Novices In Education

Teaching calls on the professional to use a variety of skills in order to reach a wide range of learners. One of the most important skills for teachers to develop is the ability to differentiate instruction.

Differentiation involves modifying the content, process, product or learning environment to effectively address the variety of student interests, learning preferences, affective needs and readiness levels in today's classrooms (Tomlinson, 2003).

As with other professions, teachers' skills develop and improve over time.

Many experts consider differentiation of instruction to be a practice only used by veteran teachers, because it involves the "fine motor skills" of teaching, while many novice teachers - preservice teachers and teachers

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37) as well as meeting individual instructional needs and fairness to students.

This research indicates that novices do not typically attend to student differences until the last stage.

Lidstone and Hollingsworth (1992) conducted a longitudinal study of the first four years of teaching and found three stages of cognitive attention: management focused, subject/pedagogy focused, and student learning focused. Novice teachers begin with "rote knowledge of pedagogy." This is when the novice recognizes the concept but does not use it, uses it poorly, or has a superficial understanding of why it is worth using. The next stage involves routine processing. Now the new teacher applies the technique but only superficially and in specific contexts. The final stage is

Can Novice Teachers Differentiate Instruction? by Holly C. Gould http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/differentiated/gould.htm[4/24/2010 1:42:19 PM] comprehensive knowledge when the teachers' beliefs are integrated with teaching performance, concepts are understood and applied across contexts, and they have cognitive space available for attending to student needs. While it is clear that novices have knowledge of pedagogy at

Education professors must "talk the talk" and "walk the walk." College professors can assess preservice teachers' readiness levels, interests, and learning profiles within their college classes. They can then model differentiated instruction of education course content, classroom activities, and products based on the results of needs identified by these pre-assessments. In addition, college professors must "think aloud" and let the preservice teachers know what is differentiated, how it is differentiated, and why they chose to differentiate the instruction the way they did.

Once the college students have experienced differentiation and understand how they differ as learners themselves, they can begin to understand how their future students differ from each other and what will be required in order to meet the various needs they will have in their classrooms. In addition, as early in their programs as possible, preservice

Can Novice Teachers Differentiate Instruction? by Holly C. Gould http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/differentiated/gould.htm[4/24/2010 1:42:19