Abstract Book of the 9th International Conference on New Trends in Teaching and Education
Year: 2025
[PDF]
Differentiated Instruction and Self-efficacy Scale Survey
Dr Kathy Gibbs (Lead), Dr. Nicole Dargue, Dr. Gemma Scarparolo, Dr. Tom Porta
ABSTRACT:
Differentiated instruction is described as a student-centred approach to instruction to meet the diverse needs of students in multi-ability classrooms. Educators in Australia, like their colleagues globally, need to ensure that every student has access to high-quality schooling and to be educated at their neighbourhood, “mainstream” school (UNESCO, 1994). Therefore, teaching in today’s multi-ability classrooms requires educators to rethink their pedagogical practices to enable equitable learning for all students. Teacher efficacy is highly aligned to meaningful educational outcomes for school children. Teacher efficacy is a belief in one’s capabilities to bring about desired learning outcomes for students, even those who are disengaged, marginalised or whom have a learning difficulty. Teaching in Australian classrooms requires teachers to differentiate instruction as a means of providing equitable learning opportunities for all students. Differentiated instruction is an approach to teaching designed to address learner diversity in mixed ability classrooms. The lead researcher in a previous project designed a Teachers’ Self-Efficacy Scale Using Differentiated Instruction. It is in its pilot stage at present. In this current phase of the study, we were interested in teachers’ (both pre-service and in-service) self-efficacy beliefs for using differentiated instruction. We sought 280 participants to complete an online survey and the researchers have now completed a factor analysis of the responses using SPSS software. The survey can be used internationally to measure teachers’ beliefs in their capacity to use differentiated instruction. It is unclear if there has been a scale developed that measures teachers’ self-efficacy using differentiated instruction using a specific model of differentiated instruction such as Tomlinson’s (2014) comprehensive framework. The researchers are aware and acknowledge that several teachers’ self-efficacy of differentiated instruction scales have been developed. However, it is unknown if a scale in the development and validation phase has used male and female pre-service and in-service teachers (primary and secondary). It is timely to develop a scale that includes both male and female respondents and from a larger pool to include pre-service and in-service primary and secondary school teachers, to ensure a more accurate and better representation of educators. The aim of this presentation is to present the findings of the scale in its next stage.
Keywords: Differentiated Instruction, differentiation, mainstram classrooms, teacher beliefs. self-efficacy, survey