I have spent the last five years facilitating Personalized Learning (PL) in my LEA (School District).   Personalized learning is intended to facilitate the academic success of each student by first determining the learning needs, interests, and aspirations of individual students, and then providing learning experiences that are customized—to a greater or lesser extent—for each student. To accomplish this goal, schools, teachers, guidance counselors, and other educational specialists may employ a wide variety of educational methods, from intentionally cultivating strong and trusting student-adult relationships to modifying assignments and instructional strategies in the classroom to entirely redesigning the ways in which students are grouped and taught in a school.

While personalized learning in public schools may become the object of debate, most debates tend to center on specific applications of personalized learning—such as the strategies described above—rather than on the general concept or pedagogical philosophy (which is so encompassing, multifaceted, and far-reaching that it would difficult to isolate specific arguments for or against it). That said, the idea of “personalized learning,” in whatever manifestation, does have its ardent proponents and its equally ardent critics.

In some cases, criticism and debate about personalized learning may stem, at least in part, from a fundamental misunderstanding of the strategy. For example, the idea of “individualized instruction”—creating distinct courses of study and instructional strategies for every student—was popular for a brief of time in the 1970s until educators realized that it was impractical and unfeasible to develop unique academic programs for dozens of students in a class. Personalization, personalized learning, and personalized instruction—the practice of varying instructional techniques in a classroom to effectively teach as many students as possible—is not synonymous with individualized instruction as it was defined in the 1970s. The conflation of related but distinct terms and strategies such “differentiated instruction,” “personalized instruction,” and “individualized instruction” has likely contributed to ongoing confusion and debates about personalized learning, particularly given that these distinct terms are commonly used interchangeably.

It should also be noted that online schools and educational programs promoting “personalized learning” have also become the object of criticism, debate, and controversy. Many for-profit virtual schools and online collegiate degree programs, for example, have been accused of offering low-quality educational experiences to students, exploiting students or public programs, and using the popularity of concepts such as “personalized learning” to promote programs of dubious educational value.

Personalized Learning