Blog Post 1: Personalized Learning
Personalized Learning for Me
I believe in a learning model that emphasizes individual learning plans. This does not mean segregation classes, but rather building students up until they have a complete understanding or grasp of a topic before moving on. For example, instead of passing a student who barely got a 50% on a test, I would offer them to take a different test on the same material until they were able to prove an agreed-upon target for their grade. This means I would hold my class to a B+ standard, and if students struggle to meet more resources will be supplied to aid in their education journey until they show sufficient mastery over the given topic. For students who might already be meeting said standard, I would offer extensions and depending on the difficulty of the extension project, they would get either an A-, A, or A+. The extension projects are all self-directed, meaning they have to take a learning objective from the class and apply it to someone in their life. This is the perfect definition of mastery in my eyes because it shows that the student is ot just retaining the information but also able to apply it to a multitude of contexts.
Personal Learning Experience
Growing up, I believed that personalized learning meant adherence to one’s inherent learning style. This happened because it was something my parents and teachers would talk about and try to utilize for my development. I believe they did this because I was undiagnosed dyslexic, and so my reading ability was incredibly poor; however, since the teachers did not know this, they thought I just had a strong affinity for tactile or auditory learning. When I learnt about my dyslexia and how to manage it, I realized that the learning styles are adaptable and mainly dependent on the teacher who is educating. Throughout my academic journey, I learnt that there was truly no research backing the myth of personalized learning through learning styles. It has helped me in classes that I’ve taught because if a type of teaching I was offering was not being received, I couldn’t blame learning styles, and instead, I could address the root issue, which was the structure of the class or the methodology of my approach.
This is a book called Toe by Toe, which I had to use growing up once I learnt I had dyslexia. It helped me differenciate different words and taught me how to read and speak properly.
Supporting Evidence
During the research for the personalized learning blog post, I found a book written by Charles M. Reigeluth titled Vision and Action: Reinventing Schools through Personalized Competency-Based Education. Reigeluth’s framework he named Personalized Competency-Based Education (PCBE). It shifts schools from a time-based system, where everyone moves at the same pace, to a competency-based system, where students move forward only after demonstrating mastery. The goal of Reigeluth’s framework is to create learner-centred environments where pacing, instruction, and goals are personalized to each student’s needs and strengths.
“Dyslexia is not a measure of intelligence. Too often, children are made to feel broken for struggling with words, when in truth their minds are simply wired to see the world differently.” — Sally Shaywitz, Overcoming Dyslexia (2003)
References
Reigeluth CM, Karnopp J. Vision and Action : Reinventing Schools through Personalized Competency-Based Education. Marzano Resources; 2020.