Adaptive teaching centres on responding to the strengths, needs, and prior knowledge of all pupils while maintaining high expectations. Pupils learn at different rates and require different forms of support, so effective teaching involves understanding these differences and adjusting instruction responsively rather than delivering identical experiences to everyone. At the same time, adaptation should not reduce challenge or create fixed hierarchies of expectation, since artificially distinct tasks or lowered goals can limit pupil success.

This perspective reflects a long educational tradition in which the excellence of the teacher lies in recognising differences in learners’ talents and responding appropriately. Adaptive teaching therefore combines attentiveness to individual learners with commitment to shared intellectual ambition.

Relationships, trust, and classroom climate

Adaptive teaching depends on strong relationships. Pupils must feel safe to make mistakes, ask questions, and reveal uncertainty. Building trust may require sustained individual interaction, especially in examination classes or when pupils inherit a new teacher. Over time, confidence in the teacher’s knowledge and care supports deeper engagement and willingness to attempt challenge.

Motivation, self-efficacy, perseverance, prior experience, cultural capital, and access to technology all influence success in learning to code. Intelligence matters, yet motivation predicts achievement beyond intelligence alone and can be shaped through teaching, feedback, and expectations. Adaptive teaching therefore attends to emotional and motivational conditions as well as cognitive ones.

Belief in fixed programming ability can hinder participation. Evidence shows little support for innate bimodal “coding talent,” reinforcing the importance of inclusive expectations and responsive support.

Grouping, support, and classroom organisation

Debate continues about ability grouping in computing. Research suggests setting and streaming yield limited overall progress and may disadvantage lower-attaining pupils, while flexible grouping and targeted support offer more promise. Ensuring all pupils encounter challenging curriculum content remains essential regardless of grouping structure.

Classroom practice often blends approaches. Teachers may focus attention on pupils who have made less progress, provide peer support through mixed-ability collaboration, or reorganise seating to enable targeted intervention. Adaptive teaching here involves pragmatic allocation of teacher time to maximise learning benefit.

Mixed-ability contexts can enable peer explanation and exposure to higher-level thinking, while ability grouping may simplify pacing and support. Each approach carries trade-offs in motivation, equity, and instructional efficiency. Professional judgement therefore remains central.

Responsive questioning and real-time adjustment

Questioning forms a core mechanism of adaptive teaching. Prepared probing questions enable teachers to assess understanding, challenge reasoning, and extend thinking during the lesson. Real-time questioning replaces static differentiation, allowing stretch or support to emerge dynamically.

Observing pupil responses, facial expressions, and misconceptions informs immediate adjustment. Over time, experience allows teachers to anticipate common misunderstandings and plan targeted prompts. Adaptive expertise thus develops through practice and reflection.

Inclusion and high expectations

Adaptive teaching rejects the notion that some pupils cannot succeed in computing. Inclusive practice combines high expectations with tailored support, ensuring access to demanding knowledge for all learners. Additional needs, including special educational needs or disabilities, require collaboration with colleagues and families to remove barriers and design effective strategies.

Flexibility in grouping, responsiveness to progress, and avoidance of fixed labels help sustain equitable opportunity. Motivation and expectation interact powerfully with achievement, reinforcing the teacher’s role in shaping learner belief.

From differentiation to adaptive teaching

Traditional differentiation often relied on ability-based worksheets, predefined ceilings of attainment, and rigid planning with static resources. By contrast, adaptive teaching emphasises a single high-quality task accessible to all pupils, flexible responses during the lesson, and real-time adjustment informed by feedback.

This shift reframes classroom practice. Rather than allocating different work to different groups in advance, teachers observe understanding as it develops and intervene through questioning, scaffolding, or extension. Every pupil retains access to demanding content, while support and stretch emerge dynamically.

Depth, safety, and long-term success

For high-attaining pupils, effective challenge combines intellectual depth with psychological safety. Stretch without support risks disengagement; support without stretch limits growth. Depth of thinking builds durable success beyond immediate performance, and genuine learning depends on reasoning rather than speed.

Adaptive teaching therefore aligns challenge, inclusion, motivation, and responsiveness within a single pedagogical stance.

Who counts as “bright”?

Surface indicators such as finishing first, confidence, or prior attainment may suggest brightness, yet deeper understanding, meaningful learning, and confident reasoning provide more reliable evidence. Pace is visible; thinking is not. Effective adaptive teaching therefore probes understanding rather than rewarding speed.

Stretching high-attaining pupils presents specific challenges. Apparent mastery may conceal misconceptions, acceleration may replace depth, and motivation may decline if challenge feels risky. Addressing these tensions requires careful design of intellectual demand.

In computing, stretch is characterised by depth rather than speed, complexity rather than quantity, and decision-making rather than compliance. Rich challenge invites pupils to reason, refine, and justify rather than simply complete more work.

Practical approaches to stretch and challenge

Three complementary strategies illustrate adaptive stretch in computing.

Same task, different thinking encourages comparison of alternative solutions and evaluation of quality. Pupils engage in reasoning about efficiency, clarity, or correctness rather than merely producing an answer.

Stretch through constraints asks pupils to refine or transform existing code, align solutions with specification requirements, or improve structure and efficiency. Constraint deepens understanding by requiring deliberate design choices rather than free exploration.

Metacognitive stretch involves prediction, explanation, and reflection. Pupils anticipate program output, justify reasoning, and analyse outcomes, strengthening conceptual understanding and self-regulation.

Across these approaches, challenge emerges from thinking rather than pace, supporting durable learning.

Concluding perspective

Adaptive teaching in computing is not a set of techniques but a way of thinking about learning. It requires attention to individual difference without surrendering shared ambition, commitment to depth over pace, and continuous adjustment guided by evidence from pupils’ responses.

Stretching the brightest, supporting the struggling, and maintaining inclusive expectations form interconnected aspects of the same practice. Through responsive questioning, thoughtful task design, and strong relationships, adaptive teaching seeks to ensure that every pupil can think more deeply, learn more securely, and participate more fully in computing.

Based on the 14th Roehampton Computing Education lecture, Adaptive Teaching, 28 January 2026