ABSTRACT
In this chapter we are concerned with pedagogical differentiation, that is, how teachers structure their classrooms and interact with students so as to meet their diverse needs. Advocacy for differentiation has been evident and a source of concern in a number of locations. For example, the Times Education Supplement (Dixie 2011) provides advice to new teachers in England on how to differentiate their classrooms, and in Australia the NSW Department of Education and Communities website (2016) advocates curriculum differentiation for ‘gifted students’. An article in the UK Guardian in 2003, headlined ‘Differentiation, the new monster in education-Differentiation is just another pressure meted out by managers’, captures the frustration of some teachers who feel that this policy is impacting negatively on their classroom practice (Everest 2003). In Queensland, where the case studies are located, differentiation was mandated through an audit of teaching and learning. Publication of data on these audits indicated that the implementation of ‘differentiation’ was problematic for teachers. We would suggest that this may well be the case in many locations.
