and further extend students’ understanding of their own and others’ rich and diverse cultural backgrounds. Schools benefited from professional learning programmes that gave teachers greater awareness about the need to know their students as culturally located learners, and increased their ability to design relevant learning opportunities for their students.2
Differentiation key #2: know how to identify areas for learner progress
Leaders and teachers must get to know well the specific learning needs of each individual, based on valid and collectively well-understood assessment, as well as what has been observed by whānau, support staff and class teachers.
The Ministry of Education’s Tiered Support Model (Response to Intervention) supports early identification of students who are not progressing as they should, and ensures the right levels of support are in place for individuals and groups of learners. It structures the guidance as tiers:
- Tier 1: within a universal classroom setting, provide specific targeted teaching and flexible grouping for differentiated learning
- Tier 2: more targeted, small group approaches with intensive instruction and regular extra support
- Tier 3: highly individualised tailored support that may include specialists such as RTLB.
At each tier, progress is monitored and students move between tiers as needed. Based on this whole-school model, the strategies for differentiated responses at each tier can be best selected.
Differentiation key #3: choosing your strategies
The education landscape is filled with programmes, tools, advice and resources. Even more are on offer now as the refreshed curriculum is being rolled out. Leaders must make prudent choices to select the right strategies for providing effective differentiated instruction to the learners in their unique setting. ERO’s evaluation model3 presents the processes required for deliberate, systematic decision making and reasoning. Too often, ERO sees school leaders effectively Noticing the needs of individuals and groups of learners, but moving straight to Prioritising to take Action; often, that is, to taking the first programme on offer. Before leaping to solutions that may prove costly, ineffective and result in change fatigue for teachers and students, leaders and teachers need to take the time now to carefully Investigate options, based on good evidence and examples of best practice, then Collaboratively sense make to decide on preferred options. Shared decision making results in greater chances of success at implementation.
Insights from ERO, and others that may help you:
One way to help with decision making is to understand what works in other, high performing schools. ERO’s studies into effective teaching of reading, writing, maths and science have all found that these schools closely monitored learning and implemented a quick and short-term response when progress was ‘flat lining’. Strategies included: accelerated reading programmes for students who needed this to boost confidence and experience a range of reading strategies; small in-class group interventions; mixed ability grouping; and providing timely, specific feedback to students.
Another step towards successful implementation of a new strategy is to identify the enablers and barriers within the school, community and among individual teachers. The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)4 provides a useful scoping tool to support leaders with leveraging the school’s enablers and reducing any perceived barriers to implementation, and then to prioritise those to be addressed. The tool, a determinant framework, can help you to think about the people and processes implementation of a new strategy will rely on, from multiple perspectives.
Another planning tool that can guide selection and assess the fit and feasibility of potential strategies is the Hexagon Discussion Analysis Tool, from the National Implementation Research Network (University of North Carolina). Again, taking a collaborative team approach to understand diverse perspectives, this tool helps you to consider how a proposed new strategy will fit with existing practice and your school context.
Differentiation key #4: knowing how effective your practices are
Any strategies you implement to support effective differentiated teaching practices will need to deliver on key considerations:
- evidence underpinning the strategy
- stewardship, for example, cost effectiveness
- easy for teachers to implement
- availability of internal and external support, for example, leadership, adequate resources, professional development, teacher aide provision
- knowing very early on that it is having a positive impact on student learning
- deliberate and systematic emergent evaluation of the strategy, and rapid responses to issues.
Insights from ERO that may help you:
Using the School Evaluation Framework (SIF) Quality Teaching domain will support your internal evaluation of the effectiveness of differentiated teaching strategies. If you are already using this tool with your ERO Evaluation Partner you will have a sense of the current state of these indicators, and your priorities for next steps. Ask of your team, To what extent do teachers undertake:
- evidence-based and differentiated pedagogies to provide cognitively challenging, purposeful and well-paced learning opportunities
- scaffolded teaching - use of knowledge of learners’ strengths, needs and interests
- assessment for adaptive teaching: the use of a range of appropriate high quality assessment information to adapt teaching practise to effectively respond to learners’ strengths and needs
- effective additional supports: students needing additional support are identified promptly and provided with relevant, individualised support to learn and progress at an appropriate pace, while those who are succeeding continue to be challenged and extended.
As you gather a view on progress and achievement information about your student cohorts, and begin to consider the tools, resources and supports you need to deliver a differentiated approach to curriculum implementation that will meet their needs, we suggest you take a deliberate and systematic approach to selecting the most appropriate strategies for improving outcomes for all learners.
This article is part of a series created to share information that may help school leaders, educators and those with an interest in supporting education excellence get the best results for learners. If you are interested in this topic, read our latest email outlining professional learning communities here Professional Learning Communities in Support of the Curriculum Implementation | Education Review Office or email info@ERO.govt.nz to be notified when articles like this one are published.
1 Macklin, P. & Zbar, V. (2023). Driving School Improvement. ACER.
2 Keeping children engaged and achieving through rich curriculum inquiries | Education Review Office
2 What drives learning in the senior secondary school? | Education Review Office
Teaching strategies that work - Reading | Education Review Office
NIRN-Hexagon-Discussion-Analysis-Tool_September2020_1.pdf
3 Effective Internal Evaluation for Improvement
4 AERO Explainer – Addressing enablers and barriers to implementation