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Promoting high-achieving students plays an important role in the school context. Hence, one promising support measure within the mixed-ability classroom is differentiated instruction (DI). The current systematic review examined (1) the impact of DI on high-achieving students’ outcomes, (2) to what extent DI is used, (3) how useful teachers and high-achieving students perceive DI, and (4) which barriers and facilitators are encountered in DI’s implementation. Forty-nine studies from 2000 to 2019 were included. Differentiated instruction impacted high-achieving students’ academic achievement and motivational-affective characteristics predominantly positive. However, there was considerable heterogeneity between and within studies. Teachers typically did not use DI for high-achieving students proactively nor on a regular basis. However, teachers and high-achieving students perceived DI as valuable for encouraging high-achieving students. The barriers found might help to explain discrepancies between the extent of usage and the perceived utility, whereas the identified facilitators suggest how to overcome these barriers.
Ziernwald et al. (Fri,) studied this question.