ABSTRACT
Individual differences among students present a pervasive, profound problem for instructional designers. At the outset of instruction in any topic, at any age, in any culture, students will differ from one another in various intellectual and psychomotor abilities and skills, in both general and specialized prior knowledge, in interests, attitudes, and motives, and in personal styles of thought and work during learning, that in turn will relate directly and often strongly to differences in their learning progress. These relations imply that individual predispositions somehow condition learners' readiness to profit from the particular instructional treatment provided. Instructional theorists and practitioners since ancient times have noted these relations and some have developed plans to adapt instruction to individual differences. But actual instructional practice has mostly remained fixed, adaptive to individual differences in minor ways, if at all. Students are usually expected to fit the instructional system as given; some do, some don't, there is a range between, and some drop out.
