The New Education Policy in India came out a couple of weeks ago and one of the primary focus has been inclusivity in Education. How to make education inclusive for all children across the classroom? Differentiated teaching, perhaps a part of pedagogy that is the strongest tool of inclusive education. The sound of it, however, makes one feel like differentiation in a classroom is the worst tool and shouldn’t every child be taught “Equal” coursework in the “same” manner? The answer is no. Here is where we speak of equity more than equality, the goal of teaching should be to bring continuous improvements in students present in the classroom. A classroom is a diverse space where children at different stages of learning and understanding in a lesson sit together. The key to ensuring effective learning and desired learning outcomes is to ascertain that each child is identified on the basis of their readiness and a tailored lesson-plan is executed in the classroom for the child. It is not a strategic step but a thought process in teachers that lets them incorporate every childs learning outcomes in their lesson. That, in short, is what we call differential teaching.
The one size fits all doesnt stand true in a classroom context. Dr John Hattie says, “About two-third students who drop out say not one teacher cared about their success in learning at school.” This is where we are lacking severely, children across grades are unable to see their achievement in comparison to their highly ready classmate who seems to be able to follow the lesson with ease and therefore are getting demotivated from investing in their growth. Differentiated teaching ensures that children see the merit in taking one step at a time and appreciating the effort instead of just seeing the end-product. It is important to however realise that the difference in learning levels are often seen as a problem as compared to an opportunity for both students and teachers. Ideally, creating and executing lesson plans in a differentiated class ensures optimum learning for both teachers and students. It is important to realise that we are far from ideal still.
As someone who taught for the last five years, it is natural to find differentiation to be a daunting and mammoth task of navigating through each students’ learning needs in a time-bound class. However, once we get over the fear of starting the task and incorporate differentiation in our classes, it is easy to see the considerable impact on learning outcomes and classroom participation. A video shared on Firki, shows a classroom that takes student interest in account and the teacher uses differentiated instruction to lead the class. It is markedly different than most of our schools in India and the New Education Policy aims to bring inclusivity in our classroom through various techniques.
The question is despite the benefits of differentiated instruction, why are our teachers so reluctant? The answer lies in Prisoners Dilemma of Game Theory. Teaching a differentiated lesson is ideal but it does not come across as the best scenario to the teachers. Consider this case scenario:
- Two Teachers: Teacher A, Teacher B.
- Payoffs are written as: (a,b); a for Teacher A, b for Teacher B.
- Each teacher has the following Strategies: {Teach DI, Dont Teach DI}
Here, DI means differentiated instructions. The pay-off Matrix can be as follows:
| Teacher A | Teacher B | ||
| T | Teach DI | Don’t Teach DI | |
| TeachDI | If both teachers decide to incorporate DI, then both of them have added work and improved learning outcomes. | If teacher A decides to incorporate DI then she has added work while teacher B can continue with her usual lessons without change. | |
| Don’ tTeach DI | If teacher B decides to incorporate DI then she has added work while teacher A can continue with her usual lessons without change. | If both of them dont participate, there is no systemic change recorded and no comparison can be drawn. |
It is human tendency to resist change. According to the matrix, if Teacher A chooses to teach using differentiated instructions, Teacher Bs best response is to not teach using differentiated instructions as that would give her a higher pay-off and vice-versa. It is the classic lack of cooperation between teachers in thinking what’s in it for them and their colleagues might be enjoying the extra time while they work without any perks that cause them to not try a new pedagogy which may be beneficial and results in an undesirable output.
Interestingly, nudging can play a very important role here. If we can introduce an incentive for the teachers who are teaching using DI by giving them 3 points extra, the entire matrix would change.
| Teacher A | Teacher B | ||
| Teach DI | If both teachers decide to incorporate DI, then both of them have added work, improved learning outcomes and incentives in the form of appreciation, promotion, etc. | If teacher A decides to incorporate DI then she has added work but she also has incentives while teacher B can continue with her usual lessons without change. Both of their situations are similar in a way. | |
| Don’t Teach DI | If teacher B decides to incorporate DI then she has added work but she also has incentives while teacher A can continue with her usual lessons without change. Both of their situations are similar in a way. | If both of them dont participate, there is no systemic change recorded and no comparison can be drawn. | |
After introducing incentives, the pay-offs are such that any rational person would want to teach using differentiated instruction for the kind of benefits they will get. This will also ensure cooperation because if BOTH the teachers are using DI the pay-offs are the highest. Therefore, by guaranteeing incentives, we have workers coming forward, and realizing the benefits of cooperation, thus creating a feedback loop through the Role Model Effect and Cooperation. In Dr John Hatties words, Planning can be done in many ways, but the most powerful is when teachers work together to develop plans, develop common understandings of what is worth teaching, collaborate on understanding their beliefs of challenge and progress, and work together to evaluate the impact of their planning on student outcomes.
One of the major problems with teachers in public schools in India is that there is absolutely no feedback loop in place apart from the yearly inspections. They also dont have any incentive to perform better than how they are doing right now and are reluctant to do anything more than what their performance is measured on, that is, pass percentage. Therefore, it is about time that appraisals are made a part of the education ecosystem where teachers have incentives to look forward to in the case of continuous betterment and innovation in the classroom.
In his analysis of Indias education system, Lant Pritchett hypothesizes that the reason why India (and many other developing countries) demonstrate low progress on basic learning outcomes, is because the education system is designed to cohere only around the goal of schooling inputs (enrolment, access, infrastructure) rather than learning. While the NEP looks promising in shifting focus from what goes outside the classroom to the happenings inside the classroom, it will be interesting to see how this policy is implemented further in the country and if it does bring the reforms around inclusive education that it claims to do on paper.
Mayuri Puryakastha, Teaching Fellow, Teach For India
Views are personal.