Empowering educators: Differentiated instruction at the organization level

"Differentiated Instruction (DI) is the process where educators modify instruction to play to the students' strengths and learning preferences while meeting their individual needs rather than teaching all students in the same manner. DI allows the educator to change how they deliver content, what content is provided, the learning environment, and how students demonstrate their knowledge (Tomlinson, 2001). Unlike other publications, this dissertation's intent wasn't to create a guide on how to implement DI, as that has been well documented in the literature. Instead, the aim is to empower DI educators by creating an organization that supports and enables both the educators and the organization to succeed. In short, the goal of this dissertation is to answer the following question: How can education administrators support Differentiated Instruction educators through faculty development, incentives, and the use of new technology to improve students' success? To investigate this question, the author used two different literature search techniques. First, a substantial literature search on Differentiated Instruction teaching and organizational dynamics was conducted. This provided the evidence needed to validate the research question. The second literature review, an integrative review, was performed to determine specific areas where educators and administrators expressed frustration or a need for assistance (Frederiksen & Phelps, 2018; Whittemore & Knafl, 2005). Next, the author investigated Educative Curriculum Materials (ECM), designed to promote both teacher and student learning rather than traditional curriculum materials focused on student learning (Davis & Krajcik, 2005; Beyer & Davis, 2009). Davis and Krajcik's Design Heuristics for Educative Science Curriculum Materials are a common framework for designing ECMs (Davis & Krajcik, 2005). The author transformed these heuristics into the Guiding Principles for Empowering Educators. The output of this dissertation is a guide titled "" Cutting Edge Differentiated Instruction Strategies for Administrators: Supporting Innovation at an Organizational Level,"" which not only provides a background of differentiated instruction, technology-enabled education, and organization dynamics it also offers high-level initiatives for administrators to empower their educators. This dissertation concludes by brainstorming future applications of this guide, including improvements, distribution, and creating measures of success for organizations to track their progress."

Name thesis:degree_name

Ed.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2021

Author dc:creator

• Roberts-Lieb, Solomon David

Contributors dc:contributor

• Cope, William
• Kalantzis, Mary
• Ward Hood, Denice
• Montebello, Matthew

• differentiated instruction
• empowerment teacher empowerment
• support
• higher education

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2020 Solomon Roberts-Lieb

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/109380

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/109380