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 5.15
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, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, and
the Russian Federation 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 science
curriculum was taught at different levels to different groups, two
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, and
Singapore, which assign different curricula to students of different
levels of ability and interest. Three of the comparison countries,
Italy, Japan, and Korea, reported that their official science 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, Miami-Dade, and Montgomery County provided the same
curriculum to all, but at different levels for different groups –
three levels in First in the World and two levels in each of the other
two.
Schools’ reports on how they organize to accommodate students
with different abilities or interests are shown in Exhibit
R2.1 in the reference section. Substantial percentages of students
in many countries were in schools that offered remedial science (53
percent, on average internationally) and enrichment science (50 percent).
While high-performing Singapore and Chinese Taipei reported that 97
and 78 percent of their students, respectively, were in schools that
offered remedial science, all Benchmarking jurisdictions reported
that less than 30 percent of their students were in such schools.
Six Benchmarking jurisdictions reported higher percentages of students
in schools that offer enrichment science than internationally, with
Miami-Dade and Rochester reporting that 100 percent of their students
were in such schools.
