Examining the Australian educational landscape of differentiation through document analysis

Abstract Teachers in Australia have the professional responsibility to differentiate teaching to meet the needs of students across the full range of abilities. However, it is often reported that there is a need for greater definitional clarity of the term differentiation to support teachers’ understanding and implementation. In this article, we examine differentiation in the context of Australian education with a focus on how differentiation is communicated to school leaders and teachers. A document analysis tool was utilised to review publicly available documents from 2008 to 2024 to establish how differentiation is communicated to school leaders and teachers in Australia. The analysis of 60 documents revealed that the nomenclature and definition of differentiation is varied and that there is a strong need to provide a nationally consistent definition and distinction between the term adjustments (used in Australian disability legislation), and differentiation as distinctly different approaches to addressing the diverse needs of all students, and not just for students with disability as it currently being positioned in many educational documents. Three recommendations are presented that have implications for Standard 1.5 of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, and other national documentation.