Disability, Difference, and Diversity

Feb 25, 2010 by Susan Fitzell

There’s a world of difference between those words, particularly when they are applied to students and how they learn.  It’s all too easy (and common) for people who merely learn differently to be branded as “learning disabled,” “hyperactive,” “ADHD,” or “unteachable,” and shunted into the educational backwaters of Special Education. If ever there was a time when society needed their rich diversity of intelligence and fresh ways of thinking, this is that time. We can’t afford to let the ideas and abilities of our different thinkers go undeveloped simply because they don’t fit into one narrow educational model.

Too many classrooms still rely solely on verbal linguistic teaching methods — lectures and verbal instructions delivered by one person standing in front of a roomful of more or less attentive children. Many kids can and will learn  in this type of classroom, but too many others will lose their joy of learning and start to dread going to school.

Differentiated instruction involves a flexible, dynamic, and interactive teaching model that doesn’t expect all children to learn the same way, at the same pace, with cookie-cutter results. Students learn the same content and standards based curricula, but the path to learning is much more varied and responsive to the different learning styles and levels of the students in the classroom. Students who learn best through words or who think in more logical-mathematical ways, or those who respond to visual cues as well as the more physically and mechanically gifted students can all be engaged effectively in learning when we differentiate instruction. We reach the listeners, the talkers, and the introspective thinkers.

Once the basic concepts are understood, though, there are many simple and effective techniques for implementing differentiated instruction in the classroom. Introducing pictures and images, movement-based exercises, cooperative projects, and color-coded instruction aids are four teaching strategies that target the special needs of diverse learning styles, while still benefiting all the students in the classroom.

In the weeks to come, I hope to talk some more about the background issues and practical methods I have explored in depth in the second edition of my book, “Special Needs in the General Classroom: Strategies that Make it Work  2nd Edition (2010).”*

Though it may be challenging at first for teachers to learn these new strategies, differentiated instruction has the potential to bring much greater satisfaction, and fun, back into the classroom for the teacher who embraces it as well as the children who will benefit from it.