Adaptiver Unterricht erfordert eine adaptive Unterrichtsforschung

There is a growing awareness that instruction should be adapted to the individual differences of students in a classroom. However, there is surprisingly little empirical knowledge about such adaptive teaching and under which conditions it is beneficial for students’ academic development. Following on from Begrich and colleagues, who, in the anniversary issue of Unterrichtswissenschaft, identified the study of adaptive teaching as one of the central “perspectives for teaching quality research of the future”, we would like to “think ahead” in our commentary as to how the empirical study of adaptive teaching can be implemented. To do so, we first address what adaptive teaching is and what it looks like in practice. Based on our experience from the study “Adaptivity and Teaching Quality in Individualized Classrooms”, we then turn to the question of what challenges arise in the study of adaptive teaching and outline possible solutions. In doing so, we argue that not only teaching, but also instructional research must be adaptive in order to adequately address student heterogeneity.