ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the connected environmental layers-the instructional environment, the social-emotional environment, and the organizational environment-and highlights key considerations for designing and sustaining classrooms in which differentiated instruction can thrive. Teachers must manage dynamic components, including physical space, time, resources, curriculum requirements, assessment, expectations for work and behavior, students'various motivations, tasks set at varied levels of complexity and with different supports, and myriad grouping configurations. The pathway to expert practice is one of incremental steps and opportunities for reflection, so that teachers gradually introduce changes in practice that develop into routines and ultimately into ways of working that are sustainable over time. The field of gifted education has given rise to countless definitions and conceptions of giftedness and talent, and dozens of curriculum and program models. Learners’ need for acceptance, affirmation, and a sense of emotional security at school is universal.
