Teacher practices in differentiated instruction: a survey of practices in grades four through eight

In California, and particularly in Los Angeles, the percent of students who are proficient in mathematics declines as students move from 4th to 8th grade. The purpose of this study was to examine the use of differentiated instructional (DI) strategies by elementary (grades 4 and 5) and middle school (grades 6, 7, and 8) teachers in mathematics, to determine whether the use of DI strategies varied from elementary to middle school and if there were relationships between teachers' reported use of DI and classroom and teacher characteristics. The participants included 98 teachers from nine elementary and three middle schools. Teachers responded to a 31-question survey, based in part on a survey developed by Carol Tomlinson, (Tomlinson & Allen, 2000) which asked them to report on their use of DI in three dimensions (planning and assessment, working with diverse learners, and teaching strategies) and classroom/teacher characteristics (school level, classroom demographics, type of teaching credential, years of experience teaching mathematics, and amount of training in DI). Classroom demographics were defined as the percentage of English learners, students with disabilities, and gifted students in the classroom. Using descriptive, comparative, and correlational analyses, the means and standard deviations for the three DI dimensions were analyzed against the independent variables of school level, classroom demographics, type of teaching credential, years of teaching experience in math, and training in DI. Significant relationships were found between how frequently teachers reported using DI and both the percentage of students with disabilities in their class and the amount of training they had in DI. The variables of school level, type of credential, and years of mathematics teaching experience had no significant relationship to teachers' reported use of DI, and may be mediated by the amount of training in DI.