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Curriculum differentiation in primary education as a way of supporting all pupils in the classroom

Publication at Faculty of Education |
2022

Abstract

The article focuses on the current trend of increasing the quality of education, which brings increased demands on teacher competences when introducing differentiated teaching for primary school pupils in heterogeneously composed classrooms, starting from the very beginning of schooling. The Ministry of Education in its Strategy for the Education Policy of the Czech Republic until 2030+ emphasises didactic practices in teaching that allow differentiating teaching according to the needs of pupils.

However, many teachers are not sufficiently prepared to do this and there is very little relevant literature and research to help them in practice. This article summarizes the latest findings in this area, analyzing the concept of intrinsic differentiation, not only its cognitive aspects, but also the social dimensions of teaching.

It emphasizes the importance of this issue for the improvement of primary school quality in the contemporary socio-economic context of the issue of equal educational opportunities in society. He emphasises the knowledge of specific pupils and their individual peculiarities as an important condition for the implementation of internal differentiation.

It also discusses the possibilities of differentiation in relation to the content of education, methods and organisational forms of teaching. Improving the level of basic education by means of internal differentiation is a long-term and, given the increasing heterogeneity of large school communities, difficult task.

The main aim of the research was to investigate the implementation of differentiated and individualised teaching by five teachers in the Pardubice, Central Bohemia and Hradec Králové regions, focusing on the main subjects of Czech language and mathematics in grades 1-5 of primary school. In our paper, I will focus mainly on the analysis of the pedagogical means of differentiating the scope of work, in particular, the differentiation of the difficulty of the curriculum, the scope of the curriculum and the choice and use of graded tasks in teaching.

Its contribution to the individual personality of each pupil and his full education.