OVERCOMING STUDENTS’ DIVERSITY THROUGH DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING: AN ANALYSIS OF TEACHER PRACTICES IN MADRASAH

Student diversity is a challenge for teachers when implementing teaching and learning process. Teachers have a key role in managing student characteristics to identify and respond to individual student differences, especially in the aspect of numeracy skills. The purpose of the research is to analyse teachers' strategies in overcoming student diversity through differentiated learning. Qualitative approach was used as the research approach. The data collection process began with observation and continued with interviews with six teachers who teach science and mathematics subjects at MTs Almaarif 01 Singosari. The results showed that teachers have diverse strategies in overcoming student diversity, especially in measuring numeracy skills. In an effort to implement differentiated learning, teachers provide different student activities, such as conducting a pre-test before learning takes place, providing different reading materials and differentiating the difficulty level of student assignments according to their abilities. Initial assessment before learning takes place is an important thing to do so that teachers can design learning methods appropriately, especially in materials related to numeracy skills. Continuous assessment is also carried out as an evaluation material for teachers when implementing differentiated learning. Collaboration with fellow science and math teachers is also used as a way to understand the level of students' numeracy skills. This is done because math and science lessons have a material connection that makes counting skills as an indicator.