INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
Apart from identical twins, no two individuals are the same especially in the area of genetic inheritance. This implies that though we are all human beings, we are never the same. Even siblings born of the same parents or who belong to the same phenotype category are not the same. Each person is unique even in the case of identical twins. Areas of differences may include gender (sex), height, skin pigmentation, weight, intelligence, how individuals perceive things, how they believe, their emotions, resistance to diseases, attention span, interests, and problem solving approaches among others.
Each individual though unique has some differences within him personally. This is known as intra individual differences, that is the differences seen or noticed in an individual. The situation is made possible because of differences in periods or stages of growth and development from the moment of conception to birth and finally to adulthood and death. It is expected that growing up from babyhood to adulthood will have to produce certain differences in the person. So from docile or precocious babyhood to dull or lively childhood, the individual grows into quiet or stubborn or probing adolescent.
And yet at another period he becomes a loving and caring father and husband. Within each person, these differences continue to manifest in physical
and behavioural domains and he still remains the same person.
Clifford (2004) identifies between subtle and extreme differences. Subtle differences among individuals are not easily noticed. They are identified in members of a racial group who possibly have the same skin colour. He listed the areas of differences to include, colour of the eyes, hair condition, weight, skills, height, taste and other traits. Apart from subtle differences there are other ones. These are extreme differences which are easy to be identified.
Sex or gender is one of the extreme differences easily noticed between persons. Some subtle differences may also manifest in extreme differences in the areas of interests, aptitudes, attitudes, emotions, attention span. Apart from gender differences, other trait differences span over a continuum, so that within two extremes of very long attention span and very short attention span, there may be a situation of not so long or not so short and that of average span of attention in between.
From the above it is not easy to find all the children in a school even in a class identical.
Differences exist in the areas mentioned above. So in a school of about 600 pupils or in a class of about 40 pupils, each and every one of them is unique in various ways. Teachers who are not aware of these differences treat every child alike. They believe that by using the same method, instructional materials, skills and strategies in teaching and learning and creating conducive classroom environment, that they have accommodated every child in the class. This is
erroneous. The individual differences must come into play in the course of teaching and learning, in allotting and in carrying out other school or classroom activities. For instance, is it profitable for a teacher to delay bright children in the class in a particular lesson so that some backward ones will catch up with them? Or can a teacher run on in his teaching without giving any attention to the backward children just because a few bright ones are following. The teacher has to prepare her lesson and teach in such a way that these differences are accommodated and taken care of through what he does, how he does it, when he does it, where he does it and with what he does it. Therefore taking care of individual differences in schools is necessary for proper implementation of educational programmes.
It will also help the teacher to allot duties to each child in the class according to interests, strengths, weaknesses, potentialities, etc.
Areas of Individual Differences
The areas of individual differences are manifested as follows.
(a) Differences in Sex: The differences in sex (gender) are remarkably noticed in human beings and other orgaisms such as animals. A human being is either born a genetic male or a genetic female. Comparatively, males are more sturdy in stature, more robost, taller, more strongly built, more ambitious, more independent, adventurous, and competitive than females. But females are more docile,
more tolerant, more emotionally mature and dependent.
(b) Physical Differences: No two individuals have the same physique. There are therefore differences in height, weight, skin colour/
pigmentation, hair and eye colour, motor development (coordination of the parts of the body which depends on maturation and learning) and shape of the body among people of the same gender and age.
(c) Differences in Intelligence: Intelligence is the centre point of academic process and activities. It is a phenotypic phenomenon and the differences arise as a result of factors in the environment where people operate. As a result of this there are gifted people with very superior intelligence. Others have average, below average, low and very low intelligence.
The government even though it recognizes these differences, does not make adequate arrangement to accommodate children with varying intellectual differences. The children are then grouped and lumped together in the same class. The result is that those with superior intelligence are not challenged through the academic work and so get frustrated, while those with low intelligence are over stretched and so cannot cope.
(d) Socio-economic Differences: Socio-economic status refers to social and economic standing of an individual. It refers too to how one is
rated socially and economically arising from ones social and financial standing. Whether a family is socially and financially rated high or not, children are born into it. They live, operate in it and they are influenced by it. A wealthy and well informed family is well disposed to provide a healthy and comfortable environment for their children-good nutrition, enough rest, ample time for extra lessons and provisions of school materials like texts, radio, video games, audio-visual aids like television, computer film projectors etc. These things help children to grow academically.
(e) Psychological Differences: People exhibit varying emotions. Some are easily prone to fear, anger, temper-tantrums while others appear the apposite. Some are introverted while others are extroverted. The degree of relationships between and among people depend on the extent these emotions are expressed. That is why some people make friends easily and some find it so difficult to have close association with people.
(f) Physiological Differences: Physiology is the study of the structure and functions of various parts of the body. From studies it has been found that the structure and functioning of these parts differ from one person to another.
For instance the level at which the sense of smell functions differs from one person to another. So are other senses of sight, touch, taste and hearing. Various parts and organs in
the body differ in size and how they function in each individual. There are also differences in the blood group and type, in the rate of metabolism, in the level of sugar, salt content in the blood and differences in the body temperature and pulse rate.
Why we differ:
No two individuals are alike. There are areas of differences between them. Each individual is therefore unique in certain respects. Individual differences refer to the deviations of people from the normal or average and from person to person. Some children are consistent in growth while others are not. There are children who are fast, consistent and who maintain a relatively advanced position while others lag behind (Uba, 1981). Through growth and development people differ in appearance and behavior. New born babies differ in size, skin pigmentation, eye and hair colour and shape of the body. Some are active, they cry more, eat more while some others are dull, cry less, eat less and this may continue as they grow older. Why do people differ?
They are different because of three conditions. These conditions are (a) the genetic condition (b) the environmental condition and (c) the phenotype condition.
The Genetic Condition:
The differences found in humans occur as a result of meiosis which is a special kind of cell
division. The process of meiosis results into a condition that no two sperm or ova are the same (Clifford, 2004). We emphasized that since no two sperm or ova are the same, two zygotes cannot be the same at conception. It is only identical twins which develop from one zygote that are more or less the same genetically. All other genetic differences in people result from the fact that we develop and grow from different zygotes at conception.
The Environmental Condition:
Differences in environment bring about differences in individuals. Environmental differences start from pre-natal stage. Each individual apart from twins, grows and develops in a separate womb with its separate environmental conditions. Children of the same mother may experience different environmental conditions either in the womb or post natally. This may result from varying conditions and experiences undergone by the mother during pregnancy. What prevailed in one pregnancy may be absent in another.
Treatment, love and care given to siblings living in the same environment by their parents and other significant individuals vary. These produce varying effects on children. Siblings are mindful of this kind of behaviour. These varying care, love and affection exhibited by parents towards their children are clearly noticed when a new baby arrives in the home and every attention is diverted towards the baby.
Each individual is unique and each environment is unique for each person. This produces varying interests, likes and dislikes among people. The uniqueness found in people results from the fact that they have various background characteristics such as differences in homes, families, villages, towns and countries. Some of these characteristics like the home/family may be rich or poor. Some people live in slums while others live in highbrow areas like Government Reserved Areas such as, Victoria Island, Independence Layout etc. Some also live in urban cities while others live in rural areas.
The Phenotype Condition:
Genetically every individual is different just as environment differs from one situation to another.
What produces the phenotype condition is the complex and constant interaction between genotype and the environment. The genetic conditions differ and the environmental conditions also differ. The interaction of these two conditions cannot produce what is the same for everybody. This means that the phenotype so produced varies from person to person even between two identical twins. The skills one develops depend on the kind of environment one lives and grows in. All potentials acquired at conception need environment to manifest themselves. It is the phenotype condition that explains why even identical twins reared up in different environments manifest different phenotypic traits like differences in intelligence or
mental ability, personality, skills, dressing and language. Identical twins born in an Igbo family but are reared in Yoruba and Hausa areas are bound to behave typical of the area where each is bred.
Educational Implications of Individual Differences
Educational implications refer to the role education has to play so that the individual differences are accommodated. This is done through curriculum planners and the teachers who are the implementers of the curriculum. The accommodation of the differences can be handled by teachers in the following ways:
Grouping Strategy
This involves grouping the children according to their academic performance using their results.
This may be done by grouping all the intelligent children in one class, for example, grouping them in class 4A; the average ones in 4B and dull ones in 4C etc. Those who advocate this strategy maintain that children in each of these classes fall within the same 1.Q. bracket and that they are expected to learn almost at the same rate. Some problems arise out of this arrangement. The first one is that since all the children in one class have relatively the same 1-Q.
no one is posing a challenge in what is taught and learnt. The next one is that the average or the dull ones do not benefit from the intelligent ones who will help brush them up for better academic
improvement. While the teacher in 4A puts in very little efforts in her teaching, 4C teacher will always exhaust her/his energy in teaching and explaining of points so that the children will grasp what has been taught, no matter how little.
Enriching the School/class environment
Enriching the environment has to do with providing all the school resource materials in the form of library materials, textbooks, laboratory equipment adequate learning experiences and creating opportunities for self and individual studies. Enriching can be made for gifted or very bright children, it can be put in place also for dull children. While the bright ones can cope with studying and experimenting using effectively the equipment and materials with or without supervision, by touching/feeling, manipulating objects, testing, perceiving and hearing, the deficient ones may be able to improve academically and in other areas in the enriched school and classroom environment.
Giving Special Attention
Teachers are meant to give special attention to those children who are not fast in learning. After teaching, teachers should make out time to help those children. Attention should be given to the children’s learning styles and rates at which they learn, background experiences and span of attention. So teachers should use different methods, styles, skills and strategies in teaching to
accommodate the differences in the learning styles and rate of learning by children. Special and extra lesson sessions should be devoted to the less intelligent students in order to brush them up.
Acceleration Process
This is a process through which students who have high intellectual ability are made to skip classes. In every class there are students with varying intelligence quotients (I.Q.). Some have very high or superior I.Q., others may posses average I.Q.
while still others may acquire inferior I.Q. To take care of these differences, the students who possess superior I.Q. may be accelerated or promoted to one or two levels or classes ahead. According to Ugwu (1997) the acceleration arrangement will avoid the tempo of instruction being dull and unchallenging to those with superior intelligence and hectic and over stretching to the very dull ones.
Integration
Integrated education programme is much more beneficial to segregated arrangement. Integration enhances socialisation and accommodation of various differences in students – including gender differences, social background, physical or mental abilities, and psychological aspects of children. All of them are put in the same programme and the teacher in the class has to do all in his/her power to accommodate these differences effectively for the benefit of each child in such a class.
Special Education
Even though mainstreaming is highly recommended, sometimes some extreme cases need special educational arrangement. Those children who remarkably differ from others are recommended for special education programme. The children involved include the hearing impaired, the visually impaired, the physically challenged, and the gifted among others. Special teachers are trained who work with special equipment that are put in place in such schools and special methods are used in teaching them. Children are therefore arranged in the school according to the type of exceptionality, disability or impairment for maximum academic achievement. Mainstreaming however helps the disabled to integrate themselves with the normal learners in the school. It helps to reduce inferiority complex, enhance their relationships within the school and helps to accelerate learning. It enhances their social and emotional wellbeing in the school and by extension, outside the school.