Chapter 5: Individual Differences and School Learning Environments

Effective schooling involves the design and implementation of learning environments that enable students to achieve desired outcomes. Insofar as learning is a function of the learner's response to the environment, instruction is the intentional manipulation of the learning environment to facilitate appropriate responses. A major complicating factor in this purposeful design and use of learning environments is the diversity in the requirements of individual students for achieving given outcomes. Thus, adapting school learning environments to each student's unique needs and capabilities, and enhancing each student's capability to respond effectively to the demands of the environment to attain the intended outcomes, have continued to pose a challenge to educators. The response to this challenge has included a variety of research and development efforts with significant implications for the design and implementation of educational practices that have come to be associated with the provision of adaptive instruction in school settings.