‘And it's also much more quiet there!’—A qualitative study on the relationship between differentiated instruction and classroom disruptions

Abstract The concept of differentiated instruction (DI) is recommended for the productive handling of diversity, to which all teachers at all school types are committed. In an interview study on differentiated instruction in school practice , teachers addressed a connection between the use of differentiated instruction and classroom disruptions, which has not yet been the subject of empirical research. This article is dedicated to this connection, which has been derived from the interviews. The research question thus stems from school practice and the teachers' perspective. The results of this study, which evaluated 18 semi‐structured interviews using qualitative content analysis, interestingly showed that some secondary school teachers deliberately use DI to reduce classroom disruptions, for example, to avoid excessive demands, frustration, boredom or students' refusal to work. Additionally, teachers report using certain measures to prevent classroom disruptions, such as tiered assignments and materials, the targeted composition of student work groups, or nonverbal learning aids. However, other teachers, in contrast, report that they explicitly do not use differentiated instruction because it is not even possible due to students' disciplinary difficulties, and DI tends to exacerbate classroom disruptions. The research question is framed theoretically, and results are discussed in the context of previous research.