Differentiated Instruction in History Education – A Subject-specific Analysis of Why and How

Abstract

Differentiated instruction is an approach to teaching in which teachers respond proactively to the needs and preferences of students in their classroom. This study seeks to increase insight in which instructional design pre-service history teachers use to cater for heterogeneity in the classroom. It draws on pre-service history teachers’ lesson plans. Data regarding pre-service teachers’ actual implementation of differentiated teaching practices were collected based on natural and purposeful designed lesson plans. Three types of heterogeneity as described by Tomlinson were further refined for the domain of history education. Three types of instructional strategies to cater for heterogeneity in history education were found: collaborative learning, tiered approaches, guiding and scaffolding. It is concluded that pre-history teachers manage to design history lessons in which instructional adaptations are made to cater for heterogeneity, but that often no systematic link could be found between assessment of heterogeneity and instructional design.

Keywords

• history education
• teaching methods
• Qualitative analysis
• Teacher education