A latent profile analysis of adaptive teaching and its associations with self-efficacy in special education needs and professional collaboration

Abstract

Adaptive teaching is frequently conceptualised as an instructional response to learner heterogeneity in inclusive classrooms and is often examined as a continuous characteristic of teaching practice. The present study investigates whether adaptive teaching may be better represented as differentiated configurations of instructional regulation and examines how these configurations relate to teachers’ self-efficacy in special education needs and professional collaboration. Drawing on aptitude–treatment interaction theory, a person-centred analytic approach was applied to data from 4932 lower secondary teachers participating in the Teaching and Learning International Survey 2024 in Türkiye. Latent profile analysis supported a four-profile solution that differed in overall intensity and in the relative combination of planning, explanation, method adjustment, and material differentiation. In addition to low, moderate, and high adaptivity profiles, a method-centred configuration was identified, characterised by comparatively stronger emphasis on instructional method adjustment than on material differentiation. Differences in self-efficacy in special education needs were statistically significant across profiles, although the pattern was not strictly monotonic. Professional collaboration was related to profile membership and was particularly salient in distinguishing the least adaptive profile from the others, but it did not increase linearly across more intensive configurations. Overall, the findings suggest that adaptive teaching may be examined as patterned instructional regulation within this sample and context, while interpretations remain bounded by the cross-sectional design and reliance on self-reported measures.