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Hidden mechanisms of differentiation: teachers’ beliefs about student diversity

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Abstract

This article provides an empirically grounded analysis for two fundamentally different models of mathematics teachers’ beliefs about student diversity in Russian secondary schools: exclusive and inclusive models. Although teachers’ beliefs are considered a central factor for the differentiated approach, teachers’ beliefs could be stereotyped and, consequently, the evaluation of a student’s ability would be systematically shifted and decisions about the possibility of teaching a student would be incorrect. Semi-structured interviews with 30 mathematics teachers allowed us to investigate what criteria teachers claim to employ while classifying students in the classroom and what expectations they have for each group of students. It was found that within the exclusive model, teachers have an image of a “normal” student and use discrete categories for labelling students with reference to the “normality”. Within the inclusive model, teachers tend not to match students with discrete categories; rather they prefer to compare a student only with herself or himself. Research findings are discussed in the context of a possible “fixed effect” on a student’s development. However, there is a need for further investigation of a connection between teachers’ belief systems, teaching practices and student achievement.

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Notes

  1. Basic State Exam (BSE)—Osnovnoy gosudarstvenniy ekzamen, OGE.

  2. Unified State Exam (USE)—Yediniy gosudarstvenniy ekzamen, EGE.

  3. The national panel project TrEC is aimed to study educational and professional pathways of students and university graduates in Russia. The initial TrEC sample consisted of 210 schools in 50 regions. The first wave of the study consists of the Russian participants in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) in 2011. Details on the TrEC can be found in the paper by Malik (2019) or at the website https://trec.hse.ru/en/.

  4. Here and elsewhere, we put emic codes from the teachers’ narratives in quotation marks. Respondents are not indicated because these codes appeared in the several interviews.

  5. Numbers of citations are made by two figures: the first one is for a region, and the second one is for the number of an interview within the region.

  6. Special method of solving system of two algebraic equations. In this case, the teacher used an unofficial diminutive form of the method.

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Acknowledgements

The article was prepared within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and supported within the framework of a subsidy by the Russian Academic Excellence Project “5-100”.

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  1. International Laboratory for Educational Policy Analysis, Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Galina Larina & Valeria Markina

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  1. Galina Larina
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  2. Valeria Markina
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Correspondence to Galina Larina.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 2.

Table 2 Characteristics of interview respondents
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Larina, G., Markina, V. Hidden mechanisms of differentiation: teachers’ beliefs about student diversity. J Math Teacher Educ 23, 463–482 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-019-09436-1

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