Education Next – Julia Freeland
“Personalized learning is a means, not an end. Standards are an end, not a means. Debates about both, however, tend to muddle these distinctions. In the EdTech, blended learning, and competency-based reform worlds, a quiet debate about the definition of personalized learning is heating up. In an attempt to codify the often-vague concept of personalization, however, champions risk fixating on enumerating the inputs of personalized learning approaches, in turn losing laser-like focus on the outcomes we’re hoping such approaches can achieve. Personalized learning is a process, not an outcome. The relevant outcome animating this work is not personalized learning but actually individual student mastery. The inputs to get there —which we often dub personalized learning—ought to be whatever it takes for particular students in particular circumstances to achieve mastery. To maximize individual student mastery, we’d probably expect radical structural shifts in how we organize and deliver education—such as moving away from lockstep grade and age cohort-based pace, using technology to assess student mastery more frequently, tapping into students’ passions, and allowing students to access learning in environments beyond their school building, to name a few. But all of these strategies will look different depending on a given schools’ philosophies and circumstances.”(more)