Programme 403, Combining Challenge and Differentiated Instruction in Maths Teaching (1-6-20)

Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.

This week on the programme I interview five colleagues who participated recently in an Erasmus+ project titled EDUCATE. This project involved developing materials for teachers, providing providing professional development, and conducting research on how to combine challenge and differentiated instruction in the teaching of mathematics at pre-primary, primary and post-primary levels. Project materials are available here. The guests on the programme are Charalambos Charalambous from the University of Cyprus, Ann Marie Gurhy from the Marino Institute of Education, Despina Potari from the University of Athens, João Pedro da Ponte from the University of Lisbon, and Evridiki Kasapi from the University of Cyprus. Among the topics we discuss are:

• Realising that mathematics is more than memorisation and drill and practice.
• How the study of differentiated instruction and challenge in mathematics came about
• What it means to introduce challenge to mathematics tasks
• An overview of differentiated instruction
• Using enablers and extenders to promote differentiated instruction
• Why a teacher needs to know a student’s cognitive, social and affective needs in order to differentiate
• Observing teachers’ needs in differentiating and providing challenge through reading research and observing lessons
• Developing materials to support teachers
• Using video clubs as a model of teacher professional development
• Challenges teacher encounter when working with challenging tasks
• The difference between video clubs and lesson study
• Overview of the modules created as part of the project (each module is based around a number of cases of practice)