The highlight of this week's Google alert daily digests for me was an article from The News Herald about a personalized learning symposium taking place in Northeast Ohio this week. The article itself was just your basic "5W" piece on the event itself, but it linked back to an earlier piece in Education Week that attempted to define the key traits of personalized learning, and it was that article that I found quite thought provoking.
According to the Education Week piece, personalized learning is competency-based and flexible while making some use of both personalized learning pathways and learner profiles. Each of these facets represents some serious pedagogical questions that I would be willing to wager most educators (if they were being completely honest) would struggle to answer. I could devote and entire blog post to each of these facets (Maybe in future weeks?) but today I'd like to focus on the competency-based piece.
About the ONLY place in my district where students' matriculation is actually and truly based on competency alone is perhaps within the ESL classes, since students are tested to move from one level to the next and to exit the program. As for the general student population? Behavioral compliance, attendance, and assignment completion far outweigh genuine competency-based assessments in determining whether or not a student passes a given class and moves on to the next. You may believe that isn't the case in your district, and I hope that it is not, but I can tell you assuredly that it has been in every public school district with which I have had any experience as either a student or a teacher throughout my career. It is systemic throughout the American education system, and with pressures from administration to maintain certain passing rates, I don't see it likely changing en masse any time soon.
Now, if we focus instead on the progression through learning pathways within a course rather than solely on the end grades, does the scale tilt at all in favor of the competency-based model? Perhaps some, but too often students are still stuck in a rigid one-sized curriculum that does not reward diligent workers and inspired minds with opportunities above and beyond the base-level assignments. Too often "individualized learning" amounts to giving extra-credit 'extension activities' to students who finish their regular tasks with time remaining in the class, the lesson, or the week. I could not think of a more disastrous approach to that circumstance. Want to watch a bright kid slow pitch you for an entire semester, biding her time until at least some other kids are done before she turns in any of her work? Give her more work as a reward for finishing well and quickly the first time around. Remember, she's sharp; she won't make that mistake again!
Thus, if more work isn't the answer, then the answer must be different work from the very start, but how are we to know who needs different work when we've already crafted an assignment we hope will meet the needs of most of the kids in our classes? I suppose the answer is timely and well-crafted assessment that is turned around and acted upon as quickly as possible, and that sounds like fodder for a whole other blog post!
According to the Education Week piece, personalized learning is competency-based and flexible while making some use of both personalized learning pathways and learner profiles. Each of these facets represents some serious pedagogical questions that I would be willing to wager most educators (if they were being completely honest) would struggle to answer. I could devote and entire blog post to each of these facets (Maybe in future weeks?) but today I'd like to focus on the competency-based piece.
About the ONLY place in my district where students' matriculation is actually and truly based on competency alone is perhaps within the ESL classes, since students are tested to move from one level to the next and to exit the program. As for the general student population? Behavioral compliance, attendance, and assignment completion far outweigh genuine competency-based assessments in determining whether or not a student passes a given class and moves on to the next. You may believe that isn't the case in your district, and I hope that it is not, but I can tell you assuredly that it has been in every public school district with which I have had any experience as either a student or a teacher throughout my career. It is systemic throughout the American education system, and with pressures from administration to maintain certain passing rates, I don't see it likely changing en masse any time soon.
Now, if we focus instead on the progression through learning pathways within a course rather than solely on the end grades, does the scale tilt at all in favor of the competency-based model? Perhaps some, but too often students are still stuck in a rigid one-sized curriculum that does not reward diligent workers and inspired minds with opportunities above and beyond the base-level assignments. Too often "individualized learning" amounts to giving extra-credit 'extension activities' to students who finish their regular tasks with time remaining in the class, the lesson, or the week. I could not think of a more disastrous approach to that circumstance. Want to watch a bright kid slow pitch you for an entire semester, biding her time until at least some other kids are done before she turns in any of her work? Give her more work as a reward for finishing well and quickly the first time around. Remember, she's sharp; she won't make that mistake again!
Thus, if more work isn't the answer, then the answer must be different work from the very start, but how are we to know who needs different work when we've already crafted an assignment we hope will meet the needs of most of the kids in our classes? I suppose the answer is timely and well-crafted assessment that is turned around and acted upon as quickly as possible, and that sounds like fodder for a whole other blog post!
You bring up some very valid points about the way things seem to be playing out in public education. Pass rates, state testing, new initiatives, etc seem to take precedence over centering our curriculum and classwork on the individual student. I to am not sure how this will change. And of course, no student really Wants to do more work separate from their peers. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts in weeks to come, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete