Getting Personal: The Promise and Perils of Personalized Learning

• In Event: Roundtable Session 13
  In Roundtable Session: Innovations in Selected Standard Practice: Action Principles for State and Local Education Agencies

Abstract

Objective: Personalized learning’s basic premise, that instruction should be tailored for each student and that the student should be the prime actor in directing learning, is not new. Current tensions in education, however, are reigniting interest in personalized learning. This paper reviews theory and practice on personalized learning, provides a framework for it, and offers action principals for practitioners making decisions about it.
Theoretical Framework: Four tensions in education have reignited interest in personalized learning:
(a) The curriculum is under pressure to expand in scope and depth, though the amount of time in school remains stubbornly constant (Kaplan & Chan, 2011).
(b) Teachers struggle, given limited time for training and planning, to use data and individualize instruction to meet the expectation that all students perform proficiently on methodically structured, standards-based assessments (Hassel & Hassel, 2012).
(c) Low achievement and unacceptable drop-out rates point to waning student motivation as an underlying cause (Christensen, Horn, & Johnson, 2008).
(d) Familial and societal fragmentation and disconnection jeopardize young people’s social and emotional well-being (Jackson, 2008).

Method of Inquiry: Research synthesis, review of contributing theory, formulation of a new perspective.
Data Sources: Extant literature on personalized learning and examples of it in practice.
Conclusions: By reforming schooling’s time-pace-place traditions and utilizing new technologies, personalized learning proponents assert that the bulging curriculum could be accommodated, data and instruction efficiently managed, students motivated, and people connected. New technology makes possible ways to teach and learn that were unfathomable only a short time ago. Approaching technology’s multitude of possibilities, we are at once hopeful and cautious. Clearly, technology is not the whole of personalized learning, lest it fail as an antidote to the tensions in education. The expanding curriculum may fracture into incomprehensible, digital disarray. Reliance on radical individualization may rob students of common experience and overlook the proven facility of explicit and direct instruction. Excessive student choice may result in no appreciable unity of understanding and wasted time. Social connection mediated by electronic devices may further isolate young people and hamper social and emotional maturation.

Significance: As evidenced in U. S. Department of Education initiatives and in the robust technology industry basing assertions for its products on tenets of personalized learning, the concept warrants careful analysis to determine its promises and avoid the perils of unrealistic expectations.
References
Christensen, C., Horn, M., & Johnson, C. (2008). Disrupt¬ing class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Hassel, B. C., & Hassel, E. A. (2012). Teachers in the age of digital instruction. In C. E. Finn, Jr. & D. R. Fairchild (eds.). Education reform for the digital age. Washington, DC: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, pp. 11-34.
Jackson, M. (2008). Distracted: The erosion of attention and the coming dark age. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Kaplan, C., & Chan, R. (2011, September). Time well spent: Eight powerful practices of successful, time-expanded schools. Boston, MA: National Center on Time and Learning.

Author

• Sam Redding, Academic Development Institute