While the shift from “differentiated instruction” to “personalized learning” seems like a reasonable enough commitment to make philosophically, the changes in practice that this generation of teachers will need to make to realize the potential of personalized learning are daunting...As a result, there are enormous technical and emotional barriers that need to be overcome among educators in order for students to have the opportunity to learn in environments that are highly engaging, personalized, and authentic.

Over the last three school years, BetterLesson has worked closely with over a thousand teachers in North America to shift their practice in the direction of greater personalization for their students. We knew going into this work that many of the teachers we were supporting would want coaching around the technical aspects of planning and implementing new systems and strategies, including the use of technology to drive student engagement, creativity, and achievement.

At the same time, we were surprised by a few key things:

  1. The degree to which shame factored into many veteran teachers’ experience of shifting their classroom practices in a more personalized direction.
  2. Early-career teachers, though they were still building the core of their teaching toolkits, were in some cases fairly advanced in their personalized learning practices
  3. Regardless of prior experience with personalized learning practices, the majority of teachers we coached last school year struggled most with three domains in BetterLesson’s “Personalized Learning Continuum”: Use of Data, Authentic Learning, and Student Agency.

Read the full article by Jeff Liberty about personalized learning from The Learning Accelerator