Decoding Adaptive Teaching – TeacherToolkit
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What is adaptive teaching?
Adaptive teaching can be hard to visualise in everyday classroom practice, so I’ve offered some actionable strategies, as well as some leadership and academic critique.
But first, it’s important to note that adaptive teaching is not new.
Despite the recent attention it has received, the phrase “adapt teaching” has been central to the Teachers’ Standards since 2012. Whether it’s called “responsive teaching” or “differentiation,” the goal remains the same: helping teachers meet the needs of all their students and maximise individual potential.
While every teacher strives to meet each student’s needs, the reality is that a teacher cannot individually engage every student in every single lesson.
The challenge lies in how adaptive teaching is implemented, observed, and evaluated, in and out of the lesson.
What does ‘Teacher Standard 5’ say?
Adapt teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils
- Knowing when and how to differentiate effectively.
- Understanding factors that inhibit learning and how to overcome them.
- Being aware of students’ physical, social, and intellectual development.
- Adapting to the diverse needs of students, including SEN, high ability, EAL, and disabilities.
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What should teachers do?
Personalise
What adaptive teaching means is that teachers should adjust their approaches so that they personalise the curriculum to meet the needs of their students. This does not mean 30 different approaches, or 30 different worksheets. As with all the headaches we experienced with differentiation myths, it is an overtime approach, not a one-off lesson method.
Variety of instructions
Adaptive teaching also involves using a variety of instructional (teaching) strategies. These could include a live demonstration under a visualiser, a group exercise, a lecture delivery, or a ‘I do, we do, you do‘ modelling exercise.
Flexibility
As with all excellent teaching, teachers must be flexible.
If things aren’t working, you shouldn’t follow the lesson plan just because that’s what you’ve planned. If students struggle, question or need some additional help, teachers must adapt their strategies in the moment. Now how to do this, how to evaluate when, and what to do next requires your teacher-expertise.
Ongoing assessment
Whether you question, conduct retrieval practice low-stake quizzes or provide written or verbal feedback in class, ongoing assessment is essential.
Collaboration
Adaptive teaching also involves what happens outside the classroom. For example, collaborative discussions with other teachers, other students and the family unit at home. This becomes your ‘planning tool’ to help refine your interventions (back) in class.
Self-regulation
I have always found metacognition quite an abstract concept. We must teach our students how to participate in their learning. When we think about what critical thinking skills involve; being aware of capabilities, the problem that lies ahead and the strategies available to solve them. When these building blocks are in place, we can plan, monitor and evaluate our learning.
A resource to help?
If you need a practical resource, the following provides many examples in the classroom.
What doesn’t it mean?
For many years, our profession has been fixated on the phrase “differentiation.”
Ten years ago, this meant meeting the needs of every single child in every lesson. It is highly misinterpreted, an unsustainable approach, and misleading for teachers.
Academic research
Emerging studies – there are ~172 open-source PDFs on “adaptive teaching” – in cognitive science suggest that effective adaptive teaching is underpinned by an understanding of the brain’s role in learning. A recent paper, Neuroscience Concepts Supporting Teachers’ Adaptive Expertise (Simmers & Massey, 2024, pg.7) highlights:
- Effective, responsive teaching benefits from a foundational understanding of the cognitive and neural mechanisms that underline student learning. These can inform teachers’ instructional decisions.
- Teachers make a high volume of planned and in-the-moment decisions in response to the varied emotional, social, developmental, and instructional information they gather about students.
- Adaptive expertise requires drawing from a broad knowledge as opposed to deep knowledge in one area.
- With an incomplete or in accurate knowledge base, adaptive expertise becomes more challenging.
- The phrase “neurocognitive pedagogy” describes creating a scientific base to support teaching and learning.
I will return to this paper in greater detail in a future blog.
Adaptive teaching is certainly much more than responding in the moment; I resort back to the first key idea in all the 30 chapters shared in Mark Plan Teach. Do you have a secure overview of the students in front of you?
Without this, you cannot plan a laser-sharp lesson, nor can you meet your students’ needs. So for me, adaptive teaching happens outside of the classroom, as much as it does inside.
The evidence base for a teacher should be vast, responsive in the moment, and an overtime approach …
