Differentiating agents, differentiated patients: the production of subjects and knowledge(s) in theorizing differentiation in education

Educational theorizing makes use of various tools and perspectives to understand how differentiation processes in education have emerged as responses to socio-historical developments. Drawing on a systematic literature review, this article finds that educational research has framed these responses in five different ways: as structural-functional response; communicative response; cultural-historical response; hegemonic response; and as a response to capability development. Scrutinizing these scholarly understandings of differentiation from a meta-theoretical perspective, the article investigates, firstly, the kinds of knowledge generated within each approach; secondly, how researchers and researched subjects—differentiating agents and differentiated patients—are positioned relative to one another; and thirdly, how these approaches contribute to thinking about inclusion and exclusion in education. Drawing on insights from the author’s fieldwork in multi-ethnic Southwest China, each of these five theoretical conceptualizations are interrogated with respect to their potential to accommodate conceptions of individual or collective agency.