The death of ‘differentiation’ and why it matters for inclusion

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10 September 2024

By Joseph Mintz

Government policy for the schools system in England has moved away from using the term ‘differentiation’, replacing it with what they have called ‘adaptive teaching’. This is an idiosyncratic term in this context, and it seems that by adaptive teaching the Government means to refer to an emphasis on direct instruction and mastery learning. I argue here that this shift risks the individual learning needs of children with special educational needs being ignored, and that this has not been given enough attention in policy, practice or teacher education.

For those not familiar with classroom practice, differentiation, or differentiated instruction, involves teaching in a way that addresses the different needs and interests of students, using varied course content, activities, and assessments; so, for instance, different students or groups of students might be working on different tasks during the same lesson. Direct instruction, meanwhile, involves more of an emphasis on working as a whole class, under the ‘direct instruction’ of the teacher, with all of the class learning at the same pace, and the teacher only moving on to the next concept when all or nearly all the class have securely grasped the previous concept. Direct instruction is often connected to the concept of ‘mastery learning’, which there has been some enthusiasm for in the English context, particularly in some subject areas, such as Mathematics. This mastery approach breaks up content into tightly specified units with specified learning outcomes, which (all or nearly all) learners must demonstrate mastery of before moving on to new material.

In England, the move towards ‘adaptive teaching’ in place of ‘differentiation’ was presaged by an influential Education Endowment Fund blog post in 2022. Subsequently, the Department for Education has adopted the phrasing in a number of policy initiatives, including the Early Career Framework for newly qualified teachers and the revised National Professional Qualifications for more experienced teachers and school leaders.

This change chimes with wider international debates about whether direct instruction approaches, often involving mastery learning, are in fact the best route to meet the needs of all learners, including those with perceived special educational needs. The main rationale is that differentiation is seen as being too focused on thinking about the needs of individual children identified with special educational needs, which could lead to teacher expectations being lower for such children. By contrast, the thinking goes, if teachers focus first and foremost on teaching the whole class, this ensures there are high expectations for everyone.

It is curious that in England the policy shift towards whole class teaching has foregrounded this unusual phrasing of ‘adaptive teaching’. Neither in the academic literature, nor in policy terms in other countries has the term been used in this way: it is much more usual to see reference to ‘direct instruction’, as a wider concept which encompasses approaches such as mastery learning. Whatever the terminology, the question is whether this move away from differentiation is actually working as intended. There are lots of good reasons to be worried that it might not.

To be effective, whole class teaching and direct instruction models need to include careful tailoring and monitoring for individual children, in addition to a focus on whole class progress, something that is very difficult to do well. As regards children with special educational needs, teachers may be less confident in understanding what is expected of these children, or may not have the right training to be able to effectively implement whole class approaches such as mastery learning so that they meet the needs of all children. As in some cases in other territories, it may be that in England the move away from ‘differentiation’ towards ‘adaptive teaching’ could have been interpreted by some as meaning that they can forget about tracking and meeting the needs of individual children (i.e. differentiating) altogether. If this is the case, then the potential consequences of this for children with special educational needs in mainstream settings are significant. Could it be that their needs will just be forgotten?

At the moment, we don’t really know whether this might be happening or not. We also know little about how this issue is being addressed in both pre- and in-service teacher education in England. Are teachers being supported to develop the necessary skills for adaptive teaching, including mastery learning, for all children? If they are receiving training, are they able to implement and sustain it in the classroom? It is welcome that in the recent update to the Initial Teacher Training Core Content Framework and Early Career Framework improving coverage of special educational needs was a priority, but this is within the framework of adaptive teaching; we will know more once the new programmes are rolled out, from September 2025. In the meantime, more widely, the international academic debate as to which works better, whole class direct instruction versus differentiation, remains unsettled. This is particularly the case in relation to the effective inclusion of children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms. Given this, it would be good to know more about what impact this local English experiment has had in the classroom for children and their families.