Making Differentiation a Habit

Diane Heacox, Ed.D., is a consultant and professional development trainer focusing on strategies to increase learning success for all students. She is professor emerita at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is a national and international consultant and professional development trainer to both public and private schools on a variety of topics related to teaching and learning.Dr. Heacox has taught at both elementary and secondary school levels and has served as a gifted education teacher and administrator, as well as an instructional specialist in public education. Dr. Heacox is also the author of four books. Her first book for Free Spirit Publishers was Up From Underachievement: How Teachers, Students, and Parents Can Work Together. Her second book, Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom: How to Reach and Teach All Learners was updated and re-released in 2012. Making Differentiation a Habit earned the 2010 Association of Education Publishers Distinguished Achievement Award and was updated in 2017.Her book coauthored with Richard Cash, Differentiation for Gifted Learners: Going Beyond the Basics, received the 2014 Legacy Book Award for Educators by the Texas Association for Gifted and Talented. Dr. Heacox’s books have been translated into Dutch, Hungarian, Korean, Arabic, and Portuguese.Her Differentiation Classroom Practices Inventory was used by the Ministry of Education in Portugal for conducting a national survey of classroom practices. Dr. Heacox serves on the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development (MN ASCD) and the Minnesota Department of Education Gifted Education Advisory Board.She is the past chair for the Middle Level Network and the Education committee for National Association for Gifted Children and the current facilitator of the Higher Education Division for international ASCD.Dr. Heacox was recognized by the Minnesota Educators of Gifted and Talented as a Friend of the Gifted for service to gifted education. She is also in the University of St. Thomas Educators Hall of Fame for contributions to the field of education.

“I loved the first edition of this book, yet find this updated edition to be even better! Diane does a masterful job of citing essential educational research and joining it with practical differentiation strategies for classroom teachers and school administrators. I particularly appreciate her focus on gifted students and students with learning difficulties, since these are the most likely groups to need differentiated instruction. Additionally, Diane connects Response to Intervention (RTI) and ways to implement personalized learning as parts of the differentiation habit. The most significant part of the book for me, however, is the chapter entitled ‘Using Ethical Grading Practices.’ Grading in a differentiated classroom seems to be the greatest challenge for many teachers when they begin to differentiate their instruction. Diane offers several excellent strategies for dealing with this issue. I recommend that this chapter be carefully read and discussed in every school.”