In this update I would like to discuss about personalized learning. According to Patrick, Kennedy, and Powell (2013), personalized learning means tailoring learning for each learner’s interest, strengths, and needs. This approach encourages flexibility to support mastery and enables learners to influence how, what, when, and where they learn. Below is a short video that offers a window into how a personalized learning classroom looks:

First, promising evidence about the method’s success are being researched and shared in the academic environment, where The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations have taken to investigate advancements of schools implementing the method. Several conclusions are outlined:

1. students made significant progress in mathematics and reading, and the gain in performance increased with the number of years that the children have been exposed to personalized learning methods;
2. teachers used out-of-school instructional formats and provided more learning opportunities;
3. flexible learning environments and preparatory strategies like grouping were employed to ensure high school children were ready for the life after school, whether they chose to learn more or get jobs;

While the study goes on exemplifying how various schools implemented personalized learning in US, some points should be made about the barriers or lack of evidence thereof.

For example, in this particular study children were not encouraged to follow their own path according to their abilities, but rather they were following the grades – which are indeed necessary to get into a secondary education. Teachers admitted that they cannot finish the 12th grade with a child who is not at the requested grade level in English, for example. So personalized learning, as it was implemented across schools in 2013-2015, rather focused to use methods such as grouping, technology, learning environments, independent spaces and not actually push the children to be their best selves at what subject matter they liked.

Secondly, a separate paper evidences that personalized learning is very much dependent of technology, and student self-regulation is needed. The personalized environment, this independent second study found, helps even more the children with disabilities, however it emphasizes the importance of additional investments in systematic reform that understands students as individual learners. Hitherto the grading level requirements mentioned, but also a system-level focus on curriculum, environment, pedagogic, school culture and personal development.