EFL Teachers’ Beliefs on and Practices of Differentiated Instruction in Oman

Abstract

This study aimed to explore the beliefs that EFL teachers in public schools in Oman hold about differentiated instruction and the extent to which they practise DI as perceived by them. Two tools were used to collect data on these dynamics: a questionnaire distributed to 338 English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers and semi-structured interviews with 10 English language teachers. After analysing both quantitative and qualitative data, the findings indicated that Differentiated Instruction is not yet a common practice among English language teachers in Oman but that EFL teachers held high beliefs about it also revealed that teachers practised environment differentiation more than content, process, or product differentiation. However, teachers’ views on their differentiated instruction practices in interviews did not match their reported practices in the questionnaire. Moreover, there were significant differences in DI according to teaching experience and according to gender – female teachers seemed to differentiate instruction more than male teachers in all four elements. The findings of the present study gave the opportunity to provide recommendations for future research into the Differentiated Instruction approach.