Differentiation & Adaptive Teaching & Learning


Embedding evidence-based, school-wide strategies to deliver for every learner
Within any year level, the most advanced learners are routinely five to six years ahead of the least advanced. Schools are being asked to meet that range in every lesson, and the responsibility too often rests on individual teachers alone.
This conference brings senior school leaders together for two days of practical, interactive, evidence-based work on what differentiation actually requires at three levels: the teacher, the school, and the system.
Across the conference, Australia’s leading experts and voices in cognitive science, curriculum, assessment and inclusion sit alongside practitioners doing this work well. Delegates leave with frameworks, case studies and concrete strategies for school-wide differentiation that lasts beyond the initial implementation. Over the two days, explore how to build a school-wide approach, implement formative assessment routines that drive real-time teaching decisions, and reach every learner.
Speakers
Professor Geoff Masters AO
Former Chief Executive, ACER, Research Director
Institute for Educational Reform
Charlotte Forwood
Professor of Practice - School of Education, La Trobe University & Director of Learning Design and Development
Camberwell Girls Grammar School
Dr Matthew White
Lecturer & Researcher in Inclusive Education
Australian Catholic University
Professional learning alignment
Differentiation in Teaching & Learning 2026 is structured professional learning aligned with the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, supporting participants to meet Standards descriptors at Proficient level and above, with particular depth in Standards 1, 5 and 6.
- Standard 1.5 — Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities.
- Standard 1.3 & 1.4 — Students with diverse linguistic, cultural and religious backgrounds; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.
- Standard 5.4 — Interpret student data.
- Standard 6.2 & 6.3 — Engage in professional learning; engage with colleagues to improve practice.
Advisory Panel
The advisory panel brings together experienced educators, school leaders, and academic voices who have shaped the development of this conference. Their guidance has informed the program’s themes, session topics and speaker line-up, ensuring the conference reflects the realities of contemporary teaching practice and the priorities of senior school leaders.
The Hatchery would like to thank them for their participation, time, contribution, and insight.
- Professor Geoff Masters AO, former Chief Executive, ACER
- Matthew Esterman, Founder, The Next Word
- Adam Kruger, Learning Specialist – Teaching and Learning, Clyde Secondary College
- Associate Professor Chrissy Monteleone, Teacher Education and Professional Practice, School of Education, Associate Dean, Learning & Teaching (ADLT), La Trobe University
- Aisha Kristiansen, Head of Innovation and Technology, Kardinia International College
Why you need to attend this conference
Create a school-wide approach that supports teachers to differentiate sustainably
Build assessments & feedback routines that turn knowledge & data into teaching decisions
Reach every learner with differentiation strategies that work across the full classroom
What’s new in 2026
- Pre-reading, supplementary videos and an online assessment that attendees can access and complete ahead of the conference, as well as framework documents to take away.
- A new opening keynote anchored in cognitive science, Andrew Fuller’s Flight Path of Learning framework, with delegates arriving with their own learning-strengths profile
- A first appearance from ACER’s PISA International Survey Director, Dr Goran Lazendic, reading PISA 2025 through a global lens just six weeks after the data drops
- An AI-as-learning-partner panel anchored in real classroom workflows across sectors, plus a post-conference workshop where delegates build the workflows themselves
Who will attend
Leaders from primary and secondary schools, government, curriculum authorities, peak bodies and associations with roles and responsibilities, including:
- Principals/Headmasters & Deputy/Assistant Principals
- Head of Teaching & Learning
- Curriculum & Assessment
- Learning Enrichment & Support / Diverse Learning
- Gifted & Talented / High Potential Learning
- Professional Learning
- Student Data & Analytics
- Pedagogy Leaders & Learning Specialists
Explore practical strategies through case studies, panels, & roundtables showcasing real-world differentiation in Australian schools.
Learn from leading experts, including Professor Geoff Masters AO, school leaders, First Nations educators & neurodiversity specialists.
Strengthen leadership by building teacher expertise & embedding whole-school differentiation strategies.
Connect and collaborate through roundtables, panel discussions & networking opportunities.
Agenda
Acknowledgement of Country
Opening remarks from the MC & The Hatchery
Lead change without breaking your school
- Identify the agile leadership conditions that help you embed adaptive teaching practices
- Apply distributed leadership models that share, rather than concentrate, the implementation load
- Build the psychological safety, data infrastructure and workload protections schools need to make differentiation stick

Dr Venesser Fernandes
Senior Lecturer
Monash University
Differentiate through learning strengths, not labels
- Identify the working-memory and cognitive-load conditions that block each learner’s progress
- Apply a three-stage learning model, reducing drag, building lift, and accelerating forward, through differentiated, strengths-based practice
- Build the metacognitive and pattern-recognition routines that turn passive learners into adaptive thinkers

Dr Andrew Fuller
Clinical Psychologist and Educational Author
Morning tea
Leading whole-school differentiation: What experienced practitioners do every day
- Identify the day-to-day routines that turn whole-school differentiation from policy into practice
- Apply the strategies two senior diverse-learning leaders use to bring their teams along, manage workload, and stay on track when other priorities compete
- Build a practical playbook of the leadership moves that work across school contexts, regardless of size, sector or resourcing

Tina Moshkanbaryans
Head of Learning Enhancement
Knox Grammar School, NSW
How to make MTSS work alongside your other frameworks
- Identify where differentiation, explicit teaching and intervention actually sit within MTSS
- Apply the three-layer integrated MTSS model: normative foundations, structural enablers, implementation processes
- Build the leadership, data and partnership routines that let MTSS run as a single architecture, not competing silos

Dr Matthew White
Lecturer & Researcher in Inclusive Education
Australian Catholic University
Lunch
Differentiation strategies that worked this term
- Apply four practitioner-led strategies through small-group rotation
- Identify what each strategy delivered, what it cost, and what made it work
- Take back four ready-to-trial approaches from peers, in their own words

Tina Moshkanbaryans
Head of Learning Enhancement
Knox Grammar School, NSW
Implement whole-school change with fidelity, not fatigue
- Identify why most school initiatives fail at the implementation phase
- Apply capacity-building, modelling and coaching practices that protect the work
- Understand the honest version of what ‘school-wide’ actually requires from leaders

Amanda Schimke
Assistant Principal - Learning and Teaching
St Columban’s College

Janine Shipard
Senior Implementation Consultant
AERO
Afternoon tea
Using the curriculum as your differentiation framework
- Identify the curriculum resources, planners and scope-and-sequences already built within the curriculum, and the school-level habits that keep them unused
- Apply the work of mapping your school’s curriculum continuum, so that differentiation has a Foundation-to-Year-12 reference point, not just a year-level one
- Build the school-level habits that focus staff energy on teaching practice and assessment, with the curriculum framework as a foundation

Lauren Sayer
Head of Campus Williamstown
Westbourne Grammar School

Charlotte Peverett
Assistant Principal
Hamlyn Views School
The global lens on PISA 2025: What international data tells us about classroom practice
- Identify what PISA 2025 reveals about classroom and school practice through the international questionnaire data, beyond the headline rankings
- Understand how PISA 2025 has changed: the first online PISA cycle, what that has enabled, and what it now measures
- Apply the OECD’s global findings as a lens for thinking about Australian school practice

Dr Goran Lazendic
PISA International Survey Director & Chief Research Director
ACER
Closing remarks
Opening remarks from the MC & The Hatchery
From classroom to school-wide: Making differentiation everyone’s responsibility
- Identify the five-to-six-year range within every classroom, and what the research says about planning for it
- Understand why traditional age-and-stage models fall short and what continuous-progress learning offers instead
- Apply the case for transforming curriculum, assessment and reporting requirements to better address individual learning needs

Professor Geoff Masters AO
Former Chief Executive, ACER, Research Director
Institute for Educational Reform

Elizabeth Lenders
Mentor and Coach, Independent Schools Victoria (ISV) and Former Principal
Kingswood College
Responsive teaching strategies for CALD & First Nations learners
- Identify what genuine cultural responsiveness looks like beyond surface-level acknowledgement
- Apply approaches that work in schools with significant Indigenous student populations
- Build assessment and scaffolding routines for EAL learners in mainstream classrooms

Michael Barton
Executive Principal
Djarragun College
Morning tea
Build a data-to-decision routine that drives weekly teaching
- Reframe the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (NCCD) from a compliance burden to a daily evidence routine that empowers teachers
- Use MTSS to transform student data into clear visual tools that drive cluster grouping and targeted instruction
- Embed a metacognitive planning process as a sustainable, school-wide strategy to strengthen NCCD evidence and proactive differentiation

Amanda Borrello
Head of Diverse Learning
John Paul College, QLD
The hidden learners: What speech pathology tells us about differentiating for language
- What Developmental Language Disorder is, how common it is and why most teachers have never heard of it
- How DLD and language differences, including in vocabulary and academic language, present in the classroom, and why they’re routinely mistaken for low ability, attention problems, or disengagement
- What the science of language and reading tells us about how to adapt teaching, not through labelling, but through universal design for language

Charlotte Forwood
Professor of Practice - School of Education, La Trobe University & Director of Learning Design and Development
Camberwell Girls Grammar School
Lunch
Embed AI into adaptive teaching while keeping teacher experience & knowledge at the center
- Identify the daily workflows that move AI from one-off prompts to embedded routine
- Apply leadership approaches that solve AI adoption at whole-school level, not teacher by teacher
- Understand the cross-sector contrast: building tools, buying packages, and what each delivers

Adam Kruger
Learning Specialist - Teaching & Learning
Clyde Secondary College (VIC)

Scott Rumble
Assistant Principal
Clyde Secondary College

Danielle Heatley
Principal
Balambalam Primary School, VIC

Lauren Sayer
Head of Campus Williamstown
Westbourne Grammar School
Afternoon tea
Differentiation through sensory regulation: A multi-disciplinary case study with measurable outcome
- Identify how sensory regulation and arousal states shape a learner’s capacity to access the curriculum
- Understand the implementation reality, how teachers learned to read sensory signals, when to intervene, and how the work scaled across the classroom
- Build a case for the difference this approach made, including the NAPLAN outcomes the case study delivered
Speaker to be announced
See differentiation from the teacher’s desk
- Apply the planning routines a senior teacher uses to differentiate inside a real timetable and workload
- Identify the small classroom adjustments that scale, drawing on a parent-teacher’s view of neurodivergent learning
- Build a practical view of how leadership decisions translate into the classroom, and what teachers need from leaders to make differentiation work

Jade Kemp
Media Teacher
Kardinia International College, VIC
Closing remarks & close of conference
Building AI workflows that enable differentiated teaching and learning
This workshop picks up directly from where the Day 2 AI panel leaves off. The panel surfaces the shape of the problem and how teachers, leaders, and schools are using AI in adaptive teaching. The workshop is where delegates actually build the workflows. Platform-agnostic, hands-on and pitched for educators at all levels of computer confidence; no prior AI experience required. Underpinning the whole session is the principle that AI should strengthen teaching, not replace it: the workflows we build should free up time for the relational work, feedback, conferencing, student support and the human relationships at the heart of effective teaching.
Attend & learn:
- Embedding AI into the daily routine – how to move from one-off prompts to repeatable workflows that fit inside a teacher’s actual week, not on top of it
- Differentiating content delivery – building workflows that adapt material for different learners, different abilities, & different points in the lesson
- Curriculum development for differentiation – using AI to design adaptive content, scaffolds & tasks from the curriculum you’re already teaching
- Behaviour management and the admin overhead – the workflows for the parts of teaching that AI can genuinely take off your plate: tracking, roll call, communication, the documentation that eats your evenings
- Teaching practice in a sandbox – a safe, non-production environment to test ideas, try platforms, & explore prompting without committing your school’s data
Pre-reading:
Sal Khan’s TED talk “How AI Could Save (Not Destroy) Education” provides an accessible and balanced perspective on AI’s potential to support personalised learning, strengthen teacher capacity, and create more space for meaningful human interaction in education. Recommended viewing before the workshop.
Pricing:
- $399 +GST: Save $200 when purchased by 31 July
- $449 +GST: Save $150 when purchased by 28 August
- $499 +GST: Save $100 when purchased by 18 September
- $549 +GST: Save $50 when purchased by 9 October
- $599 +GST: Standard rate after early bird
Adam Kruger
Learning Specialist - Teaching & Learning
Clyde Secondary College (VIC)
Melbourne | Naarm & Online
Venue: Rendezvous Hotel Melbourne, 328 Flinders St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Online: Learn from anywhere with our interactive online technology.
Benefits of attending in-person: This is the perfect networking opportunity for leaders, in an environment that will set you up to build new connections and a support network of like-minded peers!
Food & catering requirements: Catering is provided at all in-person The Hatchery events. Dietary requirements and special needs are to be communicated to event organisers one week prior to the event commencing. Please identify yourself to The Hatchery staff upon arrival to ensure all your needs are met.
Dress code: The event dress code is Business casual.
Pricing
Save up until 31 July
+GST
Early bird pricing
Save $500
Save up until 28 August
+GST
Early bird pricing
Save $300
Save up until 18 September
Early bird pricing
Save $200
Save up until 9 October
+GST
Early bird pricing
Save $100
Price after early bird savings
+GST
Standard rate
Save up until 31 July
+GST
Early bird pricing
Save $500
Save up until 28 August
+GST
Early bird pricing
Save $300
Save up until 18 August
+GST
Early bird pricing
Save $200
Save up until 9 October
+GST
Early bird pricing
Save $100
Price after early bird savings
+GST
Standard rate
Save with our group discounts!
Groups of 5+ save 10% | Groups of 9+ save 15% | Groups of 12+ save 20%
“It was an inspirational 2 days with working real examples of how you can turn your school around!”
Assistant Principal, Heritage College Sydney, March 2026
“A great conference on differentiation reminds you that when you adapt your teaching, you don’t lower the bar—you open more doors for every student to reach it.”
Differentiation Coordinator, Catholic Ladies College, March 2026
“A great conference full of a range of topics that provoked reflection and provided ideas for application in our context. Appreciated the time provided to network and gather wisdom from attendees!! Highly recommended”
Education Improvement Leader-Diverse Learners, Department of Education VIC, 2025
“Be prepared to have your heart opened, your practice constructively challenged and your passion pumped up!
Flinders Christian Community College, March 2026
“An awesome gathering of professionals that inspire and support the essence of what we are about.”
Assistant Principal, Heritage College Sydney, March 2026
“I came into this conference with an open mind and now leave with a very full brain. Best conference in years.”
James Sheahan Catholic High School, March 2026
“Differentiation for Teaching & Learning was both inspiring & helpful, providing valuable insights into all aspects of school operations and the integration of differentiation in the classroom.”
Learning Leader, The Friends' School, March 2025
“Attending The Hatchery’s Differentiation in Teaching and Learning was an amazing and thought-provoking PD. The sessions were practical, insightful, and deeply engaging — offering a perfect balance between educational theory and real classroom application. I walked away feeling inspired, equipped with new strategies to better cater to the diverse learning needs within my classroom.”
Head of Curriculum, Kingswood College, 2025
“The content, quality, organisation, suitability and professionalism was outstanding. The event atmosphere was warm and welcoming, and the people presenting and attending were knowledgeable, generous and engaging. The conference was well worth attending. I will definitely seek out Hatchery events in the future.”
The Illawarra Grammar School, September 2024
“Differentiation in Teaching and Learning with The Hatchery can reshape the way you see every learner in your classroom.”
Program Coordinator GATE, Willetton Senior High School, March 2026