Abstract:

In the contemporary educational landscape, ensuring that all learners have equitable access to knowledge and skill is paramount. Differentiated learning has emerged as a pivotal strategy to support curriculum delivery, particularly for progressed learners who may require tailored instructional approaches. Learner progression policy/ automatic promotion/ social promotion has been implemented in various forms worldwide with the common goal of minimizing grade repetition and its negative impacts. Literature suggests that while these policies are well-intentioned, their success depends on the availability of support structures that address the diverse needs of learners. Like other countries, learner progression in South Africa was introduced in the Further Education and Training (FET) Phase in 2013 to allow learners to move through the system until grade 12. This intervention came after learner retention and dropout investigations that pointed to retention being more pronounced after Grade 9 with dropout rate hikes between grade 10 and 12. However, progressed learners’ success is dependent on the support to bridge content gap to enable them to obtain their grade 12 certificate. Some of the factors which influence progressed learners’ throughputs, inter alia, abstract support ideas, overcrowded classes, lack of resources, and insufficient development and support to deal with progressed learners. This paper explores the concept of differentiated learning, its theoretical underpinnings and its practical applications in enhancing curriculum support towards progressed learners’ epistemic access. Differentiated learning affords opportunity for tailored instructions to suit individual needs of progressed learners. The study uses Universal Design for Instruction as a theoretical lens to explore causal relations to understand how teachers offer tailored curriculum support interventions to enable progressed learners’ epistemological access. The study is qualitative in nature and adopt case study design to explore teachers’ implementation of differentiated learning as an enabling epistemic access for learner progression. Data were generated through open ended questionnaires and interviews from five teachers in secondary schools in Limpopo Province, South Africa. This paper is part of a larger project on School Based Support Teams’ (SBST) initiatives on curriculum support for learner progression. Therefore, teachers selected form part of the SBST and are regarded information rich to provide insights on the phenomenon. Data were analysed thematically, and preliminary findings reveal implementation of differentiated learning complexities related to lack of knowledge and skills. While teachers acknowledge possibilities for tailored instructions; notable issues such limited pedagogical knowledge as well as limitations to cooperative-collaborative practices challenge the effectiveness of differentiated learning. This paper suggests teachers’ professional development focusing as a mitigating strategy that can promote the implementation of differentiated learning. This is likely to enable progressed learners’ epistemic access as teachers will be equipped with skills and knowledge to deal with individualised needs on progressed learners. This study makes a significance contribution to the growing body of literature on how learner progression can positively contribute to learner access to basic education.

Keywords:

Curriculum support, Differentiated learning, Epistemic access, progressed learners.