Dwindling student numbers in rural areas force schools to combine classes or different grade levels together, causing an increase in student heterogeneity with different backgrounds (Smit & Humpert, 2012). This combination calls for teachers to take appreciate instructions to address student differences in learning (George, 2005). Differentiated instruction (DI) is purposed as an effective way for meeting individual learning needs (Tomlinson, 2003). However, many teachers feel obstructed when using DI in the context of heterogeneous single-grade or multi-grades classrooms (George, 2005; Drudy & Kinsella, 2009). Thereby, understanding how rural school teachers perceive and use DI in their teaching practices is important. DI is defined as both a teaching philosophy and a collect of teaching practice (Tomlinson, 2014). Recently, Coubergs and her colleagues (2017) promoted a model named “DI-Quest”, based on the work of Tomlinson (2014) and Hall (2002), and it was validated in Flemish primary and secondary schools (Coubergs et al., 2017). DI-Quest model fills up the gap of lacking the theory-driven instrument to measure teacher beliefs and actions about DI during teaching practices. This model includes three prats: DI philosophy (growth mindset and ethical compass), DI principle (flexible grouping and output=input) and DI practices (adaptive teaching to student interests, readiness and learning profiles) (Coubergs et al., 2017). A survey incorporating 906 teachers from 59 public primary and secondary schools in two provinces across four districts in western China was constructed to investigate their use of DI. Three research questions were purposed in this study: (1) What is the extent of DI use in Chinese rural schools? (2) Which teacher-level variables explain rural teachers’ use of DI? (3) Which school-level variables explain rural teachers use of DI? Descriptive statistics were adopted to answer research question 1 and two multilevel models were employed to answer research question 2 and 3. Furthermore, teacher variables represented model 1 and school variables represented model 2. The teacher-level variables include the information about teachers’ understanding about DI philosophy, principles and demographic characteristics (gender, age educational degree, class size and subjects). The school-level variables provided information about the school location and school type. Firstly, results show rural teachers’ responses with regard to the frequency of adopting DI in daily teaching practices. Secondly, teacher and school level variables could predict the total variance in the outcome variance respectively, but the specific proportion of teachers’ use of DI explained by the independent variable needs the further analysis.

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