Beyond Averages: Harnessing Learner Variability for Inclusive Education

• In Event: Embracing Variability in Children's Learning Journeys: Towards Inclusive Education Systems

Proposal

Learner variability disrupts the myth of the average learner. The concept finds that each learner presents a unique reservoir of skill sets and challenges that can change among subjects and situations throughout the day and year. It matters that we understand learner variability Because it informs education practice. If we start with the assumption that there is a lot of variability among learners in each classroom, different decisions are made on how to create optimal environments or edtech products to support learning. Burgeoning learning sciences research, coupled with the flexibility and precision of the latest digital technology, presents new opportunities to design learning that is responsive to learner variability. When we understand learner variability in this way, classroom challenges become a design problem, not a student problem.


Yet, it is not enough to simply understand the concept of learner variability. The charge is how to address each learner’s variability in real time in classrooms worldwide. A national survey of the American public, public school teachers, and public-school parents found the public widely recognizes that students vary from one another in how they learn individually, as well as in how they learn across school subjects. Among the general public, parents, and teachers, 78 to 83 percent think there’s a great deal or good amount of variability across learners, and 74 to 77 percent (teachers, general public, parents) say there is a great deal or good amount of individual learner variability across school subjects.


Understanding learner variability is critical for students who are too often marginalized or misunderstood in school. Students with learning disabilities, who have historically and systemically been excluded, who live in high poverty areas or who have experienced trauma. For these young people, acquiring a deep understanding of the “why” behind their manifested behavior, their learner variability, can direct educators to provide the precise strategies they need to thrive.


At Digital Promise, we have developed the Learner Variability Navigator (LVN), a free and open-source tool that curates research and provides it to teachers and edtech product developers in a digestible format called learner models. These learner models highlight key research-based factors of learning and accompanying strategies for literacy, math, and a new general learner model in grades PreK through high school. The robust evidence base supports not only an understanding of learner variability, but how it can change in context across a whole child framework. For many educators, this signals a paradigm shift away from operating as if students are proceeding along the same linear developmental trajectory toward one that recognizes the variable and nonlinear nature of development (Stafford-Brizard et al., 2017).


Understanding and addressing the learner variability found within an individual within a group, recognizing that context matters, and scaling the work will dramatically improve each learner’s knowledge of themselves and create inclusive education systems.

Author

• Barbara Pape, Digital Promise