An Investigation of Research on Differentiated Instruction Approach in Preschool Education Between 2005-2022

Abstract

Differentiated instruction is a pedagogical approach that involves differentiating the content, process, teaching methods, resources used, activities implemented and children's products to meet the learning needs of children with different levels of readiness, interests and learning styles in the same classroom. Considering the differences of children in multicultural societies, differentiated instruction helps to turn children's differences into advantages and respond to their learning needs. The aim of this study is to present a general framework for differentiated instruction in the light of the studies on differentiated instruction in preschool education between 2005 and 2022 in the literature. For this purpose, a systematic literature review on differentiated instruction in preschool education was conducted and the reflections of differentiated instruction in preschool education were investigated. The 41 articles obtained as a result of the review were analyzed by content analysis according to the years of publication, the index of the journals in which they were published, the subjects studied, the methods used, the methods of analysis, data collection sources, data collection tools and samples. As a result, in the scanned studies; the most articles were published in 2021 and it was seen that they were mostly published in SCI/SSCI indexes. It is seen that teachers are given trainings about the differentiated instruction approach as the subject of the published articles, and as a result of the trainings, teachers support the development of children with their practices.