Readiness

Readiness has to do with a student’s proximity to or proficiency with particular knowledge, understanding, and skill. Readiness affects a student’s growth as a learner.
The theoretical line of logic that supports differentiation is as follows:

• Learners must work at an appropriate degree of challenge or degree of difficulty with what they seek to learn.
• When tasks are too difficult for students, they become frustrated and do not learn effectively or efficiently.
• When tasks are too easy for students, they become bored and do not learn—in spite of the fact that they might earn high grades.
• To learn, tasks for a student must be moderately challenging for that particular student.
• Learning happens when a task is a little too difficult for a learner and scaffolding is provided to help the student span the difficulty.
• Learning occurs through a progression of appropriately scaffolded tasks at degrees of difficulty just beyond a particular student’s reach.
• Motivation to learn is decreased when tasks are consistently too difficult or too easy for a learner (Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, & Whalen, 1993; Howard, 1994; Jensen, 1998; National Research Council, 2000; Vygotsky, 1962, 1978).
  Also in regard to readiness, a number of research studies over an extended period of time continue to suggest benefits when tasks match learner readiness, including these findings:
• Students learn more effectively when teachers diagnose a student’s skill level and prescribe appropriate tasks (Fisher et al., 1980).
• Students learn more effectively when a task structure matches a student’s level of development (Hunt, 1971).
• In classrooms where individual students worked at a high success rate, they felt better about themselves and the subjects they were studying, and also learned more (Fisher et al., 1980).