As the engineering landscape advances, becoming increasingly intricate and interwoven with diverse disciplines, individuals from varied backgrounds find themselves navigating territories that may be partially familiar or entirely novel to them. Addressing this dynamic, adaptive learning and teaching emerge as effective tools to cater to unique learning preferences and the varying foundational knowledge of each student, ensuring tailored educational trajectories. Individualized progression is essential, when handling complex engineering problems that rely on layered and sequential understanding. Adaptive teaching and learning approach are still rarely utilized in most educational settings. To date, the integration of adaptive systems in higher education has not been exploited to its full potential. A particularly intriguing research area is the deployment of adaptability within mixed-reality environments. The convergence of adaptive learning with immersive technologies holds great potential for delivering experiential hands-on learning. Furthermore, data-centric design enables educators to gain insight into each student's performance. An analytical perspective can reshape teaching strategies and curricular adjustments in engineering education for the foreseeable future. This paper provides an overview on fundamental principles of adaptive learning and teaching. A mixed reality approach is introduced, which employs a comprehensive progression model for virtual learning environments. The model provides a structure to examine various stages of incorporating adaptive learning and teaching techniques. At each phase of the model distinct opportunities and challenges are identified. The proposed framework may act as a guiding structure for the design, development and deployment of adaptive learning environments. In presenting this research, the focus is put on fostering the discourse, collaborations, and innovations in adaptive learning applications within higher education in engineering curricula.