Challenges to Implement differentiated instruction in a primary school teachers perspective / Fathimath Hameed

Abstract:
Increasing student failure rates has become a signal for educators to identify best approaches to teach. Providing high quality instruction differentiated to students needs essential for improving instructional effectiveness for student population with increasing diversity. However, due to various factors in educational system, providing an effective differentiated instruction has become a challenging experience for teachers. Thus, the aim of this dissertation is to investigate the challenges faced by teachers to implement differentiated instruction in primary school.
Differentiated instruction is an effective model of teaching that is implemented in educational settings. A qualitative case study of interpretivist research paradigm was used to explore this issue. Six teachers of primary school were selected by a purposive sampling and the data was collected by conducting a semistructured interview.
The findings of this study suggest, it is essential for the school management to provide resources efficiently to the teachers to provide effective instruction for a diverse population. At present, it is the responsibility of the administrators to support the teachers and guide them to manage these resources effectively with effectively managed time to meet individual needs. The findings also shows the importance of strengthening the supervision which includes monitoring of the subject coordination meetings, instructional process and identify the areas where teachers are required to provide professional development. It is also found that even though teachers are aware of differentiated instruction model, due to various reasons it is not implemented. Therefore, the school management need to be more responsible to facilitate implementation of effective differentiated instruction in order to improve the students' academic performance.

Key Words: Differentiated Instruction, Student readiness, Student interest, learning profile, diverse population, individual needs.