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IntroductionSince the late 1980s, the term differentiation has increasingly entered theeveryday usage of teachers and become a priority issue on many schooldevelopment plans. Yet in the summer of 1994, when most of the co-authors ofthis book met together on an in-service education (INSET) course at the Instituteof Education in Cambridge, a library research revealed only three books and asmall collection of articles with differentiation in their title. Of these, noneprovided any actual examples of practice and none asked the sorts of questionsabout differentiation that this group of teachers most wanted to raise.This seemed a good enough reason for trying to write such a book ourselves.What was needed, we felt, was a book written by teachers for teachers that wouldreflect the living, breathing, frustrating, tiring, challenging, rewarding andoccasionally inspiring reality of everyday work in schools. We have tried towrite the kind of book that we wish had been available to us at the start of thecourse: one that reads easily but does not patronise, one that not only offerspractical examples but also raises theoretical questions, one that recognises thepressures of practice and the need to get the task done, but does not shy awayfrom acknowledging the complexity of the issues involved.When we came together originally, as a group of professional people, all thatunited us was a shared interest in learning more about the issue of differentiationand its implications for practice in schools. As we have gradually built up ashared body of knowledge, experience and expertise, however, we have alsogradually begun to elaborate some shared questions, concerns and principlesrelating to differentiation that give a distinctive flavour to the approach adoptedin this book.Perhaps the most important of these is a recognition that the new f focus ondifferentiation in schools can lead not only to positive developments but also todevelopments that we would not necessarily wish to endorse. One of our mainaims in this book, then, is to draw attention to some of these more controversialaspects of differentiation and try to open these up to constructive discussionand debate. We do not pretend to have definitive answers to the questions weraise, or to offer clear solutions to the tensions and complexities that weacknowledge. What we can do is to provide honest accounts of how we haveattempted to respond to them so far in the various contexts within which we
2 INTRODUCTIONwork. All are part of a continuing enquiry: seeking to understand whatdifferentiation means and the part it might play in fostering childrens learning.In many cases, the accounts record the first tentative steps taken as we beganto explore ways forward. Most are written by teachers who are describing theirwork for publication for the first time. We present them because we think thatthe questions they address are important and because examples of practice willprovide food for thought to help readers reflect upon alternative possibilities andestablish their own principled basis for choosing particular ways of working.The overall structure of the book and the organisation of the case studychapters have been designed with this purpose in mind. It is possible to read ordip into the various parts of the book in any order, or use individual chapters as abasis for INSET, depending upon readers particular needs, interests andpurposes. All chapters begin with an editorial introduction which aims tohighlight the key issues and questions addressed in each chapter at a general level.This could be used as a starting point for staff discussion, drawing first uponteachers own experience and resources to reflect upon the questions and issuesraised, and then developing the discussion further by engaging with the ideas inthe chapter.PART I:WHAT IS DIFFERENTIATION?Many teachers on the course felt that a necessary first step for themselves andtheir colleagues was to demystify the notion of differentiation. They talked tocolleagues, observed in lessons, examined their own practices and tookphotographs round the school in order to clarify their own understandings of theterm and the range of practices that might be included within it. They drew ontheir own existing understandings, plus the limited literature so far available, tobegin to analyse and describe the many features of school and classroom practicewhich contribute to differentiation and examine how these connected up withtheir own ideas of good practice.In this first part of the book, we invite readers now to reconsider with us thequestion What is differentiation? Our experience suggests that there is nosimple answer to that question. Indeed, the term has a whole set of meanings andprior associations which are frequently unacknowledged in current debates.Three course participants, including the course tutor, make their owncontributions to answering this question, linking it up to their own experienceand practice.Chapter 1 examines the origins of the new emphasis on differentiation andsome of the influences which have made differentiation a major priority fordevelopment work in many schools. It highlights some of the controversial andproblematic issues which the term differentiation raises for the author, andproposes an interpretation of differentiation which links it to equalopportunities issues.
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