Chapter 3: The Importance of Teachers’ Subjective Perceptions of Educational Innovations: The Case of Adaptive Teaching

In light of continual scientific and social developments in a variety of areas, education keeps changing. This task elicits the necessary tensions within the educational system; not only organizationally but also among the teachers and school leaders responsible for the teaching. Over the past few decades, considerable progress has been made with respect to the establishment of a scientific basis for proposed educational innovations. Empirically well-founded scientific insights into teaching and learning have emerged. This also holds for the teaching of young children and the need for attention to the differences between pupils.

Increased attention to pupils and their individual differences is realized in the form of adaptive teaching, which involves the adjustment of teaching to the possibilities and needs of each student. Such teaching concerns a pedagogical climate in which children feel accepted and safe. Such teaching also requires a climate in which children are sufficiently challenged to achieve to the best of their ability. Adaptive teaching calls for teachers to examine and contemplate the manner in which they look at the differences between pupils. This is not an easy task, however, as the present contribution will show. First, adaptive teaching will be sketched. Thereafter, a description of a coherent approach to successful implementation of adaptive teaching involving four domains will be presented.