國
立 政 治 大 學
‧
N a tio na
l C h engchi U ni ve rs it y
59
CHAPTER 5
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
This primary purpose of the present study was to explore the effectiveness of DI on junior high school students' grammar learning. The subsidiary purposes were to explore its effectiveness on different proficiency learners and their perception after receiving DI. A total of 54 junior high school students participated in the twelve-week DI grammar learning activities. A pretest was administered at the outset of the study and the participants took a posttest eleven weeks after the pretest. In addition, a focus group interview was used to collect the participants' opinions after they had
experienced DI.
This chapter presented the discussion, the possible explanations, reasons and the relative literature was reviewed and compared. Finally, the conclusions, implications for practices and recommendations were provided for future research.
5.1 Discussion
The findings of this study revealed there was a significant difference between the subjects who received differentiated instruction in the experimental group and those who didn't in the control group on their grammar scores. These findings indicated EG students' grammar scores significantly increased from the pretest (M=38.29) to the posttest (M=39.51). These findings were parallel to those of McCullough (2012), who found there was a significant improvement in Grade 2 students' vocabulary and reading comprehension performance after the implementation of DI. Numerous studies (Baumgartner et al., 2003; Dangelo, 2006; Johnson, 2010; King, 2010;
McCullough, 2012; Parker, 2011) have provided evidence of the effective and positive outcomes of DI . DI targets the learning needs of all students, especially struggling
‧
ones. This teaching approach allows students to be engaged in tasks that are matched to their readiness level, interest level, and learning profile. Moreover, DI gives every student the opportunity to achieve and to be successful.
To further investigate different proficiency learners' grammar achievement for the second research question, three subgroups-low proficiency, intermediate
proficiency and high proficiency learners' pretest and posttest scores were compared.
It was found that the three subgroups of the experimental group had no significant improvement compared with their counterparts in the control group on the whole performance of the posttest EGT-2. However, by analyzing the scores on the three subsections of the posttest: multiple choice questions, fill-in blank questions and sentence making questions, it was shown that low proficiency learners in the experimental group improved their performance in the multiple choice section
significantly (p=.033, <.05) in comparison with those in the control group. The results echoed with those findings in Burns (2005), which indicated the performance of eighth grade students on the Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment showed gains for lower achieving students in the area of Language and Arts Literacy and Science, but the rest of the students have not shown increased achievement.
Finally, as for learners' experience in this DI setting, their thoughts about
learning process, learning materials and English learning problem were collected and analyzed. It was found that not all of the interviewees liked the process of DI,
particularly for HPL. Only three of eight HPL reported they liked the process of DI.
One student of HPL stated his reason that he was assigned to finish the differentiated task individually but he preferred group work. However, another interviewee of HPL reported she liked the process of working independently because she could control her own learning rate. The findings were in accordance with Graham (2009), which
‧
reported that the participants did not like to be singled out or compared but they enjoyed doing different things in class, working at their own pace and having a choice whether to work alone or with another.
As for the learning materials of DI, 88% of LPL thought it was helpful for their learning, 80% of IPL and 50% of HPL endorsed the point respectively. After further investigating the subjects' learning problem in English, the data indicated 78% of LPL's difficulties were sentence making parts, and 22% were vocabulary. By contrast, IPL's and HPL's learning problem scattered in different categories such as vocabulary, sentence-making, reading magazine, reading, speaking, listening and grammar. We may infer LPL's learning problem in English may be more unified so DI could effectively impacts on their attitudes and their learning outcomes. The findings were in agreement with Tseng (2008), in which the result showed the reason of students' poor English performance was because their maladjustment was unrecognized.
The researcher suggested that teachers should closely examine students' adjustment problem in learning English by employing the diagnosis exams at the beginning of the new semester in order to offer appropriate support.
Because the current study is based on the theory of DI and the two particular DI strategies were adopted, the following section aims to discuss the concept of tiered task and flexible grouping.
5.1.1 Tiered Task
DI adopted the concept of "readiness" to determine the alignment of tasks with instructional goals and objectives. That means the difficulty of tasks taught should be slightly in advance of students' current level of mastery. This is grounded in the work of Vygotsky (1978), the zone of proximal development (ZPD). In this current study, the researcher scaffolded the students in the experimental group with three varying
‧
tiers based on their pretest performance. However, the findings from the focus group interviews indicated that some subjects thought the tasks were too easy for them which meant the tiered tasks didn't actually suit the learners' diverse readiness levels.
Here, the result supported the previous study (Hall, 2002) for the point that the initial application of DI came to practice for students considered gifted who perhaps were not sufficiently challenged by the content provided in the general classroom setting and full models of DI are still developing. Therefore, the findings underscore the importance of recognizing the suitable tiered tasks for each individual. Thus, it may suggest that Teachers should design the differentiated materials that suit students' needs more by understanding students' learning difficulties.
5.1.2 Flexible Grouping
Research on ability grouping has a long history and encompasses both qualitative and quantitative studies. Advantages and disadvantages of ability grouping have been identified. Strict ability grouping makes the school a more rigid environment.
According to Mills (1998), the ability grouping has minimal positive influence on achievement but often results in low self-esteem. Flexible grouping provide another alternative within classes. Findings from this current study suggested that the classrooms with flexible grouping showed significantly higher gains on their performance than the traditional heterogeneous classrooms.
However, the analysis of the findings that indicated none of the three subgroups significantly outperformed than their counterparts in the control group seemed to lend some support to the view that flexible grouping may not be beneficial to all the three subgroups. Flexible grouping means there are more small learning groups in a classroom setting. The amount of teacher's time that can be spent on each learning group was less than that on the whole classroom instruction. What's more, the teacher
‧
may unconsciously pay more attention on the low proficiency learners and that would lead to the results that intermediate and high proficiency learners did not make
remarkable headway compared with the low proficiency ones.