ABSTRACT
Meeting students’ special educational needs successfully in mainstream classrooms usually requires that subject matter, learning activities, teaching procedures, resource materials and patterns of classroom organization must often be adapted or modified. This strategy of adapting to students’ needs and abilities to make classrooms more inclusive is known as differentiated instruction – previously it was referred to as ‘mixed-ability teaching’. In simple terms, differentiated instruction can be defined as teaching things differently according to certain important differences among learners. In principle, effective differentiation means that the educational needs of almost all children with disabilities, learning difficulties, language differences and with gifts and talents can all be met in the regular classroom, and within a common curriculum. In the UK, official policy guidelines have endorsed a differentiated approach as a necessary component for inclusive education, and as a way of giving almost all learners access to the National Curriculum (DfE, 2013c, 2013d; NCSE, 2011). The Department for Education in England has stated:
We know that how some pupils access the national curriculum will be different from others. This may mean that their rate of progress is different and will be dependent on adapting teaching approaches to meet their needs but does not mean that they are unable to participate fully. In practice this means ensuring that the national curriculum is taught in ways that enable all pupils to have an equal opportunity to succeed. . . . [T]eachers must determine the support and teaching interventions their pupils need to participate fully in all parts of the school curriculum.
