Closing the gap: differentiation by time

There’s a lot of talk about differentiation by outcome, differentiation of explanations, differentiation of support, differentiation of task, etc. etc. etc.. Heck, there’s eighty purported differentiation strategies here.

I worry sometimes about doing differentiation for its own sake. We don’t talk so much about the goals or the assumptions behind differentiation, when those, to me, seem to be the much bigger questions. In this post I’ll explore some of those questions, and present my view of the conditions when, and how, differentiation makes sense. (The title gives you a hint.)

I remember watching this episode from the Simpsons on BBC2 when I was at school myself. This particular section has lingered in my mind since then, and since becoming a teacher it naturally came back to mind. As I watched it again, it’s even more devastating than I remembered.

While that clip has so much worth commenting on, Bart’s quote says it all:

“Let me get this straight. We’re behind the rest of our class and we’re going to catch up to them by going slower than they are?”

Differentiation via a slower remedial class: clearly a ridiculous idea – or is it?

To me, there are several responses to Bart’s insight. Instinctively we want to laugh with him, because it’s clearly a ridiculous state of affairs. But don’t we subconsciously and unknowingly do something very similar in our daily teaching, as we differentiate? This group of children are the lowest attaining in the class, so they will focus on more basic knowledge and skills. This group are the highest attaining, so they get pushed onto new knowledge and skills or deeper questions. If that’s how we teach – and that IS how I teach and how I was trained to teach – then we are doing exactly what Bart ridicules us for. The students who are furthest behind get even further behind as they are either denied access (whether just by lack of time, as they have to spend their time on more basic questions first, or by explicit lack of teacher permission, or by lack of understanding) harder material. Those who are ahead get even further ahead. There is only one result: a widening of the chasm between the top and the bottom.

Perhaps Bart is wrong. I teach like this because I have to. I teach a subject which is setted and streamed, and even then, no matter which set I teach, there is still a wide range in the speed with which groups of students grasp certain topics. Some students are lightning quick: they require little else than just a few examples and a general rule; others are slower, requiring explicit flagging up of misconceptions, multiple examples, illustrations, non-examples, etc. until the concepts become clearer. On top of that, I differentiate every day because my students literally demand it and like it. I use a strategy like this (featuring the lovely Dani Quinn) in most lessons, where after my main planned explanation I offer a choice: students can either go on to the main task, or volunteer themselves for extra examples and re-explanations (and sometimes I select the students based on AfL). I do this because it’s obvious that some students need that extra explanation whereas others don’t. Yet it is still true: in the time taken to re-explain for these students, the other students in the class have extra time to go onto harder and deeper tasks. This technique may be necessary, but Bart is still right: even if you need to go slower, going slower still leaves you further behind.

This is what I mean by examining the assumptions behind differentiation. While the practice has its benefits, and may even be necessary to be a responsible teacher, most strategies are built on the assumption that some children are only capable of so much. That gaps in attainment can’t be closed. It’s an assumption bolstered by target levels. Yet it’s paradoxical that we then spend so much time teaching about ‘growth mindsets’. At the least, it’s clearly not a straightforward assumption. If we hold to this assumption, then it’s fine to accept that differentiation is good practice, and gets students to where they are able to get to. But as Chris Parsons writes here, there’s also an epistemic problem with this assumption: who are we to judge (or impose?) these limits upon our students?

We don’t know enough about:

• The past of our pupils
• The future of our pupils
• The complex internal state of our pupils
• The complex dynamics of how learning really works

Back to Bart’s quote. Is there a way forward?

“Let me get this straight. We’re behind the rest of our class and we’re going to catch up to them by going slower than they are?”

As I’ve said, I think that many students benefit from slower teaching. But I don’t like the inevitable consequence that this method enlarges differences between attainment groups – nor the assumption which underlies this consequence.

So, here is the big suggestion: Students who learn slower must catch up by learning for longer. In other words, we should differentiate by time. It’s pretty obvious, really; you can get to any destination at any speed, as long as you’ve got the time. Yet it hasn’t been suggested in any differentiation training that I’ve received.

Speed isn’t the only determinant of learning progress. Time and persistence pay off, too.

To some extents all schools already do this: it’s exam season, and across the country certain groups of students are currently being showered with intervention classes and extra teaching time. Yet it’s very limited, based more on pushing for borderline exam results than on helping students flourish over their entire education. And by the time students reach year 11, the gap is already huge, and the impact of these sessions limited. Far better to close it earlier on, when it’s smaller and there’s less to cover, but it seems to me that focused interventions in year 7 aren’t anywhere near as common.

What might it look like in practice? Shanghai success-story maths teachers use same-day intervention sessions, based on same-day homework assessment. It’s easy to see similar systems put in place without the burden of extra marking – perhaps by using exit tickets. Every lesson, every student is checked for their ability to perform the lesson’s learning objective successfully. Those who don’t nail it get extra teaching time to nail it after school. If teaching time is stretched already, link it to an online maths package or software, with explanations and tasks to try. Alternatively, free up some teaching time by making class sizes bigger; any drop off in class focus should be caught up by the very same interventions. This way, classes can go at various speeds, suiting various groups of learners, whilst extra teaching time for those who need it ensures everyone gets to the same point of mastery in the end.

In summary, there are all sorts of attainment gaps in education. I believe that much of my day-to-day teaching practice of differentiation, while necessary, doesn’t address these core gaps: students who are behind can’t catch up by going slower (even though they need to go slower). The only way to close the gap for such students is to give them more teaching time.