Differentiated Instruction

For my research, I chose to look at the study “Efficacy Beliefs, Background Variables, and Differentiated Instruction of Israeli Prospective Teachers” by Cheruta Wertheim and Yona Leyser. This article discussed the relationship between teachers’ self-efficacy and how well they perceived the effectiveness of differentiated instruction and individualized instruction to be. I found this article to be interesting because it demonstrated the connection between teachers’ attitudes towards learning and their instructional techniques and conceptions. Essentially, this article found that the greater degree of self-efficacy that teachers had, the more those teachers were willing to offer differentiated instruction and personalize lessons to help individual students who need it. I thought this was a great reminded that a teacher’s attitude really affects the learning done in a class – teachers who have a more positive outlook about how much they can influence students will probably have larger impacts upon their students.

Providing instruction that allows a greater amount of students to learn is a wonderful way to ensure that you are helping students to the best of your abilities. Whether this instruction encompasses using simply a variety of different types of lessons (discussions, things to help different learning styles, etc) or tailoring lessons so that individual students in the class can relate well (which would require knowing one’s class and adapting one’s lesson plan content accordingly), differentiated instruction allows teachers to reach out to as large of percentage of their class as is possible. Also, I think it is necessary to remember that pretty much all students can benefit from differentiated instruction; students who need more help with a concept may benefit from a different type of instruction, and students who oftentimes exceed expectations can benefit from having more challenging tasks. Therefore, I believe it is necessary for teachers to maintain attitudes that remind them that all students are different, so types of instruction should be as varied as their students are.