蜜桃影视

A version of this column first appeared on the Education Writers Association .

The media images illustrating students in 鈥減ersonalized learning鈥� environments often look something like this: elementary schoolers with headphones on, looking at tablets, or teenagers typing away on laptops.

But during a recent panel discussion, experts and educators sought to make one thing clear: Personalized learning is not about technology, and you don鈥檛 need a lot of money to carry it out.

鈥淚t鈥檚 really about leadership,鈥� said Heidi Vazquez, a third- and fourth-grade teacher at The Compass School in Kingston, Rhode Island, at the Education Writers Association鈥檚 national seminar in Los Angeles.

鈥淚t鈥檚 definitely a lot easier [with money], and technology is an amazing tool to help you get there,鈥� Vazquez said, 鈥渂ut 鈥� in order to do this work, the thing that teachers need the most 鈥� is time.鈥�

鈥淭hey need time to collaborate; they need time to figure it out,鈥� Vazquez said. 鈥淭he pacing question is the biggest piece of it.鈥�

Also on the panel were April Chou, vice president of education at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and Larry Cuban, a professor emeritus of education at Stanford University and skeptic of technology-based school reform.

鈥楾he Difficulty of Innovating鈥�

The panel comes at a time of keen interest 鈥� and investments 鈥� in personalized learning. In June, the published a report identifying several key challenges of work in six school systems trying to create personalized learning models in collaboration with regional partners. The effort was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as was the study by the Center on Reinventing Public Education looking at how well it worked.

鈥淭aken together, the experiences of the schools 鈥� followed a familiar pattern of promising practices struggling to replicate at scale across systems,鈥� the report says, and they 鈥渦nderscore the difficulty of innovating inside a system that was never designed for innovation.鈥�

For instance, teachers and principals had difficulty translating abstract goals into 鈥渕eaningful student outcomes鈥� to guide classroom practices, and central offices 鈥渇ailed to fundamentally change structures, policies, and supports to facilitate innovation,鈥� the report said.

Even at CZI, an organization formed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, that seeks 鈥�,鈥� officials are cautious about technology鈥檚 role in personalized learning.

鈥淚t鈥檚 really critical to recognize it, that we see technology as a tool, and it鈥檚 only just that 鈥� a tool in the hands of people that can be powerful depending on how we use it,鈥� Chou said. 鈥淭echnology has a role to play, but at the center of any of these teaching and learning interactions is really the relationship between a student and a teacher. I think we miss the mark collectively when we think about personalized learning as being synonymous with technology.鈥�

Chan and Zuckerberg are expected to invest 鈥溾�� in 鈥渨hole-child personalized learning鈥� through CZI, as Education Week explained in a recent story.

As more institutions seek to expand personalized learning initiatives 鈥� including the U.S. Department of Education, under the Obama administration 鈥� advocates and experts .

A Historical Perspective

The nascence of personalized learning, in fact, can be seen in little-known initiatives of the 1920s and 1930s like the , the , and the 鈥� all evidence of personalized learning as defined by 鈥渁n earlier generation of reformers who loved innovation,鈥� Cuban said.

But the personalized learning movement of the 21st century is facing layers of conflict: chief among them the coexistence of the 鈥渁ge-graded school system鈥� (in which students are separated into different classrooms based on age) and standards-based accountability, Cuban said.

Cuban said the age-graded school remains the 鈥渄ominant鈥� structure in U.S. education, even in places that seek to innovate in a variety of ways to differentiate instruction and better address individual needs.

During the EWA panel, Cuban also discussed the standards-based accountability system that we now know so well 鈥� a system that requires students to demonstrate mastery of a certain set of knowledge and skills by a certain time, largely measured by periodic tests. This accountability system that now governs public schools across the country inherently conflicts with the personalized learning initiatives that districts and advocates are so arduously trying to get off the ground, Cuban said.

鈥淢any schools trumpet their alignment of lessons to Common Core standards and personalized learning in the same breath,鈥� Cuban said. 鈥淭hey have learned that those tensions exist, but in my own research in 2016, 2017, they seldom arose in any discussion with teachers, principals, and superintendents who were enamored with personalized learning.鈥�

Developing metrics for how to measure personalized learning is a work in progress, Cuban said. Tying outcomes back to how students perform on traditional assessments, or even to student engagement, inevitably perpetuates the tension between allowing students to progress at their own pace and the edicts of standards-based accountability. And early of how well personalized learning systems are serving students have yielded .

What questions should parents, educators, and other interested parties be asking as they seek to understand personalized learning and how it works in the classroom?

Start with the 鈥渨hy?鈥� and 鈥渉ow?鈥�:

鈼徛�Ask school or district leaders:

醼澛燱hat are the purposes of the program that you now are going to invest in?

醼澛燞ow would you define success?

醼澛燱hat does personalized learning mean to you?

醼澛燱hat is your vision for personalized learning?

醼澛燱hat culture shifts are you seeing (or not) as a result of personalized learning?

鈼徛�Ask teachers:

醼澛�What are the purposes of personalized learning to you as a teacher?

醼澛�How would you define success in your classroom?

醼澛�What culture shifts are you seeing (or not) as a result of personalized learning?

鈼徛�Ask students:

醼澛�How does this classroom approach differ from prior experiences in school?

醼澛�Show me a project you鈥檙e working on and what you鈥檝e learned from it.

醼澛�How does your teacher help you?

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to 蜜桃影视.

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