Upgrading Learning and Teaching Progress - Paper Sample

Introduction

There exist monumental discussions in the education area on what teaching strategies can be employed by the teachers to enable the learners to learn. But the learners' diversity within the classroom, teachers should be conscious of their learners' academic history and combine it with their pre-assessments and observations. Every learner is recognized for their unique potentials when given opportunities to showcase their skills via different assessment methods. Following this foundation and knowledge concerning teachers and learners might design activities and lessons that include learners' learning styles, interests, and readiness to advance their performances in various disciplines.

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In the year 2012, the Philippine people adopted the K-2 Basic Education Curriculum to improve their education system. Their current curriculum aims to empower Mathematics teaching via spiral progression. Learners are guaranteed to learn the necessary skills and topics in developing stages with more mastery and higher retention in continuous revisit and review of prior knowledge. The outcomes of this improvement are supposed to yield skills such as innovative, informed, and creative decision-makers and critical problem solvers.

Problem Statement

Generally speaking, there various problems associated with the application of differentiation in the area of education, but as for the Critical Element of Academic Advancement Towards Upgrading Learning and Teaching Progress, the main problem is:

The divergent effects or potential convergent of comparing differentiation strategies pose unclear controversies since various studies indicate mixed reactions. Hence, it is challenging for teachers to establish precise decisions about when differentiation strategies should be applied to achieve their goals.

Literature Review

The goal of this literature review is to determine the available studies on differentiation and to include insights into how these differentiation practices can positively influence the mathematics and language performance of learners at a lower level, average, and higher levels. This literature review will variably focus on diverse academic groups due to the particular features of various educational age peers.

However, the literature focuses not only on practices by groupings, but some studies might major on these practices without necessarily specifying whether the ability grouping establishes a differentiation context—for instance, learning content, learning time, adaptive instruction, and testing and learning materials. Personal tutoring and research based on tutoring will be left out because differentiation is based on certain individuals other than the whole class's performance. Otherwise, all the diverse ways teachers might consider learners' performance differences are captured in this literature review.

Difficulty in evaluating the influence of researches on potential grouping is that it is run in various ways, and the differences can affect the output of the research. Civitillo et al. (2016) suggest multiple methods of organizing groupings. For instance, it can be between grades or classes, temporary in classrooms, special classes for low or fats learners, or even in homogenous classes for particular subjects, which is quite common in elementary classes. Teachers can assign learners mathematics groups of various levels of achievements or reading or begin with the entire group instruction and provide enrichment or remediation later as the other learners work separately. The study also suggests that several modern learning materials offer content-based abilities with primary content for the entire group and afterward, enrichment materials or rehearsals based on each learner's mastery level (Civitillo et al., 2016). This strategy can enable teachers to provide differentiated learning content to the learners within the classrooms.

Another study by Ottmar et al. (2015) highlights the concept of differentiated instruction. They reasoned that differentiated instruction is deeply rooted in the belief that there exists variability in every group of learners; hence teachers should adjust instruction properly (Ottmar et al., 2015). With this conception, it is perceived that learners can best learn when teachers embrace their differences in their levels of readiness, language styles, and interests to engage them in practical learning. They also suggested that lessons might be differentiated based on the process, content, and products, which includes instruction and preparation delivery, methods of manning classrooms as prospects of the performances of learners which considers the differences and distinct levels of interests, readiness, and learning profiles (Ottmar et al., 2015).

Learner Based Method

However, Manship, Farber, Smith, and Drummond (2016) believe in the learner-based method where it is significant to consider the difference of each learner based on their personality, abilities, strengths, and previous experiences part of the process of learning. From their constructive perspectives, learning is perceived as a changing process reminding teachers that every learner requires time, subtle experience, and space to back up the learning process. The learners come to terms with reality concerning their past experiences, value attitudes, conceptual knowledge, and accepted learning (Manship et al., 2016).

On the other hand, the ZPD theory (zone of proximal development) affirms that learners learn best, especially when imposed on tasks or difficult learning experiences directed by more skilled teachers and peers (Piasta et al., 2014). The role of a teacher in the constructivist classrooms is not restricted to providing a lecture to learners but instead, an expert who guides towards the implementation of cognitive strategies like articulating understanding, self-testing, reflecting, and asking more interrogatory questions (Piasta et al., 2014).

Additionally, the teaching strategies employed in the classrooms also influence learners' academic performance (Sawyer, 2017). The learner's academic performance is of great concern since it measures how well they have acquired competencies and the success of teachers in implementing the learning process. Besides fostering the teaching strategies, the interaction of learners during the lesson should be taken seriously since it might also result in learners' academic performance or failure. However, with the disengagement of learners, ultimate learning experiences might not be achieved.

Differentiation in learning comprises multiple uses of strategies depending on the cognitive theory, constructivism theory, and learning styles (Negreiros, 2017). Since learners' learning styles vary, the knowledge over these learning styles is also significant. Moreover, differentiation instruction is not meant to alter the learning objectives of any given lesson. However, it can improve the content, the result, and facilitate the process, enabling the learners to establish personal understanding via strategies that meet their demands. Also, learners who are engaged in learning are motivated to learn to perform high and are well behaved compared to their disengaged and unmotivated counterparts.

Moreover, learners' interaction has been suggested as one of the determinant factors that influence learners' academic performances (Al Otaiba et al., 2016). The above element is considered an essential contributor to the academic performance of the learner. Many studies surrounding learners' engagement identify the main dimensions as behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement, and effective engagement.

Learners' Engagement

The survey by Al Otaiba, Folsom, Wanzek, Greulich, Waesche, Schatschneider, and Connor (2016) further elaborates on the three major dimensions of learners' engagement. According to these proponents, the cognitive dimension entails the concept of investment. In contrast, the affective dimension encompasses learners' responses to school, teachers, and peers, thus influencing the inclination to be used in school assignments. The behavioral dimension involves the concept of active involvement and participation in social and academic activities.

According to CHOY et al. (2020), differentiated instruction has been recognized for its role in the Mathematics classroom. In Africa, specific researchers determined the impacts of differentiating instruction on learners' achievement on mathematics from high schools. They used the Solomon four and quasi-experimental design. The outcomes indicated that differentiated instruction mostly advanced the learners' performances in mathematics compared to traditional education. Moreover, they investigated tiered activities involved in improving the knowledge of the learners' infractions. Again, the study indicated a potential gain in the learners' average test scores.

Caldwell (2012) examined different strategies intending to increase learners' engagement and academic performance in the classrooms. He assessed every learner's learning style, including tactile, auditory, visual, and kinetics, and implanting differentiated learning strategies for every group while taking note of their academic progress and engagement with each other. The results indicated that the learning styles based on differentiated instruction were employed for learners taking mathematics. The study also found out that learners getting differentiated instruction witnessed major gains in their math performance (Caldwell, 2012).

The study conducted by Coubergs et al. (2017) identifies various teaching strategies that can be employed to differentiate in classrooms and schools. Homogenous classes are applicable in high school education, whereas, in heterogeneous classrooms, teachers can use homogeneous or heterogeneous groupings. Besides, in heterogeneous classes, teachers might offer adapted learning content and instruction where the lower learner might get more time to grasp the key learning content (Coubergs et al., 2017).

Consequently, the teaching and learning techniques teachers decide to use are associated with the explicit and implicit learning objectives for their entire classroom. Therefore, from a theoretic point of view, they can work for divergence and convergence goals. Those teachers striving for convergence are majorly focused on achieving the minimum performance level of all the learners meaning they may commit extra time and effort to the low performers to achieve the minimum level of performance (Dixon et al., 2014).

Conclusion

In comparison, teachers focusing on divergence mostly major on assisting all the learners to achieve their ultimate potential while equally separating the attention between lower leaners and higher learners' ability. The application of ability-based performance objectives for various groups of learners of distinct ability levels might widen the gap between higher and lower ability learners. However, in practice, many teachers tend to combine divergent and convergent goals in an attempt to achieve the minimum performance levels with the lower potential learners while providing the higher ability learners an opportunity to expand their knowledge without going ahead of their counterparts in classrooms (Dixon et al., 2014).