How Teachers Provide Help that Furthers Learning in Digital and Nondigital Learning Contexts

“All Students Learning Every Day!,” exclaimed Stuart with a smile, over his brunch at what he declared to be one of his favorite restaurants in New York City. “ALL-ED. I think that's what you should call the program.” Among his many talents, Stuart had a penchant for coining clever names for research programs – a gift that was often fueled by a good meal. And that is indeed what we ended up calling our teacher professional development program on differentiated instruction – the primary focus of this chapter (Bondie & Zusho, 2018).

Broadly speaking, ALL-ED is a teacher decision-making framework that helps teachers determine when, why, and how to differentiate instruction. After observing countless numbers of classrooms across seven countries, we noticed that all teachers – novice and experienced, American and non-American, urban and suburban – struggle with differentiating instruction. We also observed that all teachers want to meet the needs of their students, but when confronted with the range of academic diversity in their classrooms, they often default to a one-size-fits-most approach to instruction. And why not?