Conference Agenda

Contemporary classrooms are increasingly characterized by student heterogeneity in terms of diverse cognitive, linguistic, and socio-cultural backgrounds. Consequently, inclusive pedagogy has emerged as an essential response to this increasing diversity. Florian (2014), defines inclusive pedagogy as an alternative ethical approach that values student diversity and aims to reduce marginalization and exclusion within the classroom setting. Complementing this view, Black-Hawkins (2017), emphasizes that this approach focuses on responding to individual differences to ensure the active participation of all students in the learning process. Translating inclusive pedagogy into functional classroom practices requires a systematic, action-oriented mechanism. In this context, Differentiated Instruction (DI) serves as the operational framework enabling the pedagogical enactment of inclusive theoretical foundations in the classroom. Tomlinson (2014) defines DI not merely as an instructional strategy, but as a proactive effort to respond to student needs, wherein the teacher adapts content, process, product, and learning environment.

The DI plays a pivotal role in the acquisition and development of reading skills in primary education, recognizing reading as a multi-faceted process with cognitive, affective, social, and cultural dimensions. Notably, the International Literacy Association [ILA] (2018) highlights the contextual and individual nature of reading by emphasizing the need for responsiveness to students’ cultural, social, economic, and linguistic diversity. In contemporary international literature, reading is defined not merely as a simple decoding act, but as a complex, interactive, and constructive process occurring between the reader, the text, and the context (Castles et al., 2018). As underscored in OECD (2019) and IEA (Mullis & Martin, 2019) frameworks, reading literacy is conceptualized as the competence to understand, use, and evaluate texts to achieve one's goals, develop one's potential, and participate effectively in society. Consequently, reading is evaluated as a multidimensional and complex construct requiring the interactive functioning of sub-skills such as vocabulary, fluency (accuracy, rate, prosody), and comprehension. However, the significant diversity observed in primary students' reading performance in their acquisition of these sub-skills render “one-size-fits-all” strategies inadequate in meeting student needs. In this context, to address the complex nature of reading, DI practices that center on individual differences are not merely a preference but a pedagogical imperative.

Despite the theoretical consensus on the necessity of differentiation, empirical research on how to operationalize this approach in primary literacy education remains limited, particularly within the Turkish context. “The Turkey Century Education Model” implemented in 2024, explicitly positions DI as an overarching concept for the first time within a holistic educational framework. This model underscores the necessity of adopting an instructional process that prioritizes individual differences, flexible grouping, continuous assessment, and adaptation (MoNE, 2024). In this regard, there is a distinct need to develop, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of a holistic primary reading program based on DI. Consequently, this research serves as a timely empirical investigation into the practical application of these new national curriculum standards. Furthermore, this research is expected to contribute to the literature on inclusive literacy practices by offering a concrete roadmap for practitioners that details how the dimensions of content, process, product, and learning environment can be differentiated in reading instruction.

The objective of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of the developed “Differentiated Instruction-Based Reading Program” on 4th-grade students’ reading comprehension, vocabulary level, and reading fluency. Beyond quantitative outcomes, the study also aims to explore the participants’ experiences and views regarding the implementation process. The study addresses two research inquiries:

1. Does the Differentiated Instruction-Based Reading Program have a statistically significant effect on students’ reading comprehension achievement, vocabulary levels, and reading fluency skills compared to the traditional curriculum?
2. What are the views of students regarding the implementation of the differentiated reading program?

Immigration brings about the matter of living harmoniously in places both for immigrants and for the host country’s citizens. Teachers are pivotal in creating safe spaces for immigrant and local students in classrooms. Moral cosmopolitanism (Appiah, 2006) offers a framework in which the experiences of immigrants and local people are contingent on one another to build a healthy community. Hansen (2017) identifies a task for teachers to be inquisitive about different cultures to accomplish their role. The experiences that immigrant students bring into the classroom create valuable input for teachers. While American teachers are criticised for being primarily monolingual and monoracial, local American teachers’ efforts to fulfil their tasks for teaching immigrant students are overlooked in the literature.

Cosmopolitan literature constituted a detailed and well-studied corpus in the scholarly literature. There are three trends in the cosmopolitan literature. First, book or movie clubs that people interact with other cultures at the representational level. The second is documenting immigrant individuals’ literacy practices as cosmopolitan agents, which places a burden on a small group, even a single person, to represent an entire culture. The third is connecting different groups of youth around the globe and exchanging media, which is very challenging to conduct. Hence, I problematized the literature from the point of view of the participants’ profiles. The participant profile in these three trends is skewed towards the individuals who participated in transnational travel (Canagarajah, 2011; Oikonomidoy, 2018). More importantly, local individuals and those with varying levels of travel experience (e.g., expatriates) are underrepresented in the literature. Thus, this study focuses on the teaching practice of a White American teacher who spoke three languages and lived in Yemen for six years. She presented a profile that both represented the overlooked population and challenged the common criticism of American language teachers.

As a Muslim student from Türkiye, working toward a doctoral degree in the US, I experienced being an immigrant. Although I agree with the critics of American teachers being predominantly white and monolingual, I was introduced to a teacher who lived in Yemen for a long time as a White American woman during my piloting studies. Hence, I departed on my experience to build an intrinsic case study (Stake, 1995) to draw on Erica’s (pseudonym) teaching practice. I spent one year with Erica and her assistant teacher in her sheltered ESOL classroom, church, and at social occasions. To build Erica's account, I collected three semi-structured interviews, two paired in-depth interviews, nine stimulated recall interviews, observational data, and personal artefacts. Additional interviews with her assistant were also collected. I will draw only on the artifactual analysis of two materials for this presentation. The leading research question of the study was:

How does a formerly expatriated ESL teacher locate artefacts as cosmopolitan materials?