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chapter 3

Personalized Learning

Traditional instructional practices often dismiss personalizing learning for each student. I’ve seen education stakeholders across the spectrum claim it’s too challenging and time consuming to apply to large groups of students, and it requires real effort from educators to succeed. These challenges are surmountable, and it’s important that we do surmount them, because personalized learning is also a critical component of effective instruction that gets students invested in their own success.

Imagine you are going to an eye doctor because you are having trouble with your vision. You make the appointment, arrive and prepare yourself mentally, and enter the examination room. The doctor performs your eye exam, determines you need corrective lenses, and writes a prescription for you; the problem is solved, or so you believe. Now, imagine that when your glasses finally arrive, you put them on only to find, to your dismay, that your vision is worse than before. You return to the eye doctor and explain what happened and that there must be a mistake with your prescription. “Not at all,” the doctor replies. “That’s the same prescription for my own eyeglasses. It works for me, so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work for you.”

Can you imagine ever again having faith in the qualifications of this doctor? Of course not, which is why no eye doctor would do this in real life. All good medical professionals realize that not all patients have the exact same ailments, nor do they always require identical forms of treatment. Doctors individualize, differentiate, and personalize their approach according to the needs of each particular patient in order to obtain the most positive results for the vast number of people they treat. So it is with educators working with complex and versatile learners.

I often see educators confuse personalized learning with differentiation when there is, in fact, a significant difference between them. Differentiation usually involves all learners doing the same teacher-prescribed task regardless of their having any connection to it; the educator simply scales the task for each student’s capacity. Personalization is different. It is the process of creating an individual pathway through learning to arrive at the required outcomes in a way that is relevant to each learner.

This third shift of practice, personalizing learning, happens when educators use connections that are relevant to learners’ interest between the task and the individual student to strengthen his or her learning. As I wrote in the previous chapter, consider if there is an emotional connection to each of your learners, and if not, how might you create one?

As teachers, we accomplish this by taking advantage of focusing on topics and matters of importance to our students and finding ways to correlate them directly to our curriculum, pedagogy, and the learning environment itself. Educators can also personalize learning by taking advantage of the endless possibilities that appear in front of us every day for creating informal learning opportunities, or teachable moments. These are unplanned or unscheduled incidents or situations that allow an educator to provide practical insight or wisdom to learners. For example, think of an educator teaching a lesson on technological dependency in society, and suddenly, the power goes out. This is an immediate and unforeseeable opportunity for this educator to encourage students to adapt their learning to a real-life situation right in front of them. When you can locate these moments, we help our students attain a better understanding of a lesson.

Learning is a personal experience because it is something we do ourselves. No one can learn for us. The practice of personalizing learning is all about tailoring tasks and instruction to the expansive range of interests and learning styles that characterize modern learners and doing so in creative and engaging ways. Traditional 20th century education in industrialized nations fostered a whole-group instructional approach because the primary purpose of the school system was to create industrial workers (Jukes, McCain, & Crockett, 2010). Consequently, many of these students would graduate to factory roles and perform the same tasks day in and day out for much of their lives. This is not a model built for the needs of 21st century students who are entering a world that demands creative, analytical, and problem-solving skills (Crockett, 2016b). In this world, all teachers must be able to differentiate their instruction to some degree to effect better outcomes for students and prepare them for professional life in the 21st century.

I believe that if a teacher does the teaching in a classroom, then we must consider that he or she is most likely teaching just one student. If other students happen to be similar, are willing to be passively compliant, or are emotionally engaged, they will also benefit. But what about the rest of the learners? Education systems trim the top and bottom ends of classes, labeling some as learning challenged and in need of special education with more strict and explicit instruction. Others get the designation of gifted and talented and receive unique opportunities for deeper and more personal engagement. It’s ironic and unfortunate, considering what we discuss in chapter 2 (page 21) about relevance and engagement, that we create more learning opportunities for learners who are accelerating and even less for learners who are struggling.

As it pertains to personalized learning, it’s also important to understand that modern digital learners are different from their counterparts in previous generations (Crockett, 2016b). No longer are we catering to one specific type of learner destined for a limited array of occupations or societal roles once they leave their school experiences behind. Digital learners are unique, challenging, and rewarding to have as students because constant digital exposure during formative years digitally enhances and completely rewires them to expect instantaneous and rewarding learning that happens just in time instead of just in case. For example, they don’t require knowledge just in case they want to become scientists, mathematicians, or historians, but rather they need knowledge that is just in time to give them what they need to continue to do what they are doing in the moment, a moment that may require scientific, mathematical, or historical knowledge. To facilitate rather than inhibit their success, we must nurture them as problem solvers, independent thinkers, and entrepreneurs. These young minds we cultivate must be ready to take on multidisciplinary vocations we’ve not yet invented and solve problems we can’t even conceive.

In this chapter, I examine the characteristics of personalized learning and then delve into three microshifts of practice you can use in your own classroom to engage students at an individual level.

The Characteristics of Personalized Learning

The rapid pace of technological development around the world requires that every citizen be a lifelong learner (Demirel, 2009). For this reason, the idea of being in school tends to tag along with students even after classes are over and done. Facing the challenges this world presents means students need to have strong problem-solving skills, an ability to adapt to shifting workplace cultures, a capacity for critical and independent thinking, and certainly the skills to continue learning and growing throughout their lives (Crockett, 2016b). Imparting to students these invaluable gifts for living well can come through shifting into the practice of personalizing learning. When we personalize learning for students, we help them develop a passion for it by showing them that it can be interesting if we’re willing to make it interesting to them.

Let’s begin our exploration of how teachers can personalize learning by looking at some of the characteristics that define it. Personalized learning:

• Tailors instruction to the learner’s interests and capabilities in a way that connects to curriculum

• Offers relevant tasks that encourage a shift of responsibility for learning to the learner

• Paces itself to accommodate every student’s learning speed and style

• Incorporates technology to successfully connect to learners’ interests

• Utilizes formative assessments that can include both self-conducted and peer-conducted methods

• Allows students to take a certain amount of control over what they learn and how they learn it

In addition to these, it’s worth mentioning that all shifts of practice, including personalized learning, retain the goal of cultivating skills that are essential to a successful life beyond school. The modern-life skills students need are much different from the ones students raised in the 20th century required before the technological revolution swept the world. Personalized learning gives all students a chance to obtain these skills by shifting the responsibility for learning to them in comfortable learner-centered surroundings that allow them to progress at their own pace.

When you consider personalizing learning, it seems like a lofty notion to take on. After all, teachers naturally measure the viability of such a concept against the hard reality that there can be dozens of students in one classroom, and hundreds—even thousands—in a single school. How can we possibly expect to accommodate the individual needs of each student with a personalized instructional program? What does it take to truly personalize learning in modern classrooms?

As with any big shift, you can make personalized learning a reality by applying careful planning and a system of ongoing evaluation and refinement. I elaborate on this point later in this chapter, but it’s important to understand that, thanks to technology, learners already do much of this work on their own. Consider how students incorporate various media formats into engineering their own personal projects and pursuits. They are so comfortable and familiar with technology that they couldn’t imagine being able to learn without it. It’s not much of a stretch to channel that enthusiasm into the classroom.

Another thing to consider is that you don’t have to personalize every activity and progression in the learning challenge. There is value for learners in having the grit to do something that they may not want to do. It is a question of constant balance because, without sufficient personalization, a learner will disconnect and potentially disengage completely. Where this point is varies learner by learner, which is why, as we stated in Mindful Assessment (Crockett & Churches, 2017), “We should not see learning as the outcome of teaching but rather allow teaching to become a mindful response to learning” (p. 2).