How Teachers Meet Different Proficiency Levels

Abstract

Teaching in classes with numerous students requires the ability to meet students' needs regardless of the subject taught. Teaching English in a multi-level year six class in Sweden, a country where the English language is omnipresent, requires knowledge of the subject and the expertise to meet students with vastly different proficiency levels individually. According to the Swedish Curriculum, the obligation ensuing the profession assigns teachers the responsibility to meet the students at their level, adapt the education, and enable the students to develop their proficiency accordingly. This study sets out to investigate to what extent and how this obligation is carried out and what methods English teachers use in Swedish compulsory year six today. Besides, the study examines possible needs for additional resources to fulfil the teacher's responsibility to meet each student individually. A digital survey was sent out to English teachers, resulting in 29 volunteer respondents. The reported results show that all respondents claim to adapt the education to meet the needs of their students. The reasons for adapting were equally for students with either higher or lower proficiency levels. The most frequent methods reported were to adjust the assignments or the content to be implemented at different levels or to hand out different assignments to students with varying proficiencies. The survey also revealed that the English teacher was most often the sole person responsible for the adaptations made and that very few of the respondents reported cooperating with a colleague or a special education teacher when preparing the lessons. Finally, the respondents were given the possibility to express their wishes for additional resources, which revealed that the most frequent desire was for classes with fewer students or for having an extra teacher or adult present in class to enable the students to develop individually.