Differentiated Instruction
Differentiated instruction is an instructional strategy that recognises and caters for individual learning differences. It aims to maximise learning through taking into consideration students’ individual learning styles and needs and offering various avenues for students to explore and demonstrate their learning.
Matching students’ abilities, interests and preferred learning styles while further developing their abilities and encouraging them to try new ways of learning is a key goal. Teachers meet students' individual needs through differentiating the content, process, product and/or the learning environment. To ensure success, teachers must continually assess students and employ instructional strategies flexibly.
The need for differentiated instruction becomes apparent as students in Hong Kong come from different cultural, ethnic and language backgrounds, and diverse learning needs.
Differentiated instruction is promoted through our professional development programmes, Seed projects and literacy programmes.
Readiness, Interest and Learning Profile
Students learn better if learning tasks closely match their skills and understanding of a topic (readiness), ignite their curiosity or passion (interest), and cater for their learning preferences and styles (profile).
Differentiating Content, Process, Product and/or Environment
In general, teachers need to deal with the following curricular elements when designing and giving instruction:
- content - input, i.e. what students learn;
- process - how students go about making sense of ideas and information;
- product - output, i.e. how students demonstrate what they have learned; and
- environment - where the learning takes place.