Four Faces of Differentiation: Their Attributes and Potential (Report‪)‬

Teachers, teacher educators, and researchers care deeply about students' achievement. However, current assessments, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the United States, have noted the small percentage of 8th-grade students who achieve a proficient performance (Grigg, Donahue, & Dion, 2007). To address students' various needs, we call for teachers to differentiate their practices. To better understand differentiation, we surveyed existing scholarship with a particular focus on three general areas: 1) various approaches to differentiation, 2) the implications of each approach for application and implementation by classroom teachers, and 3) the potential of these differentiation options for effecting achievement for all students. Our interest in these three general areas translated into the following specific questions: 1) How do scholars and public policymakers define differentiation?, 2) What implications do these various definitions have for teachers' implementation of differentiation?, 3) What empirical evidence warrants the use of differentiation?, and 4) What unanswered questions about differentiation for achievement might the education community address? DEFINING DIFFERENTIATION: SOMETHING NEW, OR A NEW TERM?