Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for Getting Smart, Kristen Thorson and Erin Gohl discuss a new guide created for parents to become more involved in their child's education and personalize learning. 

· How can parents support their children when they are leading their own learning? How is this important when personalizing learning? 

· Here are a few resources that help with personalized learning. 

For more than a century, educators have iteratively tried to improve the structures of schooling by refining the environment design, adopting new resources, and adjusting the requirements for high school graduation in a quest to shape and yield the most prepared graduates. Historically, students have been treated as the variable that must adapt to each particular community’s mold of learning and educational success. Students have been expected to adjust to the structures and expectations formed by the set of policies, procedures, and implementations that educational experts have designed.

In recent years, administrators, teachers, and researchers have begun to reframe this conception of education, noting that students each have a unique learning profile and that educational design should take those differences into account. Concomitantly, as research has improved the understanding of the variety of ways that students learn, innovations in education and technology have allowed for schools and districts to begin to more efficiently create student-centered, personalized learning opportunities to meet the unique needs and strengths of individual students.

Strides have been made in accomplishing this task, and schools and districts are designing more flexible learning environments, creating a range of pedagogical practices teachers can use, and seeking to engage students in ways that are based on their personal history, attributes, and path to preparation for lifelong success. However, educators are still the drivers of decision-making about that learning. In order to truly personalize learning, we must invite students into the conversation with their insights and preferences about their own strengths and challenges. Student voice and agency must be at the center of planning and implementation. In response to this challenge, The Friday Institute has rolled out a suite of resources for students, educators, and now parents, to help make student input a key piece of student-centered learning design and engagement.

Read the full article about support students in leading their learning by Kristen Thorson and Erin Gohl at Getting Smart.