Making Sense of Competency-Based Education Through the Lens of Differentiated Instruction

• In Event: 21.062 - MTCC Roundtable Session Six
  In Roundtable Session: 21.062-8 - School Turnaround, School Transformation, and Models in School Reform: The Overload

Abstract

The purpose of this theoretical paper is to initiate a preliminary exploration of the connections between competency-based education (CBE), especially as it is enacted in secondary schools, and differentiated instruction (DI), a widely used framework for instructional improvement. Current policy supporting CBE in the US is summarized and a brief discussion of what is meant by the term “competency-based education” is offered. CBE is compared to DI as a way of making sense of how CBE may be perceived as both a continuation of and a logical extension of DI practices. CBE and DI are conceptualized as having a nested relationship, where system-level supports are built by CBE models to augment and extend DI.

Author

• Rebecca Mazur, University of Massachusetts - Amherst