Abstract
Differentiating, personalized learning, individualizing, customizing, tailoring, adapting, and accommodating are just some of the terms that have been used in the past and present to describe models that address each student’s strengths, needs, and interests. Because I have been involved in teaching or preparing teachers to work with students from increasingly diverse backgrounds, I read with great interest the recent research conducted by the RAND Corporation, Continued Progress: Promising Evidence on Personalized Learning (Pane, Steiner, Baird, & Hamilton, 2015). Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, RAND collected data from 32 Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) schools and a comparison group to examine how they were implementing personalized learning models and the effects on student achievement.
Among the schools, they found great variation in implementation with most personalized learning practices stemming from current practices. A separate time for individualized student support was much more common than competency-based progressions. Teachers felt they needed to teach grade-level content that was aligned to standardize testing instead of allowing students to work at their own pace. Interestingly, three elements from the personalized learning models had the greatest effects on student achievement: flexible student groupings, learning spaces that supported the model, and students discussing data related to their personal learning goals.
Most of these results resonate with my own experiences and replicate those practices that produce positive effects on students. I was pleased to learn that RAND had reported the positive effects of flexible grouping, student-driven goal setting, and learning environments that supported small group, large group, and independent work. I was less pleased, but not surprised, to learn that teachers felt constrained by grade-level content expectations and high-stakes testing. Schools then implemented more conservative changes such as setting aside a specific time when personalized learning occurred as opposed to having students experience learning activities tailored to their goals throughout the day.
In my 40 years of experience working with school districts in different reform efforts, only once have I experienced the joy and excitement when all of the important components are in place to implement and sustain desired changes successfully. The components of this successful project appeared to include clearly defined practices that were a part of the change, top-down and bottom-up support, professional development for all involved in the change, development of a successful model within the school district, professional development modeling the desired instructional practices, teacher choice in selecting the classroom changes based on their current practices with opportunities for moving toward more advanced practices, material resources to implement the desired changes such as assessments and aligned learning activities that were above and below grade level, follow-up support from within and outside of the classroom setting, ongoing professional development (e.g., progressive learning opportunities to reinforce and expand on classroom practices, observations in other teachers’ classrooms who were personalizing their learning experiences for students), the provision of time to adapt classroom learning activities, attention to individual successes, and the implementation of changes within a risk-free environment with no retributions. Interestingly, the RAND Corporation also evaluated this project, portions of which were replicated in 26 different states.
I applaud the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the RAND Corporation for this initial study and look forward to their next reports on personalized learning. Educators not only need to know what specific practices are correlated to student progress but also how to implement the desired changes so that every student succeeds, including those who are gifted and talented and beyond grade-level content.