To make DI effective and purposeful, planning must integrate the various curricular components of learning outcomes, assessment and instruction. Tomlinson (2003, 2005, 2014) highlighted that differentiation is proactive, not one in which minor, on-the-spot modifications are made to the one-size-fits all curriculum, but instead, it is planning a curriculum that has respect for and attends to learner variance from the onset of the planning and throughout the instruction.

In this PEDTalk session, you will have the opportunity to engage with the guest speaker Assistant Professor Heng Tang Tang who will share findings from her research on teachers’ experiences of DI in Singapore. In particular, she will share some of the common issues and concerns faced by teachers and ways to overcome these issues. 

Dr Heng is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education. As an ex-Geography teacher and ex-MOE officer, Dr Heng draws from her teaching and research experiences to help teachers make sense of differentiated instruction in the Singapore context. In recognition of her work in teaching and research, she has been awarded the NIE Excellence in Teaching Commendation (2019/2020) and NIE Excellence in Research Award (2020).

The previous PEDTalk session in April 2022, helmed by Assistant Professor Heng Tang Tang from the National Institute of Education, made a call for teachers to appreciate student diversity in the classroom through differentiated instructions (DI). Some of the key insights from the session are:

1. to appreciate each student as an individual and to see them beyond the lens of ability and readiness;

2. to align DI to the principles of quality curriculum such as clarity of learning outcomes (KUD) and provisions for authentic and relevant tasks;

3. to create  opportunities for self-assessment;

4. to plan for DI at a unit level.

Tomlinson (2003, 2005, 2014) highlighted that differentiation is proactive, not one in which minor, on-the-spot modifications are made to the one-size-fits all curriculum, but instead, it is planning a curriculum that has respect for and attends to learner variance from the onset of the planning and throughout the instruction.

In this upcoming PEDTalk, we are heeding the call to look more closely into the task of planning and designing DI at the unit plan level. In this session, participants will discuss what are the essential features of a differentiated unit plan and how DI flows through an entire unit. 

5 DI Practices