Best Practice

Adaptive teaching or differentiation?

Pedagogy Lesson planning Inclusion
For years we have spoken about differentiation in the classroom. But now everyone is talking about adaptive teaching. Confused? Sara Alston reminds us that it ain’t what you call it, but the way that you do it
Image: Adobe Stock

In education over the years many trends and buzzwords have come and gone. One of the latest of these is the move from “differentiation” to “adaptive teaching”. 

The need to “adapt” our teaching for different students was cited in the Teachers’ Standards way back in 2011 – Standard 5 states: “Adapt teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils.” (DfE, 2011)

And yet a best practice article 10 years later in SecEd – Adaptive teaching explained: What, why and how (Bromley, 2021) – has garnered tens of thousands of page views and still appears regularly in our top 10 most read online articles showing that colleagues are still hungry for information.

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