Annamária Kótay-Nagy: DIFFERENTIATING INSTRUCTION WITH TECHNOLOGY IN THE HUNGARIAN EFL CLASSROOM
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2 Theoretical and Empirical Background
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2.3 The Hungarian Context
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2.3.1 DI and TEDI in the Regulatory Documents of Hungarian Public Education

2.3.1 DI and TEDI in the Regulatory Documents of Hungarian Public Education

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The importance of DI in ELT and the potential affordances of ICT for DI in ELT are clearly articulated on the level of educational policy. Firstly, they are presented in great detail in the Hungarian National Core Curriculum (NCC) and the Frame Curriculum for Foreign Languages (Government of Hungary, 2020), which serve for schools as central documents to be consulted when planning the content of foreign language teaching (Öveges, 2014).

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The documents operate with a fairly comprehensive understanding of DI as they make references to all seven units of Tomlinson’s (1999, 2014) model, i.e., the differentiation of the content, the process, the product and the learning environment as well as the importance of catering for students’ readiness levels, interests and learning profiles. The NCC states that FL teaching should adopt a student-centred approach and create learning situations that take students’ age, background knowledge, interests, language proficiency and learning strategies into account (Government of Hungary, 2020).

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The significance of formative assessment is highlighted, too. The NCC identifies it as a prerequisite for differentiation as it helps “to assess students’ strengths and weaknesses and to set goals which are suitably challenging” (Government of Hungary, 2020, p. 295). The potential of professional cooperation in facilitating DI is also highlighted, and, in line with recent publications (Conderman & Hedin, 2014; Mofield, 2020), the NCC mentions team teaching as an innovative form of its implementation.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The affordances of ICT for DI are also explicitly highlighted both in the NCC and the Frame Curriculum. The NCC argues that “using modern 21st century tools is indispensable for the efficient and successful teaching and learning of foreign languages as well as for a more personalised approach to teaching” (Government of Hungary, 2020, p. 314) and that the content of FL teaching should be continuously planned and developed “in line with the needs of language learners, utilising 21st century opportunities, with special regard to ICT tools and modern language teaching technologies” (Government of Hungary, 2020, p. 316).

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Besides, and in accordance with the contents of the abovementioned documents, DI also features as a measurement indicator in the framework of compulsory performance evaluation of Hungarian primary and secondary school teachers, which combines a quality evaluation and promotion system for Hungarian primary and secondary school teachers working in public education (Bükki et al., 2016). The guidebook compiled by the Educational Authority states that teachers shall “strive to apply teaching strategies and methods that are suitable for age-specific, individual, and group characteristics, and promote engagement and differentiation” (Educational Authority, 2019, p. 17).

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The contents of the regulatory documents of public education suggest that primary and secondary school EFL teachers in Hungary are expected to possess the methodological knowledge and skills to be able to cater for their students’ needs in the classroom. However, research investigating Hungarian EFL teachers’ perspectives of DI is scarce, therefore, relatively little is known as to how they understand the approach and implement it in practice. To date, only two studies have been carried out that partially or entirely focus on this subject; an overview of these is provided in Section 2.3.2.
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