Giving Compass' Take:

• Here are strategies for educators to reclaim personalized learning with an equity focus by building an accessible curriculum, encouraging autonomy, and humanizing technology integration.

• Why should inclusion be at the center of personalized learning? How can school districts refocus equity efforts?

• Read about how personalized learning can lead to educational equity.

Many believe that for learning to be personal, it must be individualized. But over-individualization can be isolating when we over-rely on digital programs that individualize curriculum and unintentionally track learners. What’s more, it strips students of their agency and autonomy and strips learning of curiosity and serendipity.

At its extreme, this digitized brand of personalized learning is dehumanizing: It’s taking the humanity out of the human condition of learning, and it’s inadvertently taking the person out of personalization.

But that doesn’t mean that we should be remiss in advocating for personalization in schools. Children deserve an education that is inherently meaningful and personal to them, and it should be one that humanizes—instead of dehumanizes—the learning process. It’s time that knowledgeable, sentient educators reclaim personalized learning as a humanized pedagogy—one that cultivates student agency and keeps equity and inclusion at the center.

Here’s how we can start.

  • Build an Accessible and Inclusive Curriculum: It is possible to sustainably personalize learning by widening the scope of individual tasks and designing them to have varied entry points for a diverse group of learners, promoting access to an equitably rigorous curriculum.
  • Cultivate Agency and Autonomy: By building an inclusive curriculum through complex instruction, we can naturally guide all learners towards independence, embedding learner-driven personalization into the culture of the classroom.
  • Humanize Technology Integration: When humanizing technology integration, I like to make sure I do so in a way that (1) minimizes complexity; (2) maximizes individual power and potential; (3) reimagines learning experiences; and most importantly (4) preserves or enhances human connection in the classroom.

It’s time that we, educators, reclaim the term personalization as a pedagogy that is enacted by human beings, and only use technology when it preserves or enhances human connection.

Read the full article about reclaiming personalized learning by Paul Emerich France at EdSurge