Reimagining adaptive teaching: Creating a supportive environment for all learners

This paper considers how an inclusive and supportive learning environment might be realised through reimaging adaptive teaching, revisiting the work of educational theorist, Seymour Papert. Papert (1980) states that “…environments offered to children by today's cultures are poor in opportunities to bring their thinking about thinking into the open, to learn to talk about it and to test their ideas…” (p. 27-28) Considering how environments might be adapted to allow all learners to access learning whilst offering opportunity for challenge, Papert’s work offers school practitioners a new way of thinking about adaptive teaching and greater inclusivity. Therefore, we consider how a low threshold, high ceiling pedagogical model might be disseminated and function in establishing more inclusive and supportive learning environments as well as equitable outcomes for learners in all areas of the curriculum.