What Is Personalized Learning? How Can Teachers Use It To Prepare Students For The Future?
Personalized learning is an educational approach that aims to customize learning for each student’s strengths, needs, skills, and interests. Each student gets a learning plan that’s based on what they know and how they learn best.
What is personalized learning?
From kindergarten to high school, students in school are being trained in several skills to prepare them for the world. In order to ensure that these skills will be acquired, students will need to “discover, discover, discover” through self-directed learning.
Teachers will then incorporate this learnings into the lesson plan to meet the needs of each student, as stated by the SPPK:
“‘This is the shift from a teacher-centered or prescriptive model of education to one in which the work of teachers and students is informed by the student’s own exploration, creative expression, knowledge and application of the concepts, skills and values that the students bring to the classroom.
What benefits does personalized learning offer?
Personalized learning is an opportunity for students to learn at their own pace.
Students develop their learning strategies for success.
Students gain independence and confidence.
Students find out what they enjoy learning, and develop self-advocacy.
Students develop the skills needed to succeed in college or career.
What are the benefits of personalized learning for teachers?
Personalized learning for teachers can help them support learning at a student’s individual level.
It can provide teachers with the opportunity to help students learn at their own pace.
It can improve the quality of teaching, and create a more personalized learning environment.
Personalized learning allows teachers to better prepare students for the future.
Personalized Learning in the Classroom
It allows students to find their own learning strengths, interests, and paths. What excites me most about personalized learning is how it aligns with the state of the art research for student learning,” she says.
She says that personalized learning was only meant to be applied to middle school, but it’s time to think differently and how it will impact our educational system for generations to come. She has been using personalized learning for 10 years at Capitol Hill Elementary.
She says that being a teacher is one of the most challenging jobs in the country and one of the most rewarding. She has seen students that have struggled in traditional classroom settings learn to read and be a productive learner.
Conclusion
As we move forward into the era of personalized learning, it’s critical that we develop flexible, scalable systems that don’t place unnecessary burden on teachers or students. While there’s still a long way to go before the concept is adopted by the vast majority of schools, there is already good evidence that personalized learning works. We should use the time before the implementation of these systems to build out an informed conversation about what the impact of personalized learning will be on students, teachers, and school districts.
