The push to design teaching and learning around students’ distinctive academic needs, and even their personal interests, is no longer only happening in pockets of experimentation around the country. This trend has now entered the K-12 mainstream and its expansion is quickening. But the challenges ahead for the next generation of personalized learning initiatives are significant. The research evidence to support comprehensive personalized learning is thin, the approach requires big investments in educational technology, and educators must be committed to transforming how they teach for it to work.
Personalized learning is not sweeping through schools, as some would have you believe. But the trend has now entered the K-12 mainstream, and its expansion is quickening.
From left to right, English/language arts teachers June Eccleston, Elizabeth Robinson, Deborah Swigart, and Lance Shields sit with Kellee Iverson, a personalized learning coach, to finalize lesson plans during a “What I Need” day at Luella Middle School.
The Henry County, Ga., school system refashioned its personalized learning strategy after determining the original plan was overly fixated on the use of technology.
The students said the results that the web app Happify generated for each of them confirmed some thoughts they had about themselves.
Alexa J. Henry, October 18, 2016
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2 min read
Amity Elementary School 5th grade teacher Melissa McNutt, center, works with Emma Sizemore on the Happify app during a “character education” lesson at the Cincinnati-area school.
But the idea that digital tools can benefit students’ social-emotional development is controversial, with critics claiming children are already spending too much time online.
<i>2010:</i> When he was principal of Notus High School in Idaho, Benjamin Merrill created the "Pirate Academy," which allowed students at the rural school to take a wide range of high school classes online. He now feels that a balance between online-only and face-to-face classes is best.
Andrew Calkins, the deputy director of the Next Generation Learning Challenges, has seen a wide variety of personalized learning approaches in schools around the country.
Interest in pursuing 'personalized learning'—however schools choose to define it—is evident in the language found in the requests for proposals and other solicitations put forward by K-12 systems around the country in recent years.
We look at the proliferation of devices in U.S. classrooms that open the possibilities to personalization, and we give a snapshot of how one diverse school district is tracking its personalized learning initiatives.
The evolution of personalized learning in recent years has led to a growing body of data from school systems that have had initiatives in place for at least a few years.
October 18, 2016
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