Understanding the development of differentiated instruction for students with and without disabilities in co-taught classrooms

Differentiation has gained international attention as a strategy associated with responsive teaching, and as a means for ensuring access to the curriculum for all pupils. This study investigates the development of differentiated instruction in 34 Greek co-taught classrooms. The aim is to explore how co-teachers understand the term ‘differentiated instruction’, and to identify the conditions surrounding its implementation as an inclusive strategy. Sixty-eight semi-structured interviews and 57 unstructured narrative observations were implemented with mainstream and special education co-teachers. We suggest that co-teachers understood differentiated instruction as a ‘child’s deficit-oriented activity’ for students with disabilities and not as a ‘context-oriented approach’ for all students. Co-teachers attributed the limited differentiated instruction observed to several contextual factors. However, we argue that the understanding of disability through the medical model and Foucault’s ‘medical gaze’ results in the construction of differentiated instruction as a remedial approach and, by extension, its limited use in mainstream classrooms.