Evidence-Based Design of a Teacher Professional Development Program for Differentiated Instruction: A Whole-Task Approach

Teachers are urged to provide differentiated instruction (DI), that is, deliberately adapting instruction to the learning needs of all students. DI can positively affect students’ academic achievement and their social and emotional development, as well as foster teacher job satisfaction. However, international research, as well as research in the Dutch context, has shown that teachers feel unprepared to provide DI. Hence, the development of teacher professional development (TPD) programs is necessary. In the current paper, the design of a TPD intervention to support DI is presented, in which the content and design approach were deliberately chosen. The intervention content was based on an analysis of the skills and knowledge expert teachers use when providing DI. The design of the intervention was based on the whole-task approach from the 4C/ID model to promote the transfer of learning, among other things. Based on the experiences of the teachers participating in the training pilot (n = 4), we provide our recommendations for future TPD for DI. The next step will be to study the effects of this TPD program on a larger scale to obtain insight into what design characteristics do or do not work, which can be used to further improve this TPD intervention.