“ENGLISH TEACHER’S UNDERSTANDING OF DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION”

Ailyn E. Garamonte

Different types of learners are typically found in a day to day classroom. In fact, teachers face different types of learners with different backgrounds, learning preferences, psychomotor, affective and cognitive abilities, even carrying different experiences in life. Thus, teacher’s knowledge on differentiated instruction is very much important to cater different needs of the learners.

Thus, a quantitative study was conducted to determine the teachers’level of understanding and implementation of differentiated instruction of the Junior High School English teachers. The respondents’profile, level of understanding and frequency of implementation of the components, as well as the problems encountered in the implementation of differentiated instruction were the data gathered using an adopted questionnaire and a checklist that was developed through interview. The findings showed that in most of the concepts, teachers understand general, content, process, and product differentiation, and they feel comfortable/ competent doing them as they assessed their level of understanding, and frequently- more than half the time in the frequency of implementation. However, in most of the concepts in instructional/ management strategies, teachers reported that they feel somewhat comfortable doing it, but they need more information and/ or practice and sometimes - less than half the time, respectively. Furthermore, findings showed that Students find it hard to understand the accent of the actors and actresses in the movie especially if they come from other countries, Writing tasks found in the module are beyond the capacity of the students, and It is too expensive on the part of the students because most of them do not have printers and computers at home, were the problems respondents mostly encountered in the implementation of content, process and product differentiation, respectively. Based on the findings, a professional development activity was proposed to enhance teachers’knowledge and practice in utilizing the components of differentiated instruction especially on instructional/ management strategies.

--oOo-The author is Teacher III at Dolores National High School