The American public school system was developed in the mid-1800s as a way to provide free, publicly funded education to all students. Following the efforts of educational reforms by Horace Mann the public school system was designed with the goal to provide equal educational opportunities for all children (The Education Reform Movement | Encyclopedia.com, 2019) no matter where they lived or their family's social status. Known as the common school movement it provided white children with an education designed to create responsible citizens with a moral education (Marshall, 2012). Though the public school system has changed over time, the general purpose has always been to create more equitable learning environments so that all students can learn.

Traditionally public schools followed a very didactic method which is a very teacher-centered method of instruction in which teachers deliver and students receive lessons. There are very few opportunities for students to speak often limited to when the student is “asked to speak or is requested by the teacher to speak” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015; 356). The didactic approach to teaching assumes that all learners are the same and learn at the same pace and through the same means, often using a standardized assessment to measure progress and learning. However, documentation shows that personalized education has been a common theme since the early adoption of the American public school system.

One well-known proponent of educational reform was John Dewey (1859–1952). Even in the early 20th century, he believed that curriculum should be relevant to students' lives. He saw learning by doing and the development of practical life skills as crucial to children's education and is considered to be the father of the progressive education movement, which emphasizes "teaching children how to think rather than relying on rote memorization" (The School in Rose Valley, 2022). John Dewey believed that learning should be centered around the student and not the teacher. He wrote:

“To imposition from above is opposed expression and cultivation of individuality; to external discipline is opposed free activity; to learning from texts and teachers, learning from experience; to acquisition of isolated skills and techniques by drill, is opposed acquisition of them as a means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal; to prepare for a more or less remote future is opposed making the most of the opportunities of the present life; to static aims and materials is opposed acquaintance with a changing world” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2022d).

Dewey argued that students needed to be engaged in order to truly be able to learn. By creating a learning environment that emphasized experiential, learner-centered learning, which included social learning as an extension of the curriculum schools would truly be able to prepare students for the ever-changing world (Shemshack & Spector, 2020). 

Another proponent of progressive education which focused on the individual student and personalized learning was Alexander Sutherland Neill. Considered the father of progressive school, he is famous for his Summerhill School. Founded in 1921, Summerhill focused on providing learning opportunities for each individual pupil, when they wanted them. A.S Neill believed that learners should have the freedom to decide when and what they wanted to learn and should not be constrained by the expectations of their teachers or parents (Cope & Kalantzis, 2022a).

However, not all proponents of personalized learning felt that it had to follow the progressive education method. Some believed that educators should accommodate individual learners by helping them meet learning goals and demonstrate mastery of learning. Around the same time that Neill was establishing his Summerhill School, Lev Vygotsky wrote his theory on the zone of proximal development which refers to the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner (Shabani et al., 2010). According to Vygotsky, each student needs to be provided with learning experiences that push them slightly beyond their ability to understand things on their own. Educators that follow this theory would need to assess what their students already know, identify what they want them to learn, and create learning opportunities that scaffold and support their learning to ensure they master the previously unknown (Shabani et al., 2010). To learn more about steps educators can take to help reach students in their zone of proximal development and scaffold personalized learning check out the video below.

Video 1: Lyon, P. (2017). Vygotsky and Scaffolding. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AoLk5nbliM

In 1968, Fred Keller design the Personalized System of Instruction (often referred to as the Keller Plan), which focused on allowing students to learn at their own pace, while still ensuring they demonstrated mastery of a skill before moving on to the next unit. “The self-pacing feature of PSI courses allows students to move through the course material at their own pace. Thus, they can spend less time on material they understand and more time on areas they find difficult” (Eyre, 2007; 317). In this plan, learners are able to determine how much effort or support they need while the educator is there as a facilitator to help support and guide each individual learner.

Personalize learning and the importance of meeting the needs of individual learners became a real topic of discussion in 1975 when legislation passed The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) which protects the rights of students with disability to receive an education tailored to their needs (Lee, 2022). Later included as part of 1990 The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) this legislation also “provides Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) to students who are eligible for disability accommodations under this law. IDEA also guarantees that all students should be placed in their least restrictive environment (LRE)” (Brown, 2019).

It wasn’t until 2005 that these two methods of personalized instruction finally got defined. Dan Buckley, an international expert on personalized instruction, explained that personalized instruction happens in two ways. “On one hand, he recognized that personal learning means ‘an education personalized for the learner’ where the teacher adopts the educational material and teaching practices to better fit the students’ style [which Buckley calls T-Route]. On the other hand, Buckley recognized that personalization can also be ‘an education personalized by the learner’ where the student has a more independent and active role [P-Route]. Students are expected to develop skills on how to personalize their own learning” (KidsKonnect, 2022). The chart below depicts the differences between the two variations of personalized learning as depicted by Buckley.

Image 2: The Graide Network. (2018, August 8). A School Leader’s Guide to Personalized Learning. https://www.thegraidenetwork.com/blog-all/2018/8/1/a-school-leaders-guide-to-personalized-learning

This concept gained further interest when Microsoft published Buckley’s definition of personalized learning the following year in their book Practical Guide to Envisioning and Transforming Education and tech companies gained an interest in the technological applications regarding educational theory and development. Today we have numerous online companies trying to invent the next new online learning program that will allow teachers to personalized and individual instruction (Brown, 2019).

Personalized learning appears to be believed to be the future of education. However, many still don’t seem to agree on what, exactly, a personalized learning approach should look like. “Research is showing that there’s more than one way to design a successful personalized learning environment. However, for as much as they may differ in approach, the best-personalized learning environments do have a few key elements in common”(School Improvement Network, n.d.).

One highly recognized charitable organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is well-known as a champion of personalized learning and through their research in conjunction with iNACOL (the International Association for K-12 Online Learning), has helped identify several key components of successful personalized learning (Barnum, 2019). These components are depicted in the graphic below.

Image 3: Tallo. (2021, December 9). What Is Personalized Learning? [Free Guide] - Tallo. Tallo.com. https://tallo.com/educators/what-is-personalized-learning/

• Learner Profiles: Each student has individual skills, including strengths and weaknesses, interests, and aspirations, that need to be accounted for in their learning profile. Knowing these profiles allows educators to build personalized learning plans for each student.
• Personal Learning Paths: Using each student’s learner profile, an individual path to knowledge must be crafted. Learning goals, objectives, and mastery is defined by the student, not a predetermined standard. This allows each learning experience to be unique to the student.
• Individual Mastery: Assessments must be given to monitoring student mastery of various concepts, and these assessments should follow standards and goals established between the educator and the student. Students can work at their own pace to meet these goals and demonstrate knowledge.
• Flexible Learning Environments: Teachers and educators need to provide multiple options for how students can receive instruction and support for their learning. This allows learners the opportunity to gain knowledge in the best way possible for them.
• Student Agency: Students have the right to and should be encouraged to control how they learn. Teachers should help them build a learning process that works for them, students should have the choice of how they want to demonstrate their learning via tests, quizzes, and other such assessments. (Z, 2019)

As previously mentioned the concept of personalized learning has been around for centuries, but it wasn’t until the recent global COVID pandemic that society recognized the real need for personalized learning. The pandemic impacted the “lives of more than 1.6 billion students and their schooling has highlighted the need to address this issue, as students have struggled to continue their learning at home, working independently and often under difficult circumstances”(Stannett, 2021). By using the advantages that online learning technologies have to offer and personalize instruction teachers can give students power over what and how they learn while providing instruction where they need it. This is especially important now as students return to the classroom from the pandemic with different learning gaps and emotional needs. Educators are looking for ways to make learning more purposeful and specific to each learner and the personalized learning approach is the way. However, there are various factors that need to be considered when developing personalized learning opportunities, especially one that supports the broader development of our students including the social, mental, and physical as well as the academic (Vodicka et al., 2021).

Each student enters our classroom with unique needs and abilities and through the implementation of a personalized learning approach teachers can create learning opportunities best suited for their “students’ unique backgrounds, abilities, and preferred modalities” (Wilson, 2022). In Learning differences in theory and practice, Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope “explore the complex and shifting dimensions of the social, cultural, and bodily differences that impact on learners and their learning” (Kalantzis & Cope, 2016; 85) and identify three common classifiers that have been used to identify individuals including material conditions, corporeal attributes, and symbolic differences. Each of these individual classifiers includes additional factors that make up the specific uniqueness of every person and every learner (Kalantzis & Cope, 2016; 86). To learn more about these common classifiers watch Dr. Cope’s video before on “Categorical Differences”.

Video 2: Education at Illinois. (2017, May 1). Categorical Differences [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bn8v8xggPQ

1. Material Conditions [2:13-4:45] (social class, locale, and family: often refers to material resources available including income, housing, and family makeup
2. Corporeal Attributes [4:46-9:43] (age, race, gender, sexuality, physical, and mental abilities): classified as related to the body
3. Symbolic Differences [9:44-12:43] (languages, ethnos, communities of commitment and gendre): differences that are related to our cultural background and beliefs (Kalantzis & Cope, 2016)

As explained in the video above, each of these individual classifiers includes additional factors that make up the specific uniqueness of every person and every learner (Kalantzis & Cope, 2016) and add up to a set of conditions that surround the learner when they come to school, and which then impact their learning. Understanding students and their unique “metacategories”, as Kalantzis and Cope refer to them, will enable educators to connect with and better design personalized learning experiences that fully engage and support their students.

Understanding the various components of personalized learning and the factors that impact each individual learner is key when implementing personalized learning. Personalized learning looks different in every district, school, and classroom, however, there are a few steps that all teachers must take in order to implement personalized learning within their own classrooms.

Implementing a personalized learning approach recognizes that each learner is unique and has individual needs. The first step to take when designing personalized learning is setting goals to address each student’s individual learner profile. Teachers who apply a personalized learning approach often take time to assess students and sort out what they already know and identify what key concepts need to be addressed in order to create a learning plan with the student which aligns with their interests, talents, and passions. Allowing students to make choices and help design their own personalized learning plan, gives them more ownership of their learning and often makes students more “motivated when working toward an important personal goal” (Wilson, 2022).

In addition to assessing students at the start of a personalized learning approach, it is important to adopt the frequent use of formative assessments in addition to summative assessments. Formative assessments allow educators to assess their students periodically to gauge their learning and create more effectively personalize learning for the students. Data gathered during those formative assessments can be shared with the student right away to help them consider what they need to do next as they progress through their personalized learning and help teachers facilitate those learning opportunities (Nhouyyanisvong, 2014).

Another step that educators often take when implementing a personalized learning approach in their classroom, is becoming more flexible; both with their classroom layout as well as their schedules. Many teachers recognize that the physical environment of their classroom can affect learning for their students. Teachers who adopt a personalized learning approach often reconfigure their rooms to accommodate the independent work of their students, by incorporating a variety of workspaces including individual desks, small tables for group work, standing desks for learners who can’t sit all day, comfy chairs, lap desks, and other alternative seating options support a broader range of students and their learning styles (Grand Canyon University, 2019). In addition to being flexible with the way, they set up their classrooms, educators who implement personalized learning often are more flexible with their schedules. They understand that some students learn better in the morning, while others can be more creative in the afternoon after they have had a while to wake up and get moving. Some schedules enable teachers to give their students chunks of time where they are in control of their schedule and can arrange their day to optimize their ability to learn (Wilson, 2022). Teachers who have set schedules due to their building’s schedule can create that flexibility by providing tailored pacing, adjusting deadlines to accommodate their learners, as well as setting aside blocks of class for students to work on their personalized learning plans.

When implementing a personalized learning approach it is often easier for teachers to adopt a standards-based grading and reporting system. Students are encouraged to demonstrate mastery or competency for the goals and standards that they have set for themselves. Evaluating students based on their mastery of specific learning objectives allows them the opportunity to demonstrate their mastery by assembling “their knowledge representations in the form of rich, multimodal sources — text, image, diagram, table, audio, video, hyperlink, infographic, and manipulable data with visualizations”(Cope & Kalantzis, 2015b; 385) that align with their strengths and interests. These assessments can be evaluated on the student's ability to demonstrate the standards through a rubric, rather than comparing all student and their ability to complete tasks and respond the same way, recognizing and honoring their individuality.

Personalized learning may take a bit of time to understand and implement, but in the end, it makes learning more rewarding for everyone in a number of ways. There are certainly several benefits to adopting a personalized learning approach.

• Saves Time: By personalizing learning to the individual student and providing them with relevant learning experiences they are more likely to learn quicker than if asked to learn information that is not relevant or redundant (Valamis, 2020). When the pace “is held as a constant in the classroom, some students are held back from learning” (Roberts & Inman, 2015; 8). It is important for educators to evaluate what their students know already and identify what they need to learn in order to save time that would otherwise be wasted on learning concepts that will not serve the learner.
• Increases Engagement: When students are asked to interact with content that is personalized and relevant to their own unique learning needs, interests, and cultures they are more likely to engage with the content. When you increase student engagement in their learning you decrease the behavioral incidents often caused by boredom, avoidance, or stress and increase academic success.
• Improves Knowledge Retention: When students are asked to learn content that is “based on previous experience, the learner will retain that information for a much longer period of time”(Valamis, 2020). By designing personalized learning paths that connect learners with relevant content they are more likely to synthesize and comprehend the information by linking it to existing knowledge and experiences.
• Increased Motivation: When students feel more supported and valued in a classroom environment they are more likely to be motivated to learn. When educators take the time to design personalized learning opportunities that are connected to each individual student and their interests they are more motivated to master that content, especially when the “contains tips or helpful information that is immediately actionable”(Valamis, 2020).
• Improved learning results: Studies have shown that when instructors tailor learning experiences to the specific needs of each learning they will yield better learning results. “This approach elevates learning and provides content that is relevant, engaging, actionable, and memorable”(Valamis, 2020) resulting in a more positive learning experience and improved learning.

Image 4: Townsley, M. (2015). Creating a Relevant Learning Culture for the Next Generation. https://media.erepublic.com/document/CDE15_Special_Report_Q4_V.PDF

As depicted in the infographic above there are many benefits, however, if there are so many benefits to adopting a personalized learning approach to teaching why hasn’t every school adopted it? There are several challenges that need to be addressed when trying to implement a personalized learning approach to teaching.

• Inconsistent Implementation: Without the proper support of the educational institution personalized learning can be challenging to initiate and implement in a classroom. “When personalized learning isn’t consistent or comprehensive, it can be frustrating for educators and learners” (Wilson, 2022).
• Time and Support: The role of the teacher is changed in a personalized learning approach and many will need support through various professional development opportunities as well as time to collaborate with others to provide them with the understanding of what it actually means to personalize learning. “Personalized learning requires educators that are proficient in different perspectives of learning, data analysis, and student grouping” (Mosier, 2018; 30).
• Insufficient Access to Tools and Resources: Having access to the right tools exponentially helps educators design personalized learning experiences for their students. However, insufficient access can prevent educators from creating them at all which can be disappointing and stressful for both the teacher and the learner. Technology advancements have helped address this challenge a bit, but there are often times when teachers are lacking the tools necessary to facilitate learning already in the traditional didactic approach and one-size-fits-all, when they’re trying to meet the unique needs of several students on differentiated personalized learning paths this becomes even harder.

As previously mentioned technological advancements have certainly supported the growing interest in personalized learning. Numerous software manufacturers, startups, and established companies are trying to secure a spot in the new market of educational technologies recognizing the benefits that offering schools the ability to provide individualized learning pathways which enable students to move at their own pace through material and that teachers can repurpose, reuse, and adapt assignments as necessary (Wilson, 2022). Technology has erased many limitations of personalized learning, making it more accessible, flexible, and ultimately more successful.

‘’Personalization’ of learning becomes a selling point for much e-learning” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2020; xxiii) as educational technology provides educators and learners the opportunity to scale up the quality of personalized instruction through the use of prerecorded lessons, engaging videos, and interactive learning games, as well as a plethora of resources that would normally be out of reach. Through the use of computer-adaptive learning, students can learn at their own pace, engaging with content that is relevant and supports their own individualized learning path (Ganimian et al., 2020).

One of the most popular personalized learning dashboards is Khan Academy. Created by Salman Khan in 2008 it was designed with the “mission to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere”(Khan Academy, 2022) through the use of instructional videos, practice exercises, and instant progress information on a wide range of concepts. Khan Academy was created to help learners establish strong foundations and was influenced by Salman Khan’s own personalized learning experience, which he describes in the video below.

Video 3: Edutopia. (2017). Supercharging the Classroom: Using Technology to Support Personalized Learning. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlhxpU5QdM8

As Dr. Cope and Kalantzis pointed out in A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies, that technology allows meaning to be “made in ways that are increasingly multimodal – in which written-linguistic modes of meaning interface with oral, video, audio, gestural, tactile, and spatial patterns of meaning” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015a). Technology enables educators the opportunity to design personalized learning which engages students in meaning-making. It also provides our students with a wide range of tools to demonstrate their mastery of learning through a variety of “multimodal forms…including text, image, diagram, infographics, video and more” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2020; xxvii) personalized to their strengths and interests.