How Do Education Systems Deal with Individual Differences?
The challenge of maximizing opportunity to learn for students with
widely differing abilities and interests is met differently in different
education systems. Exhibit
5.14 summarizes questionnaire and interview data on how selected
comparison countries, as well as states, districts, and consortia,
organized their curricula to deal with this issue.
Some participants indicated using more than one method of dealing
with individual differences among students, and in these cases the
category describing the main method was reported. In the United States,
and in Canada, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, and Korea among the comparison
countries, the same curriculum was intended for all students, but
it was recommended that teachers adapt the level and scope of their
teaching to the abilities and interests of their students. In the
Czech Republic and England, the mathematics curriculum was taught
at different levels to different groups, four in the Czech Republic
and nine in England – so many because in England the levels are
defined in terms of progressively more complex performance to be demonstrated.
Another approach to differentiated provision was followed in Belgium
(Flemish), the Netherlands, the Russian Federation, and Singapore,
which assign different curricula to students of different levels of
ability and interest. Two of the comparison countries, Italy and Japan,
reported that their official mathematics curricula did not address
the issue of differentiating instruction for eighth-grade students
with different abilities or interests.
All of the Benchmarking states and most of the districts and consortia
generally resembled the United States in that they provided the same
curriculum for all, but expected teachers to adapt the level and scope
of their teaching to their students’ needs. The First in the
World Consortium and Miami-Dade provided the same curriculum to all,
but at different levels for different groups, while Naperville provided
a different curriculum to students of different abilities.
Schools’ reports on how they organize to accommodate students
with different abilities or interests are shown in Exhibit
R2.1 in the reference section. Compared with the international
average, substantial percentages of students in many Benchmarking
jurisdictions were in schools reporting that different classes study
different content, including the states, districts and consortia reporting
that their frameworks or standards were developed for all students
with teachers adapting to students’ needs.
