PERSONALIZED LEARNING:
The Present and Future of Education

PERSONALIZED LEARNING GUIDE 

A Comprehensive Personalized Learning Guide for Educators, Administrators, and Parents 

Increasing student engagement and achievement, developing students as lifelong learners, preparing students for college and careers, and reducing inequities are common goals in schools across the US -- and, we know, are ones not easy to accomplish.  But that does not mean they are impossible - many educators, administrators, researchers, and experts agree that, when done well, personalized learning makes a significant difference for students. While we recognize that personalized learning is, in many ways, good teaching amplified, there is no shortage of detailed, in-the-weeds as well as big picture questions about the implementation, the key elements, and the measures of success of personalized learning.  But navigating all the information out there is challenging and it is often hard to find exact answers. 

Based on our experience working with over 1700 schools and 320 districts across the US., we have created this guide to provide a curated set of resources and literature about how personalized learning is most effectively applied in K-12 settings, alongside many of the tools and resources that we have internally developed to help our district partners launch, implement and sustain personalized learning.

You will learn:

• What is personalized learning and why it is important
• How to implement it successfully and the risks and traps to avoid
• What do personalized learning classrooms look like
• What does success in personalized learning look like
• How to scale personalized learning
• How to communicate about this innovative initiative

You will find:

• Tools, frameworks, guides, reports, videos, case studies and white papers that can help you in your personalized learning journey, whether you're considering it, launching it, supporting it, sustaining it or scaling it in your school or district.
• Information and ideas that are actionable and will shape your work moving forward

Most of us have a story of the teacher that made a difference in our learning, or the learning of our child. That’s not a coincidence – teachers who recognize our needs and interests, and provide unique support for us, end up making meaningful and lasting impacts. Consider the following examples:

• The story of the young child who wasn’t yet meeting age-appropriate development milestones by age two; he wasn’t talking yet. The parents were nervous and frustrated, but a teacher recognized that a different approach (baby sign language) could be particularly helpful. The child thrived and had so much to say.

• The student who was regularly bored in math because it was too easy, so he daydreamed about other things. A teacher noticed and gave him new materials to study - different from the rest of the class - and new skills to learn. Eventually he grew up to teach middle school math.

• A fourteen-year-old who was frequently disruptive and often sent to the principal’s office. A teacher recognized that the student was reading at the first-grade level, so she provided targeted small group instruction to help her student develop skills in reading. Not surprisingly, the student's behavior, attitude, and academic success improved immensely.

When it happens for us – when someone personalizes for us, or a loved one – we know how valuable it can be.

Beyond this personal impact, we also know that:

Personalized learning promotes student agency - We know from the science of learning that student ownership and agency promotes learning. We also hear consistently from employers that they look for people who are self-directed. And so, we need to guide students to set their goals and work to achieve them, as well as give them choices so they learn how to make their own decisions. 

Personalized learning creates lifelong learners - Our world is ever changing; and challenges will continue to present themselves and evolve. So students cannot simply learn specific solutions, but must be prepared to learn how to learn.

Personalized learning increases student engagement - A recent gallup poll shows that as students get older, they become increasingly less engaged in typical schools. Personalized learning shifts this in two ways: through making meaningful connections between teachers and students we increase student engagement, and through making learning more relevant we make it more engaging too.

Personalized learning increases student achievement –Through personalized learning, students spend more time in their zone of proximal development and teachers spend more time addressing the needs of each student. With increased understanding of the types of supports students need, teachers can provide more targeted instruction and support, students are more actively engaged, resulting in higher student achievement.

Personalized learning is what our students deserve - Students deserve equitable opportunities and supports to be successful and realize their fullest potential; they deserve opportunities to bring their whole selves to the learning experience. As iNACOL's 2018 report Designing for Equity notes - "Personalized and competency-based systems have the ability to empower individuals and enable educators to disrupt the historical dynamic of sorting students, and replace it with one that seeks to educate 100 percent of students."

Personalized learning is the future of learning - And this is what they said about it All Things Considered: The Future of Learning? Well, it's Personal!

Interested to know what parents think? Check out this article: Why Personalized Learning? A Parent’s Perspective.

Without fail, one of the first questions district leadership teams ask us is, “What have other districts done that we should avoid?”.
Through our work over the past several years, we’ve identified the six key risks for districts:

Risk #1: Lack of Clear Vision, Narrative, and Rationale: Many districts struggle to paint a clear picture of how personalized learning looks different from what happens in classrooms today. Instead, they turn to educational jargon and say things like, “we want to see 21st-century skills and higher-order thinking skills.” Sounds great, right? But if I’m a teacher, I don’t know what I should be doing differently. Or if I’m a parent, I don’t know how my child’s experience will be different – much less improved – than before. And while school leaders and teachers may understand that they are being asked to focus on different instructional strategies, such as more small group instruction or flipped teaching, they may not be able to articulate why they are taking these new approaches. Without a clear vision and narrative, district leaders have trouble identifying early wins or proof points of success that would help them increase buy-in and offer exemplars of good practice.

Risk #2: Curricular and Instructional Misalignment: Many districts do not spend the appropriate time sufficiently and early in the process to make sure that new instructional models and content align with the district’s current curriculum or instructional frameworks. Often, district curriculum coaches and school-based instructional coaches are missing from initial conversations around planning, design, and professional development. As a result, school leaders and teachers are unclear on expectations and how the new instructional model “fits in” with what they were already doing – for example, what does differentiation look like in a personalized system? The lack of clarity can often lead to a compliance mindset among school leaders and teachers. Schools that adopt a compliance mindset often put a new label on current practices -- “we’re already doing this, we just need to call it something different” -- rather than embracing the opportunity to go beyond current practices. Schools that adopt a compliance mindset also frequently miss the opportunity to increase student choice, to offer additional pathways for student learning based on need, or to rethink how to personalize their professional development for teachers.

Risk #3: Failure to Build Capacity at District and School Level: Many districts create a rollout plan that only involves the principal in the periphery. For example, they allow teachers to opt-into personalized learning but have no expectations for the principal’s involvement. It’s hard for changes to stick at a school if the leader is not involved! Some districts also fail to build internal capacity at the district level to communicate, coordinate, or support the work. For example, they defer to vendors or consultants to fully own the messaging and delivery of training and do not build district capacity to support work. As a result, the district may have a few shining stars at the classroom level, but limited examples of excellent, whole-school shifts to personalization. Furthermore, once the vendors or consultants leave, there is no one with the capacity or experience to continue the work.

Risk #4: Starting with the Wrong Schools: We often see districts begin rolling out personalized learning in schools or grade levels that may not be ready for the change. The decisions are sometimes made due to political or funding pressures. District leaders may feel pressured to start at the high school level to fix low engagement or poor academic results. They may worry that parents and community members will object to providing elementary school students with additional devices or technology before high schoolers when in fact, elementary school is a great place to begin personalized learning!

Additionally, we often see investment in personalized learning – technology, professional development, coaching positions, or design services – directed by the availability of grants for turnaround schools. We strongly believe personalized learning is the right approach for all students, and have seen great success in turnaround schools. However, turnaround schools sometimes do not have the appropriate culture or staffing to sustain the change that personalized learning requires. By starting personalized learning in places where it may take a long time to see success, district and school leaders may be unable to identify early wins that would help them increase buy-in across the district and with parents and school board.

Risk #5: Under-communication with Stakeholders: Districts often fail to create a strategic communications plan to ensure their stakeholders hear the right message about personalization. A district may initially communicate their plan with families, the school board, and journalists, but they fail to follow up with subsequent messages or venues for discussion. Lack of a communications plan can have many implications. Families may only hear about the infusion of technology into classrooms, not the pedagogical changes, and think that students are not getting sufficient instruction from teachers – “teachers aren’t doing their job!” Many times the school board does not understand the criteria by which the district will measure the success of the work. They do not know the difference between “this is not working” and “this just takes more time,” and withdraw their support. We’ve also seen instances where journalists are not provided with consistent information about the rollout, and therefore write stories with inaccurate information or cover schools with poor implementations. These messages get amplified and make it more difficult to scale and invest in future transformational work.

Risk #6: Selecting the Wrong Devices: We’ve saved this risk for last because it’s one of the most talked about. Poor device decisions often attract the most publicity, and for that reason, districts have a laser-like focus on device selection – a critical decision for sure, but we want to make sure this risk doesn’t overshadow the others on the list. Districts often run into problems when they don’t have an adequate process to select devices and thus encounter significant issues once devices are deployed to students. A district may not consider software compatibility with devices, nor how the device supports stated instructional goals. A district may not check references for devices, and as a result, experience significant breakage. Finally, a district may not have a plan in place to support selected devices, both technically and financially, which can result in unusable devices stacked in hallways and offices. Talk about a PR nightmare! 

Every time we sit down with a superintendent, CTO, CAO, teacher, principal, coach, board member, or dean to discuss their goals for personalized learning, they always want to know: “Where should we start? What should we learn from other districts' mistakes? What should we focus on next?” After answering these questions multiple times, we started keeping a list.

We saw that if a district lacked a clear vision for personalized learning, schools and staff wouldn’t understand the rationale behind the initiative. Likewise, if there wasn’t a culture of innovation present, it was difficult to build ownership and sustain excitement and support. Even things like budgeting and staffing became major issues if districts did not account for how they might need to shift in this new, personalized environment.

We took this list of lessons learned and came up with a Personalized Learning Implementation Framework to guide our work at both the school and district level and to help school systems identify strengths, areas of need, and potential roadblocks.

This personalized learning implementation framework has been helpful to district leaders at all stages of the implementation process. For district leaders just starting their journey, the framework has given them clarity on priorities. For district leaders who have been moving towards personalized learning for several years, the framework serves as a check to make sure they haven’t lost sight of essential building blocks and gives them guidance around what to do next. In this personalized learning implementation framework white paper, you will find specific examples of how the framework has been and can be used.

For example, the personalized learning implementation framework forms the foundation of our readiness assessment. We ask schools to reflect on ten areas of the framework to determine their starting strengths and areas of need for personalized learning. We’ve also worked to help districts and schools better chart their course – set goals and priorities and determine the progress they are making throughout the year. 

At Education Elements, we have established our own key elements of personalized learning, called the Core Four Elements of Personalized Learning – elements that can lead to a successful personalized learning classroom. These elements - adopted as is, or modified by individual districts - can guide educators in creating a winning strategy for their district, schools, and classrooms. 

These four elements are:

1. Student Reflection and Goal Setting -Student reflection and goal setting are practices that can build a bridge for students between the content they are learning and why they are learning it. While these are two separate practices, they can, and should be interconnected in the classroom. Reflecting on what we know and how we learn builds self-awareness that can make goal-setting a truly meaningful experience.

2. Targeted Instruction - At its most actualized, targeted instruction means that students can articulate what instruction they are receiving and why, and students have some choice over the instruction they receive.

3. Flexible Path and Pace - Students learn in different ways and to truly personalize the learning experience, there must be opportunities for students to progress towards mastery of their learning through flexible learning pathways and at different paces.

4. Collaboration and Creativity - Personalizing learning encourages students to work with one another, share ideas, create new solutions and projects, provide one another with feedback, and, in the process, learn more about themselves.

Teachers talk about how they apply the Core Four in their classrooms

This is a question that a lot of teachers and leaders struggle with. And from our perspective, there is no one answer to this question.

As Michael B. Horn says in his article Choosing Your Blended Learning Model for Districts and Schools, “There is no ‘best model’. The best model is the right model for your school—or classroom—given your circumstances, students, and objectives.”

In fact, the best instructional model for a specific classroom is the one that meets the unique needs and circumstances of those specific students.

In this article about how to pick the right instructional model for your classroom, an alumna team member introduces the three base models for personalized learning – station rotation, playlists, and flipped lessons – what they are, and which classrooms they are ideal for from both a teacher’s perspective and a student's perspective. Please note that there are plenty of other models. The ones listed above are fairly common and successful ones, in other words, the need-to-know models. But keep in mind that these models can be layered, modified, and improved, and used at different times within the same class or school.

• CASEL Framework for Systemic SEL:  The Consortium for Academic, Social-Emotional Learning (CASEL) defines Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) as “the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” The Framework consists of the following competencies:
  • Self-awareness: Know your strengths and limitations, with a well-grounded sense of confidence, optimism, and a “growth mindset.”
  • Self-management: Effectively manage stress, control impulses, and motivate yourself to set and achieve goals.
  • Social awareness: Understand the perspectives of others and empathize with them, including those from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
  • Relationship skills: Communicate clearly, listen well, cooperate with others, resist inappropriate social pressure, negotiate conflict constructively, and seek and offer help when needed.
  • Responsible decision-making: Make constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions based on ethical standards, safety, and social norms.

• ASCD Whole Child: ASCD’s Whole Child approach is an effort to transition from a focus on narrowly defined academic achievement to one that promotes the long-term development and success of all children 
  • Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle.
  • Each student learns in an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults.
  • Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and broader community.
  • Each student has access to personalized learning and is supported by qualified, caring adults.
  • Each student is challenged academically and prepared for success in college or further study and for employment and participation in a global environment.

The Core Four framework further illustrates the alignment between PL and SEL in the following ways:

Flexible pace and path ensure that the materials and environment meet students’ social and cultural needs, affording opportunities to build social awareness.

Targeted instruction means that students are operating at their zone of proximal development, which supports self-awareness. Intentional grouping by skill level or interest area requires students to collaborate with peers, building their relationship skills.

Reflection supports student self-awareness, including recognition of strengths and growth areas. Ownership ensures that students practice self-management; they own their learning by setting and working toward personal and academic goals.

Collaboration and creativity support the development of a student's emotional regulation, communication skills, and reinforce students self-management, self-awareness, and relationship skills.

*Orange text identifies the Core Competencies from CASEL *Blue text identifies the tenets of ASCD Whole Child

• Advice for Teachers and Leaders Utilizing PL and Social-Emotional Learning
  
  • Students could use mindfulness tactics to develop their self-management and take ownership of their learning goals.
  • Teachers could utilize morning meeting structures to support student reflection, ownership, and supportive environment. Students will learn to monitor their personal and academic growth.
  • SEL practices in the classroom and in the school can create a culture of responsiveness among teachers and administrators. A culture of responsiveness is a precondition for sustained change and capacity building.
  • Leaders can offer a Personalized Professional Learning plan to emphasize the implementation of SEL to meet individual student needs in their school.
  • Throughout the Common Core, there are ways to incorporate SEL and PL such as:
    • Self-awareness and management through the writing process (planning, revising, editing, rewriting).
    • Responsible decision-making by focusing on Math Practice 1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
    • Relationship skills by preparing for and participating effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively in literacy.

You can download this in a one-pager format here.

When it comes to curriculum, educators are typically very familiar with its use in a traditional classroom, but with the shift to personalized learning, curricular decisions can become more complex and bring up new questions to consider, such as:

• What is the role and function of curriculum and digital content and tools in a personalized learning classroom?
• How can we create a sense of alignment between online and offline curriculum?
• Does our current curriculum already work? If not, what needs to change?
• How can we navigate the hundreds of digital tools available?
• Who should be included in discussions about curriculum to support personalized learning?

At Education Elements, we believe that when it comes to personalized learning, districts need to think differently about curriculum, and that curricular decisions should not be siloed or disjointed. They should align with a widely shared vision and purpose for personalizing instruction.

Through our work with over 140 districts we have determined that while curriculum and online content selection can be a challenge, a structured approach makes all the difference. We have identified three phases of curriculum alignment and selection. These phases do not represent a one-time process, but rather an iterative cycle that school and district leaders should follow to ensure that their curricular resources meet the dynamic needs of students, teachers, and the community.

• PHASE 1: Align Curriculum Goals with Personalized Learning Vision: A clear vision for personalized learning is an essential first step before any decisions about curriculum, instructional models, support, or professional learning can be made. We recommend that districts identify their needs, vision, and strategy before developing a curriculum plan and digital content portfolio. Vision-setting can take anywhere from a few days to a few months and should include the voice of teachers, students, and school and district administrators.

• PHASE 2: Determine offline-online curriculum alignment and the role of digital tools: Now that you’ve aligned your curriculum goals with your personalized learning vision, you’re ready to determine your mix of offline and online curriculum tools. We recommend starting with a half- or full-day workshop on curriculum alignment followed by a few weeks of conversations, and including school administrators and teachers in discussions around curriculum needs, though you may host the first workshop with a core district team to start.

• PHASE 3: Review, demo, and select digital tools: At this point you’re ready to review, demo, and select digital tools. This phase is key to ensuring you get the right tools based on the specific needs of your teachers and students, and that you include key stakeholders in the process. We recommend demoing tools for at least a few weeks and including feedback from students and teachers. From start to finish, the review, demo, and selection of digital tools might take 2-4 months.

The answer is “no”. No, we do not need technology to personalize learning in general, but it is helpful to have technology to be able to personalize learning at scale. According to Adam Newman, founding partner of Education Growth Advisors (EGA), “technology isn't actually required for personalization, but the tech makes it possible to personalize at scale.” In Education Elements CEO Anthony Kim’s book, The Personalized Learning Playbook, he says, “The components of customized education have always existed, but never before have we had the capability to extend that personalized approach to all students of all abilities. The accessibility and effectiveness of technology is at a “tipping point” where it can deliver on its promise while creating more room for creativity and connection than ever before.“

To be clear, technology serves personalized learning. Personalized learning does not serve technology.

“While technology access alone may not improve instruction or learning, when used effectively, technology has the potential to engage students, empower teachers, and connect them to each other and to some of the best resources the world has to offer. These results do have the power to improve instruction and learning and, for that reason, we include this priority to support projects that would leverage technology.”  Source: U.S. Department of Education, Race to the Top—District 2012 Application

Technology supports and amplifies personalized learning in countless ways: it opens up the opportunity for teachers to provide students with immediate feedback within a student’s ZPD; it can create space for more small group tailored lessons; it can reach students who have come of age in a digital world; it can enable students to learn anytime and anywhere; and it can connect students to others. It is a fascinating tool (but not the only one!).

Teachers who try to provide personalized learning to students without the support of technology have a heroic task. It’s nearly impossible to sustain the long hours required to teach, review material, and provide individual feedback for student growth. For a teacher today, curation of information and helping students create knowledge is as important as delivering information, and that’s one primary place where technology comes in. Here are four ways technology amplifies the reach and role of the teacher:

• Feedback: Proper individualized feedback is critical to maintaining the rate of learning and favorable persistence. Most of the online courses and digital content programs are designed to provide students with immediate feedback and scaffolding. It would be impossible for a teacher to provide the same frequency of feedback to every student on a regular basis. It would be nearly impossible for teachers to create individualized quizzes for each student based on where they are in their learning progression.

• Small Group Formation: Teachers use a variety of formative assessment data to determine small groups. One source of this data can be through the use of technology; do students need additional time on a particular standard or concept, or is there a group ready for acceleration?

• Collaboration: Many of us have tried collaborating on handwritten essays. We would send back and forth versions with notes and comments, but it can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and make collaboration challenging. Products which have a social aspect or sophisticated collaboration capabilities like Google Docs allow multiple authors to work on the same document at the same time, and writing, editing, and commenting can happen in real time and in the moment from teacher to student, and student to student.

• Creation: The barrier to entry to create anything is very low today. You can create and publish a movie on YouTube using your phone. You can publish a book in days online using Amazon, Blurb, or BookBaby, among many other services. Instead of die-casting a mold using machinery, a 3D printer can build a part within hours. Even an internet software company can be started on a shoestring; in 2000, the average startup cost was $5 million, and in 2011 it was $5,000 due to cloud computing. When used properly, new digital tools give us a unique opportunity to demonstrate our creations more frequently and easily.

In a variety of ways, technology holds promise to enable personalization to an extent that was not possible at a large scale in an earlier era. Technology’s greatest role may be to manage the complexity of the personalization process. By occasionally providing instruction or supporting independent learning, technology can also enable educators to take a more personalized approach in their own teaching efforts and other activities they undertake to support student learning and development.

Personalized learning redefines the teacher’s role but does not replace teachers.

The transition from a classic educational model to a personalized learning one isn’t an easy shift for teachers. It’s a departure from the familiar – the setting can be a new, physically different one; there can be changes in their roles and responsibilities.

Technology is not being introduced to replace teachers, as some might assume. In fact, while technology is a great way to offer more to students (e.g. through adaptive content), it still has limitations. No matter how “smart” a product or computer program is, it can’t compare to the knowledge, life experience, and community that a teacher brings into the classroom. Computers can’t create relationships with students. Programs can’t connect learning to their lives the way a teacher who knows her students can.

In our experience, personalized learning amplifies the role of the teacher. Consider Bloom’s Taxonomy. Technology is great for the bottom of the pyramid – for things like understanding and remembering. And while it can certainly play a role at the top, its introduction to the classroom often frees up the time of the teacher to focus on things like applying, creating, and synthesizing. In the diagram below, we model out how a 3 station rotation model maps to Bloom’s Taxonomy and elevates the role of the teacher to focusing on higher order tasks and critical thinking.

It is hard to emphasize enough that technology should not replace teachers and that personalized learning should not either. The “personal” element of personalized learning really has more to do with people than it will ever have to do with devices.

When it comes to personalized learning, people are understandably apprehensive about how to measure its impact. After years of thinking of students as either “proficient” or “not proficient,” many still reach for end-of-year summative data. How did our students perform on academic indicators, such as state or nationally normed tests?

While end-of-year measures are important, they can falsely imply a binary outcome: you are either successful or you are not. Meanwhile, growth in academic skills, relationships with students, and innovative teaching techniques all develop week-to-week in classrooms and risk going undiscovered. To students, parents, and teachers, these may be the “measures that matter most,” as NGLC points out in its 2016 report of the same name, and on their website that showcases the various approaches and tools districts are using to measure success.

Bearing all of this in mind, we’ve made a similar pivot in how we think about measuring success. While we continue to look at student achievement on nationally or regionally normed assessments, we are also focusing on helping our districts and schools take a more proactive approach. We’ve started to frame the conversation as “charting your course.” That phrase implies a journey and aligns with our belief in design thinking – it is imperative to set a vision for your district or school, to not be afraid of failing fast, and to constantly iterate your approach in service of that vision. District and school teams that chart their course must rely on indicators throughout the year or risk losing their way. It’s all part of a personalized learning mindset in which constant learning and creative response are expectations for all stakeholders, from students to superintendents.

What might this look like in practice? Check out the full article on Charting the Course in Personalized Learning for examples from a few of our schools and districts that have used short-term measures to chart their course.

Short-term measures include:

• Classroom walkthroughs
• Digital content data
• Mid-year student and teacher surveys
• Professional learning tracking
• Onpoint - a national benchmark for PL initiatives

We would never argue that a district or school shouldn’t be focused on end-of-year outcomes, but we’re suggesting that districts and schools that only focus on these measures miss an opportunity – they are less able to course correct, if necessary. They also are less able to identify early proof points of success – such as teachers or schools that are doing amazing things – that can be used to create enthusiasm for the work.