What does inclusive teaching look like? Adaptive and responsive teaching strategies

In this five-part series, I’m exploring inclusion and belonging in the classroom. In part one, I said there are three areas of professional practice to consider: Lesson-planning, teaching, and assessment.

I have already provided some advice for each area. Inclusive teaching, I said, requires 3Ds:

But what does this look like in the classroom?

A SecEd Series: Inclusive and adaptive lesson planning, teaching and assessment

Differentiation vs adaptive teaching

Whereas traditional differentiation focuses on individual learners or small groups of learners, adaptive teaching focuses on the whole class. In other words, it is the difference between teaching up to 30 different lessons at once – matching the pace and pitch to each individual learner and providing different tasks and resources to different learners – and teaching the same lesson to all 30 learners by “teaching to the top” while providing scaffolds to those who need additional initial support in order to access the same ambitious curriculum and meet our high expectations.