PETA: Differentiating Instruction, Do Teachers have to know it?

PETA: Differentiating Instruction, Do Teachers have to know it?

By: Budi Trisna

Nowadays, as a teachers we do not allowed to ignore our students in any single thing that they have. Students have a lot of the unique thing that teacher have to consider it. For instance, they have their own way to learn, to response and to do something. Teachers have not to generalize students’ uniqueness in the classroom. Some pedagogists have found a lot of instruction, which is offer the way teachers appreciate their students’ uniqueness in the classroom. One of them is differentiating instruction.

Differentiating instruction is one of instruction that emphasis on how do the teachers provide an instruction in the classroom based on students’ needs, interests and style. It focuses to students’ way of learning and gives a chance to exposure their capability based on their strength and interest.

Differentiating instruction is rigorous, relevant, flexible-varied and complex. Rigorous means teachers provide some go beyond instruction that has purpose to challenge and push students’ motivation. Second is relevant. Relevant emphasizes on essential learning. It means teachers have to conduct activities that focus on the objective which is have to reach in the end of the course and avoid in fun-oriented only.

Flexible-varied is talk about how do teachers apply students’ right in the classroom (for example, teacher gives opportunities to the students to make a decision which is topic that they want explore it more). The last is complex. It means as a teacher do not give an activity that over go beyond students’ capability. According to the explanation about those term in differentiating instruction, we got the main charge of the teacher is have to recognize individual differences (needs, interest, style and uniqueness of the students) and set a goal for learning based on students’ particular capability.

Talking about recognize individual differences, here are some cases of student diversity in classroom. They are cognitive ability, learning style, socioeconomic factors, readiness, learning pace, gender influences, culture influences, how students value learning and confidence in learning. In this time, I want to focus on learning style and readiness. As a teacher we have to teach around 25-30 students in classroom. So that, before we conduct an activity we have to know our student learning style. Environment, social organization, physic circumstances, emotional climate, psychological factors and sensory modes are the aspects that include in learning style. Readiness emphasizes on how the teachers recognize the readiness of student before they go to the next topic. Because, in fact we could find some students are ready to learn new topic but some of them feel lack of skill to learn it. Our big jobs as teachers are to provide a leaning to cover a student who is ready and put together an activity that can providing basic instruction and practice for students’ who are struggling.

Based on the brief explanation about differentiating instruction, teachers ought to know about it because in the classroom teachers have to be facilitator that understands about their students’ needs, interests and style. In addition we have to consider that instruction is not “one size fits all” we have to “custom” it, along with it is not as instant as we imagine to apply it in real situation.