What is the meaning of individual differences describe the causes and educational implications of individual differences?

There can be two types of individual differences based on their traits along with their definitions:

Inter-Individual Differences

These kind of differences are considered the difference which can be measurable. Inter individual differences are called the variations in physical structure, mental level, emotional factors and social attributes in two or more than two individuals. For example, a person can be measured by the weight and the variation in their growth along with the kind of temperament that person possess in comparison to another individual.

Intra-Individual Differences

Intra Individual differences are those differences which are found in an individual from with respect to various personality traits. These traits can also be measured but the difference is that these traits are compared with another trait of a person himself. It includes the kind of variations an individual can hold in various characteristics. For example, a person who is highly intelligent can have poor academic performance at school or a person who is physically healthy but does not have high intelligence .

Types of Individual Differences Based on Acquisition

Inherited Individual Differences

• Physical Individual Differences
• Cognitive Individual Differences
• Temperamental Individual Differences

Acquired Individual Differences

• Social Differences from family, neighborhood, society
• Educational Differences from academic Performance
• Emotional Differences
• Cultural Differences

Causes of Individual Differences:

• Race
• Ethnicity
• Socioeconomic status
• Academic ability
• Attitude towards learning
• Intellectual orientation
• Personality traits
• Motivation
• Family background
• Financial Background
• Relation with Family
• Friendship etc.

Educational Implications of Individual Differences

Understanding of Cognitive Ability Variations

First of all, while teaching a class full of students belonging to different mental levels, it has the partial probability to have the mentally slow learners as compared with the highly intelligent students. Therefore, individual differences provide the chance to understand these variations.

Utilization of Different Capacities

With the comprehension of individual differences, the teacher can have the knowledge about a student’s different capacities, capabilities, interests, knowledge, attitude and reasoning skills. These variations can be utilized by the teacher to guide them on the right path.

Mitigation of Intelligence Uniformity

With the understanding of individual differences, a student would be saved from the intelligence uniformity available in every student as each student would have different level of understanding. The reason behind this is that every student has different background knowledge, experience, self motivation to learn and interests in the particular field. These students would not get judged with the understanding of individual differences.

Appropriate Usage of Instructional Plan

Due to the knowledge about individual differences, the teacher and the academic institutions would implement the appropriate usage of instructional plans for reducing the gap for the achievement of learning process.

Decision upon Teaching Tasks and Activities

After understanding individual differences, it becomes easy for the teacher to opt the appropriate teaching tasks and learning activities as per the understanding level of the students.

Suggestion for Academic Improvement

The knowledge of individual difference would provide an opportunity for assessing the academic performance of every student which can inform about the right usage of teaching plans. Therefore, the performance of students along with the efforts of teacher can get acknowledged which can revolutionize the further academic improvement to reduce the gap of individual differences.