Gianluca Raso, Senior Middle Leader for MFL at NACE Challenge Award-accredited Maiden Erlegh School, explores the real meaning of “adaptive teaching” and what this means in practice.

When I first came across the term “adaptive teaching”, I thought: “Is that not what we already do? Surely, the label might be new, but it is still differentiation.” Monitoring progress, supporting underperforming students and providing the right challenge for more able learners: these are staples in our everyday practice to allow students to actively engage with and enjoy our subjects. 

I was wrong. Adaptive teaching is not merely differentiation by another name. In adaptive teaching, differentiation does not occur by providing different handouts or the now outdated “all, most, some” objectives, which intrinsically create a glass ceiling in students’ achievement. Instead, it happens because of the high-quality teaching we put in for all our students. 

Adaptive teaching is a focus of the Early Career Framework (DfE, 2019), the Teachers’ Standards, and Ofsted inspections. It involves setting the same ambitious goals for all students but providing different levels of support. This should be targeted depending on the students’ starting points, and if and when students are struggling.

But of course it is not as simple as saying, “this is what adaptive teaching means: now use it”.

So how, in practice, do we move from differentiation to adaptive teaching?

A sensible way to look at it is to consider adaptive teaching as an evolution of differentiation. It is high-quality teaching based on:

1. Maintaining high standards, so that all learners have the opportunity to meet expectations.
   Supporting all students to work towards the same goal but breaking the learning down – forget about differentiated or graded learning objectives.
2. Balancing the input of new content so that learners master important concepts.
   Giving the right amount of time to our students – mastery over coverage.
3. Knowing your learners and providing targeted support.
   Making use of well-designed resources and planning to connect new content with pupils' prior knowledge or providing additional pre-teaching if learners lack critical knowledge.
4. Using Assessment for Learning in the classroom – in essence check, reflect and respond.
   Creating assessment fit for purpose – moving away from solely end of unit assessments.
5. Making effective use of teaching assistants.
   Delivering high quality one-to-one and small group support using structured interventions. 

In conclusion, adaptive teaching happens before the lesson, during the lesson and after the lesson. 

Aim for the top, using scaffolding for those who need it. Consider: what is your endgame and how do you get there? Does everyone understand? How do you know that? Can everyone explain their understanding? What mechanisms have you put in place to check student understanding ? Encourage classroom discussions (pose, pause, pounce, bounce), use a progress checklist, question the students (hinge questions, retrieval practice), adapt your resources (remove words, simplify the text, include errors, add retrieval elements).

Adaptive teaching is a valuable approach, but we must seek to embed it within existing best practice. Consider what strikes you as the most captivating aspect of your curriculum in which you can enthusiastically and wisely lead the way . 

Ask yourself:

• Could all children access this?
• Will all children be challenged by this?
  … then go from there…