Hey Dawn -- Thanks for inquiring and thanks for exploring the possibilities. You are basically asking two questions: 1) does responding to students' learning profiles in your instruction increase long-term memory of curriculum, and 2) does responding to students' learning profiles improve test performance. Those can be very different things, as performance on a standardized test doesn't always equate with long-term memory of material. In addition, "learning profiles" is a GIGANTIC category . It's basically anything that impacts a student's learning. You're talking about learning styles, multiple intelligences, personal history (family, schooling, culture, poverty or not, interests, giftedness or not, transiency or not, fetal-alcohol issues or not, ELL, etc.). This means it will be very hard to research and conclude anything but, "Yes, this stuff matters."

What you might want to do is focus on one aspect of learning profiles, such as multiple intelligences, learning styles, etc. For each of these, there is a lot of research out there, and I'd start with Web sites dedicated to the individual topics to get citations. Another thing to consider is that we can improve test scores just by teaching students test-taking savvy (how to read and interpret test prompts, how to respond according to the formula, etc.) but that doesn't mean the students actually learned the material well or moved it into long-term memory: they just became better test-takers. You'll have to be very careful in the connections you make, isolating very specific variables, and minimizing influence from other variables. You'll have to discern whether or not something a correlation or a causation, too.

In short, you're asking if we respond to our knowledge of the unique needs of our students via our adjustments to their instruction, will it matter? This is a worthy research pursuit, if for no other reason to confirm what's already out there, but to also pose new questions we may not have considered. Find a few authors of DI material that you respect - maybe Benjamin, Marzano, Tomlinson, Northey, Campbell, Grant, Forsten, Hollas, Winebrenner, Bender, and others -- and read through the citations in their books to launch your investigation.

As you feel comfortable, throw out questions to those of us on this listserv, and definitely let us know how it's going.

Anyone else want to chime in with advice for Dawn? -- Rick Wormeli
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