The Influence of Differentiated Instruction on Academic Achievement of Students in Mixed Ability Classrooms

Abstract

The present study aims at describing the influence of differentiated instruction on the academic achievement of English Language Learners low achievers and high achievers in a mixed ability classroom. It explores the strategies used by teacher to apply some principles of differentiated instruction in mixed ability classrooms and how pupils including low achievers and high achievers progress academically in English classrooms and how much they benefit taking into consideration teacher's time and effort. A total of 20 students from one intact English class were used as a sample of this experimental study that was conducted on 10 low achievers and 10 high achievers. In order to obtain the data, the achievement test pre-test and post-test was used as an instrument to gauge the low achiever's and high achiever's academic performance. In this experimental class, the researcher used differentiated instruction as an intervention. This intervention class was able to improve their academic score from pre-test to post-test. Therefore, the results revealed a marked improvement in the low achiever's academic scores following the implementation of differentiated instruction in a great way. But for high achievers, their scores were somehow stable between the pre-test and post-test following the implementation of this process. It is evident that differentiated instruction is a strategy that has a great influence on the academic achievement of low achievers in a great way.