483472

research-article2013

JOA24210.1177/1932202X13483472<italic>Journal of Advanced Academics XX(X)</italic>Wu

Article

The Path Leading to

Differentiation: An Interview
With Carol Tomlinson

Journal of Advanced Academics

24(2) 125133
The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1932202X13483472
joaa.sagepub.com

Echo H. Wu1

Abstract
The author interviewed Dr. Carol Tomlinson, who is a well-known academic scholar
in gifted education. The interview focused on Dr. Tomlinsons work on differentiation,
how she started, and what her suggestions for teachers are to differentiate instructions
for gifted students in general education classrooms.
Keywords
differentiation, differentiated instruction and curriculum, effective teaching strategies
What you really need to do is to create a small world in your classroom. In this world, everybody
is taken into account, everybody has a voice, and everybody has a space.
Carol Tomlinson

Introduction
Carol Ann Tomlinson is the William Clay Parrish Jr. Professor and Chair of Educational
Leadership, Foundations, and Policy at Curry School of Education at the University of
Virginia. Prior to this position, Carol was a public school teacher for 21 years, including middle school, high school, and preschool. She was named Virginias Teacher
of the Year in 1974, Outstanding Professor at Curry in 2004, and received an AllUniversity Teaching Award in 2008. In January 2012, Carol was named as one of the
top 100 education scholars in the United States listed in Education Week. She has
served as President of Virginia Association for the Gifted as well as President of the

1Murray

State University, KY, USA

Corresponding Author:
Echo H. Wu, College of Education, Murray State University, 3205 Alexander Hall, Murray, KY 420713340, USA.
Email: ewu@murraystate.edu

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National Association for Gifted Children. She is author of 17 books on the topics of
differentiated instruction and curriculum as well as many professional development
materials and more than 200 articles. Her books have been translated into 12
languages.

Interview
Wu: How did you start differentiation in your classroom?
Tomlinson: When I first started teaching, the students I taught in high school had
quite a range of differences among them. I didnt pay much attention to the differences; I had never been in a place where I saw a teacher really address students differences. I knew that some of the high school kids were having a hard
time in learning, and I knew some were brilliant. I knew the students had different dreams and fears. It was a complex teaching situation, but I really didnt
know how to deal with the differences other than trying to know the kids and
communicate with them individually. Then I moved to teach in a preschool. By
the end of the 1st year I taught there, we had kids from probably 20 languages
groups. They were 3 or 4 years old, and some of the kids were English speakers
and some not. Some were quick learners and some required longer to learn.
Some were a little older than others, and therefore sometimes had more experiences. Certainly, all the different languages and cultures meant that there were
huge differences among the kids. I tried hard to make sure all the kids were
developing their skills, and I worked extra with kids who were struggling with
prelearning skills. I tried to know the children and understand their families and
where they were coming from. But I didnt really start to do anything that resembles what we now call differentiation until I was at my 3rd year of teaching,
which was my 1st year of teaching in a middle school.
In that year, even at the beginning, I realized that I had a lot of kids who were academically way behind, and a lot of kids who were way aheadalmost nobody in the
middle. I discovered, about the 3rd week of school that there was a kid coming into my
class who was 15 and didnt know the whole alphabet yet. He actually whispered that
to me in the hall, and I understood instantly that it was a cry for help. I could barely
imagine how difficult it was for this kid to come up and admit that. I began to ask
myself how I could be of help, and how I could do different things in the class with
different kids at different times. Much later that year, I became conscious of another
kid in the class who was incredibly bright. And I realized for the first time that this
child knew so much, that I had actually not taught him anything more than what he had
already known. All he had been doing was waiting patiently for me to finish.
The experiences with those two boys were really what caused me to start to think
about a classroom where the teacher can help all children, in a class where there are a
lot of kids in trouble and a lot of kids who are advanced. Some other teachers and I had
a grant by then that enabled us to do some research with control groups in other schools
along with the groups in our own classes that we were differentiating for in our

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teaching. The research project was very successful, showing quite significant gains for
students in the experimental groups. Certainly, we could also observe that differentiation (which didnt have a name then) made a big difference in the kids attitudes about
learning. By then, I was routinely teaching classes that had such diversity in them that
I realized that if I just did one thing for all the students in the same way and at the same
time, I was missing nearly everybody.
Wu: How did you start to disseminate your ideas on differentiation and to have the
mission to help teachers internationally?
Tomlinson: When I was teaching in the public school, I began teaching with one colleague and we had the students for two periods a day. So, the two of us figured out
together what to do, and it worked well. Then the school asked us to help other
schools do what we were doing. Early on the way that I disseminated my work
was helping other teachers in my district to teach in the same grade by modeling
what the two of us had been doing, and I presented that in conferences sometimes.
But when I came to the university, I started to work with groups of teachers in the
first 2 or 3 years. In life, sometime luck is a good thing, and being in the right
place at the right time is a part of success. A colleague of mine who had been here
for a lot longer than I had was asked by ASCD (the Association for Supervision
and Curriculum Development), which is a great publishing group and professional organization in the US, to work with them on a video, and she asked them
to come talk to me. That was the starting point of my work with ASCD. Ive also
published books with Solution Tree and Corwin. Each video or book on differentiation has enabled me to reach out to more and more peopleand to hear from
them as well. Thats a powerful way to learn from the experiences of others.
Wu: Teachers would often ask this question, so can you please explain what the
differences between grouping and differentiation are?
Tomlinson: If youre talking about the difference between differentiation and what
we sometimes call ability grouping, the differences are huge. Differentiation,
as I envision it, does not seek to label and segregate students, but rather to serve
them effectively in heterogeneous classrooms that are responsive to their varied
needs. Within differentiated classrooms, its quite useful to use small group
instruction, so that kind of grouping is a part of differentiation. Differentiation
for me is a way of teaching, and it begins with an idea that every student in the
class is extremely important. They dont have any choice but to trust us, and we
know quite clearly that if the work we ask them to do is way too hard or too easy,
they simply cannot learn properly. It would be okay if it is a little hard, but if it
is way too hard, they will not be able to fill in all those gaps, and that just gets
worse as they move along. Almost all regular classrooms have a spread of kids
working at different levels, and we know that they learn in different ways. Not
everybody is going to learn in a lockstep fashion, no matter how well you teach.
If you are teaching well, they will do better than if you do not, and if they are
working hard, they will do better than if they do not. To teach in only one way
will inevitably benefit some students and disadvantage others. So differentiation

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proposes that we teach not out of habit or teacher preference but in response to
the students we serve.

Honoring students interests is also beneficial because it boosts students motivation to learn. Sometimes that means supporting a student in exploring a topic of particular personal passion. Sometimes it means connecting what we teach to what kids
care about. Sometimes it means creating enough flexibility in an assignment that students can explore one aspect of a topic more deeply or use a mode of expressing learning that is particularly compelling for the student. None of those things is especially
difficult to do, and often they can make a profound difference in a students receptivity
to learning.
Another factor that affects academic growth is learning profile, which has to do
with how students approach learning. For instance, if a child does not process information orally very well, but a teacher teaches orally most of the time, then the student is
not going to learn well. So attending to learning profile helps with efficiency of learning, as readiness helps with growth in learning, and interest benefits motivation to
learn. All this points to the need to have a flexible classroom that allows students to
take in information, make sense of it, and express learning in different ways. Some
kids may come to us speaking languages other than the language of the classroom,
some are extra smart and want to pursue something at a more advanced level, some
struggle with a few or many aspects of learning. All these variations in learning need
should cause teachers to be more flexible in terms of using space and time and using
small groups and other strategies. In effectively differentiated classrooms, then, teachers would flexibly group studentssometimes based on readiness needs, sometimes
on interests, sometimes on approach to learning, sometimes heterogeneously, sometimes homogeneously, sometimes by teacher choice, sometimes by student choice,
sometimes randomly. That variety of grouping enhances both teaching and learning.
Flexible grouping is just a small part of differentiation, but it is important. Flexible
grouping means grouping and regrouping students frequently and mindfully so that
they have opportunities to work with many peers in a variety of settings and with a
variety of purposes. In a way, what you really need to do is to create a small world in
your classroom. In this world, everybody is taken into account, everybody has a voice,
and everybody has a space. Purposeful, focused, and flexible groupings allow that to
happen.
Sometimes it is easy just to give a struggling kid practice to do, over and over with
no purpose that is clear to the learner. In that sadly common scenario, students are not
learning new things, and often conclude that they are not capable, that academics are
not worthwhileor both. So one of the principles of differentiation is making sure that
all kids have respectful taskstasks that respect their interests, their entry points,
and their humanitytasks that focus on important understandings or principles, tasks
that require students to think and that engage their curiosity. Advanced learners, too,
need tasks that extend their thinking and push forward their understanding, knowledge, and skills. They, like all students, should expect to have to work hard and to
grow vigorously as a result. Flexible grouping is one part of the goal of using all

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classroom elements more flexibly to address varied learner needs, so that we would
get better as teachers at using space, time, small groups, and materials more flexibly.
Wu: What are the differentiation strategies you would suggest for teachers to use in
their daily classroom teaching?
Tomlinson: There are a lot of instructional strategies that teachers can use to differentiate. In fact, almost any good instructional strategy will allow you to do
different things at different times with different students. One of the most important ones is a teacher working with a small group of students. When you sit
down with 6 or 8 students in close proximity, it is much easier to really see what
the students understand and what they do not. In a big classroom with 30, 40 or
even more students, a teacher may not even know where a student physically is
at a particular moment. But in a small group, a teacher can ask individual questions and hear students voices and know where they get stuck or where they are
ready to move ahead. In that context, teachers know their students in a different
way, and can extend students learning much more effectively. So its important
that when the rest of class is working on one task, or several, the teacher uses
some of the time to work with small groups.
A lot of teachers find learning stations to be useful for differentiation. A learning
station is a place in the room where the kids go, to do specified work. Instructions at
the station provide guidance on how to complete work appropriately, how to get help,
where to put completed work and so on. For instance, you may have a station that
focuses on basic map skills that some kids really need to learn, but other students may
have already mastered. So another station focuses on more advanced map skills.
Perhaps everybody will go to the two stations some time during a week, but will do
one of two different pieces of work there based on students current learning
trajectories.
Learning contracts are another helpful strategy. Learning contracts allow teachers
to design tasks targeted to particular student needs and also to give all students some
in-common tasks. Typically students have the same number of tasks on their contracts
and are all working on the same fundamental learning goals. But the work can emphasize a students particular next steps toward those goals. Some tasks are readinessbased, but other tasks may be student choice. Some may be interest-based, some
readiness-based, some based on approach to learning or learning profile. The flexibility gives teachers a great opportunity to match work to student need. Tiered lessons are
also very effective in providing work for students at challenge levels that stretch a
particular student or group of students without assuming that whats challenging for
one student will be challenging for all of them. In tiered lessons, everybody works
with essential knowledge and skills but at different degrees of difficulty or different
levels of complexity. So if I have students who are struggling with a skill or an idea,
they will still be working on whatever is important for them to learn that day, but perhaps with more directions, or more step-by-step instructions, or with an application

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task that is more concrete, or that provides a model of effective work. Simultaneously
students who are more advanced may work on the same ideas but at a more abstract
level, with more decisions to make or more open-endedness, or more complex skills,
or more abstract ideas. That means everybody can work on the same essential understandings, but at different readiness levels to make it possible for each of them to move
ahead smoothly.
Wu: Can you give some examples of what challenges teachers may encounter when
they are doing differentiation, especially to those new teachers who have just
started?
Tomlinson: I think when you start to differentiate, most people, but not everyone,
will need to start slowly. When I started differentiating in my seventh-grade
classroom many years ago, I didnt have the option to start slowly because I had
that whole group of kids who needed me to differentiate my teaching immediately. It was simply not possible for the class to work for them with a one-sizefits-all approach. Their needs were vastly different. I just worked on
differentiating all the time in that year because it took every spare minute I could
muster to stay ahead of the need. The 2nd year was good, though, because I had
so much to build on from the previous year. Generally, though, I think it really
helps to take small steps, and ask yourself, Where do I want the kids to end up?
Where are they now? What are the little steps I can take to get each of them to
achieve greater success? That means you need to start with some strategies that
dont radically change the way you teach. In that way, neither planning nor management seems beyond your grasp. Then you can move on from that point a step
at a time. The teachers job is to help each of the students understand that everybody has a next step in learning. When everybodys next step is the same, great.
But if next steps differ for different students, which is typical, then it becomes
the teachers role to create more than one next step. Help students understand
the classroom routines. Tell them why and what you are doing. It is my experience that when kids understand the game plan, they can work with you very
well. In fact I find that most kids understand and enjoy differentiation more
quickly than many teachers do, so bringing them along is not so hard.
To be effective with differentiation, you need to think about practical things like
how students can move around in the room without disturbing the work of others, how
you will give directions for multiple tasks effectively, how students can get help if
youre working with a small group, and so on. At the same time, its pivotally important that you spend time understanding how students are progressing in their learning
trajectories, so that both informal and formal assessment becomes central in your
work. Its a juggling act, but then all good teaching is a juggling act. To master the art,
you have to move in the direction of your vision of the classroompersistently but in
a reasoned way.

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Wu: In a big modern city like Hong Kong, students are often from diverse family backgrounds, such as new immigrants, low-income families, or single-parent families.
What are your suggestions to teachers regarding differentiation in such a situation?
Tomlinson: I went to Iceland a few years ago to present there, and on the way, I was
thinking Why do people in Iceland want to hear about differentiation? And
I thought Well, I am sure they have some economic diversity and certainly they
would have students with special education needs, so maybe thats the reason.
What I discovered when I got there was that, at the time, Iceland had the lowest
unemployment rate in the world, so people from all over the world were going
there to live and work, because they could get a job and have a good standard of
living. Were rapidly becoming one world everywhere. In that context, its
important for teachers to learn about the various cultures represented in their
classrooms. Cultures may emphasize individualism or collectivism, reflection or
action, collaboration or competition, strict attention to time or looser attention to
time. Those things impact how students view the world and how they learn. Its
never smart to assume people from a particular culture are homogeneous in
those ways, but its very helpful to create a classroom that respects varied
approaches to learning so that students from any culture have opportunities to
learn in ways that feel natural to themthat support learning for them. Its also
important for teachers to develop strategies boosting academic vocabulary for
students whose first language is not the language of the classroom and the text
approaches like front-loading vocabulary, for example. Similarly, its very helpful to use strategies like close reads or even highlighting key portions of text to
enable students to develop proficiency with reading text materials. Really,
developing a broad range of really good teaching and learning strategies can
make the classroom a better fit for many kinds of learners.
Wu: What are your suggestions for teachers who teach a big crowd of 40 or 50
students, like in China?
Tomlinson: I have never taught a group of 50 students in K-12, although I taught 40
on many occasions. Certainly larger classes are more complex. But there are a
lot of things that you can do to make such classrooms a better fit for the students
in them. Using quick formative assessment strategies can give you a reasonable
read on how well students are progressing, individually and as a group. Its also
critical to make students your partners in the classroom. They can do many
jobsplay many rolesthat a teacher might just automatically take on. Its a bit
like having a large family. Parents with many children become very skilled at
teaching their children how to take on responsibilities around the house because
its necessary for the family to function. A large classroom is much the same in
that way. Further, its good to help students understand that your goal is to help
each of them grow each day as learners from whatever their starting points are,
and to teach them to be their own advocates toward that end. Kids often know
much better than we can when something is working for them, when its not, and
even know what might work better. Giving students that kind of voice in the

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classroom makes large classes, and smaller ones too, much more manageable in
terms of addressing learner need.

Wu: You mention in one of your books that young people are facing more difficult
issues nowadays. Can you explain a little bit?
Tomlinson: Modern technology is certainly one example. Twenty-four hour television, radio, and Internet give kids opportunity to access wonderful things, but
terrible things, too. We need to teach them to be intelligent and critical consumers of information and to use the power of technology to benefit themselves and
all of us. Experts tell us, too, that todays students will likely have many jobs in
their lifetimes as the world changes at unprecedented speed. Those jobs will
often be markedly different from one another. Further, its likely that todays
young people will have to become savvy citizens of a world community
seeing issues from diverse perspectives, working with people from quite varied
backgrounds, refining skills of collaboration. We have every reason to assume
they will also need to be keen thinkers and problem solversanalytically and
creatively. Those things are all bad news in the sense that contemporary classrooms place primary emphasis on working alone to master right-answer information to give it back on a test. The challenges ahead of young people are steep,
to be sure, but they also offer unprecedented opportunity, if we can shape schools
to prepare them for the challenges.
Wu: I could tell that you have passion when you teach, and as a professor and a
leader, you have the ability to influence people around you. What suggestions do
you have for teachers to play the leadership role?
Tomlinson: I think its important to understand the difference between being a
leader and being a drill sergeant, or even a manager. A leader articulates a compelling vision for people around them, invites people to join the vision, and then
works diligently to make sure the vision works for those who invest in it. A
leader needs to win the trust of followers and then do whatever it takes to honor
that trust. I think teachers who profoundly shape students lives for the better
invite them to be part of a team that works to make everyone the best he or she
can be as a learner and as a person. Good teaching is not following a syllabus or
covering curriculum. Its certainly not managing behavior. Its inspiring
young people to discover their strengths and to invest fully in cultivating them.
That requires having a dynamic vision of a classroom and a desire to collaborate
with the people who share classroom space and time with you.
Wu: When I was a student in your class, I was always amazed by how engaging
your classes were, and how many pertinent and funny stories you had to share
with us. What would you describe about your teaching style?
Tomlinson: Im not sure if anybody really develops a teaching style purposely. I
think you teach, and then sketch yourself around your personality. Young adolescents shaped my teaching, and that makes me a bit peculiar at a university.

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They certainly taught me to be very clear with the line of logic I use in teaching.
They taught me that positive humor can defuse a great deal of tension. I suspect
they taught me to be a storyteller. Stories are far more memorable than litanies
of information and can help students remember the information, or at least the
point of learning it. Its absolutely the case that my students gave me the gift of
their stories. Maybe above all, the students taught me the fragility of humanity,
in other words, that I teach human beings first, not content first. The paradox, of
course, is that attending to human beings first generally results in better content
mastery than attending to content first.

Wu: Can you describe yourself in one or two sentences? What kind of person you are?
Tomlinson: Im a worker bee. I enjoy what I do and thats good because I tend to
blur the line between work and pleasure. I love reading, am a fanatic about dogs.
I used to love to travel, but Ive had so much airport time in recent years that that
particular aspect of travel has worn a bit thin. Its always great to be in new
places and work with people in new places. Getting there, however, leaves
something to be desired.
Wu: Whats your vision for school?
Tomlinson: Id like to see schools be dream keepersplaces where adults say to
students, Lets figure out what you can grow up to be. Id like to see them be
places where we work to create the kind of world many of us aspire to live in
communities of respect, where human differences are as valued as human commonalities, where its not necessary to categorize and separate people, places
that concentrate on helping young people become architects of good lives. Id
like to see schools more as zones of creativity than as factoriesplaces that
dignify learners and learning.
Wu: Thank you so much for your time and insight!
Tomlinson: You are very welcome. I appreciate your work, and Im so glad to
see you.

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