4.2 Differentiation
Differentiation is planning to ensure that all students in the class can understand and make progress in their learning. It includes tailoring assessment and feedback to the needs of individual students so that they can make progress and will help to address some of the concerns about reliability and validity of assessment.
Hattie (2012) identifies the following five characteristics of effective differentiation, all of which are relevant to assessment:
- All students have the opportunity to explore the key concepts and achieve success.
- Frequent formative assessment is used in order to monitor students’ progress.
- Teachers are flexible about how they group students, giving them the opportunity to work alone, with different people or as a whole class.
- Students are actively engaged in activities that will enable them to achieve success.
- Differentiation is related to differential learning gains rather than focusing on attainment levels. Students who are making progress, regardless of their starting point, will need different opportunities from those who are not.
Planning assessment that offers all of these five characteristics is not easy and requires experience and knowledge of what works. However, that should not stop you working to achieve effective differentiation. Using AfL will enable you to find out who is or is not making progress so that you can use assessment to support the learning of all students.
Activity 8 Recognising student diversity – inclusive assessment
Part 1
How could geographical assessments discriminate against working class students?
You might consider a range of learning and assessment activities, experiences outside school or access to resources.
How can you effectively differentiate to avoid such discrimination?
Comment
There is a wide variety of possible discrimination. Some teachers will adopt a ‘deficit model’ in relation to the experiences, aspirations and abilities of working-class students. Such assumptions may affect the challenge and the type of assessments used.
At the other end of the scale, some teachers are oblivious to potential barriers to learning related to the socio-economic situation of students. Limited access to resources and family support may disadvantage some students.
The key to differentiating to avoid discrimination lies in getting to know the students. It is important not to label working-class students as a homogeneous group.
Part 2
Read each of the short student profiles below. For each student, write notes about how you might recognise their specific needs related to AfL in geography lessons.
Ash has cerebral palsy, which causes difficulty with coordination. He also tires easily.
Winston has Asperger’s syndrome. He is fascinated by studying different places but has communication difficulties and finds it difficult to be creative.
Nina came to Britain with her parents following a war in her own country. Her parents have since divorced and Nina lives with her mother. She is experiencing emotional difficulties, which impact on her social relationships and her ability to concentrate.
Comment
You may have considered:
- adapting language, instructions and questions especially for Winston and Nina
- completing short assessments throughout a lesson, rather than leaving them until the end (Ash, Nina)
- help from a scribe (Ash)
- ways of raising the students’ self-esteem (for example, setting achievable short-term goals)
- supporting the students with appropriate resources (for example, visual resources)
- supporting Nina in improving her social relationships (for peer assessment and group work).
Assessment of the physical environment would be crucial if you were working outside the classroom with Ash.
Part 3
What other factors might you consider when planning inclusive assessment?
List a range of factors, explain their relevance and suggest effective responses.
Comment
A wide range of disabilities and special educational needs of students will affect their assessed work in many ways. Considering the needs of individual students, rather than labelling all students with a condition as being the same, is key to designing and implementing inclusive assessment.
Some students have different preferred learning styles. The format of assessments may affect their performance and progress, so including a variety of assessment formats (perhaps giving students choices) will be more inclusive.
Students with poor recall or poor attendance may be unable to demonstrate higher-order thinking skills if factual information is not provided. Including resources in assessments can help these students to exhibit skills such as analysis, evaluation and synthesis.