Last year, when the notion of “personalized learning” started to become a popular topic here in British Columbia, I questioned its practicality. I asked how a secondary teacher could possibly create, supervise and assess 200 or so separate learning programs for his or her students. I concluded that teachers couldn’t possibly pull off such a feat – a feat that would almost defy the laws of physics – and that schools would have to offer pre-packaged curriculum from providers such as local distance education schools, Open School, or private sector education companies like Pearson. At best, students would get photocopied worksheet packages from their teachers… but how is that progress?
Yesterday, an interesting letter was published in the Victoria Times-Colonist. The writer, a teacher named Werner Liedtke, explained his observations of a personalized learning program in Alberta. The program used a “canned” program from the United States called Individually Prescribed Instruction (IPI), a program that dates back to the 1960’s.
Liedtke’s opinion of the program is not positive. He argues that teachers are reduced to clerks: “The teacher and four volunteers that I observed in one classroom did nothing but mark tests, record results and direct students to the next tests.” He concludes that students lose out as well, since the possibility of group interaction is eliminated.
And, really, how can it be otherwise? If learning is personalized, teachers can’t possibly create (or co-create) individualized programs for each child; they have to rely on pre-built curricula. And teachers’ time has to be consumed by the administration of a very inefficient system, because a student’s particular program needs to be administered, by definition, on a one-on-one basis. One-on-one sounds great, but how can it compete with the efficiency of one-on-thirty?
If my prediction is correct, and the government doesn’t change its mind about “net zero” funding, then we arrive at a very attenuated conception of personalized learning. Students might learn at their own pace, but they would still be learning from the same packages as everyone else (unless the school system, or parents, can afford supplementary curriculum). In addition, unless we open the deadlines for course completion beyond the standard end-of-June finish date, even individualized pacing really isn’t significant; all we’ll see is a massive crush of students desperately trying to finish in the last few weeks. In the distance education world this last minute “jamming” is a well known phenomenon. On the whole, pacing doesn’t come close to the promise of personalized learning, and may itself be cancelled by deadlines and the lack of interaction inherent in any system where students learn at their own pace.
So thank you Mr. Liedtke. You have provided another example of why the allure of personalized learning doesn’t satisfy the demand for realism.
I have to disagree with your premise that personalized learning is an impossibility. The IPI example you use from Alberta is a very poor paper-based and linear model of what self-paced curriculum shouldn’t be.
Personalized Learning should involve even more student cooperation and realtionship building than “traditional schooling”. What’s the factor that allows teachers to move forward towards personalized learning – technology. Students should be pursuing their passions and engaging in deep learning about those passions, not skipping across a predetermined set of irrelevant curricular outcomes. As an educator I have to believe that we can always do better than we’re currently doing. Your satisfaction with the status quo nad demand for realism concerns me and should concern your students. what’s real is that the current model our schools are stuck in does not prepare them for anything beyond the doors of the school.
Hi Kyle,
Thanks for taking the time to respond!
I don’t think personalized learning is an impossibility, but it will need a heck of a lot more money than the BC government is currently willing to give. In the face of “netzero”, I’m afraid that “pre-packaged learning” is all we’re going to get. Frankly, I’d rather stick with the current system if that’s the case. Packaged learning has been tried many times, and it never lasts. Too boring for the students, and too boring for the teacher. [The IPI is probably an extreme example, but canned content is still canned content.]
As for technology, my eight year run at a large DL school has taught me to be be fairly skeptical of its charms. I don’t think it makes things ultra-efficient. A good DL school that’s rich in technology and teacher-student interaction is, IMO, just as expensive as a brick ‘n mortar school, so it cannot make up for the grievous lack of funding that is sure to hobble any adoption of “21st century learning” in BC. The neo-liberal bovine dung that has been spread regarding the wonders of DL and IT is truly frightening.
I’m saddened and concerned that you have so little regard for the current system. Obviously, I disagree with you. And here’s what I said a few months ago regarding what’s “relevant”:
“The most important competencies are the ones that have existed for millennia.
In terms of the basic literacy of secondary school students, they need to be able to write effective sentences, paragraphs and extended compositions. They need to understand the differences between writing for formal situations and communicating with friends. They should be able to distinguish words like “then” and “than”, and understand that complete sentences are not connected by commas.
They should have an inkling of ironic tone and common allusions. No, Animal Farm is not merely a children’s story about belligerent swine. They need, in short, enough “cultural depth” to start the long journey towards critical thinking, a process that cannot happen in a cultural vacuum – whatever culture that may be. If they have to look up a witty aside on Google, the conversation has already passed them by.
Similarly, students should be able to make basic computations in their heads without rushing to a calculator. These computations are not simply “rote memory”; they represent the basic functional relationships between numbers that form the foundation of mathematical analysis and creativity.
And so on.
What I am saying, in other words, is that we need to be very skeptical about the latest education bandwagon and claims that things have changed fundamentally in our society and in our education system. ”
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Finally, I won’t apologize for demanding realism. Our education system actually does pretty well, in spite of the waves and waves of bandwagons forced onto the education system by academics, apparatchiks and Rousseauian romantics. If there is something corrosive in our system, it’s innovation for the sake of innovation, which also means innovation that refuses to take the realities of front-line classroom teachers into consideration. After 19 years in the system, I’ve seen much “innovation”. And little of that sticks around because its promoters refuse to engage in real consultation, lest the naysayers tarnish the “innovation” agenda.