Teachers have long recognized that the prior knowledge and experience students arrive with on their first day of school vary greatly. Long before standardized tests confirmed it, educators knew that some students were ready for grade-level content while others were not.

Armed with this understanding, educators have used numerous strategies—everything from grade promotion and repetition to tracking to differentiated instruction—to address the needs of children who may be the same age but are at different learning levels.

While interest in personalized learning appears to be peaking (not, apparently, only in the ad copy of edtech companies), the practice of adjusting what, when, and how a student learns has a long history. Efforts to personalize learning and meet students where they are can be traced back to before the turn of the 19th century. While not an exhaustive history, the below timeline presents a few highlights along the path to personalized learning:

In 1889, Preston Search, superintendent of schools in Pueblo, Colorado, introduced a plan to enable students to move at their own pace. Few details remain of Search’s Pueblo Plan, as it became known, except that a lack of quality learning materials likely hampered its spread.

In 1912, a plan at the San Francisco Normal School promoted students once they demonstrated mastery in a given subject. A student in this model might be studying 8th grade history material, 6th grade English, and 9th grade mathematics. Additionally, administrators at the San Francisco Normal School created worksheets to be used independently by students with their textbooks. Anticipating that working solo would leave students ill-prepared for life in the real world, the model also featured two periods dedicated to “oral expression”, “real training in exposition, discussion, and dramatics.”

In 1916, John Dewey published “Democracy and Education,” which advocated for placing the child, as opposed to the curriculum, at the center of the classroom. His celebrated work argued for creating communities of learners who could discuss ideas and uphold American democratic ideals. An early constructivist, Dewey saw education as a social interaction between children and adults, and believed that knowledge couldn’t simply be given to a child, but that a student must experience something and engage with it to learn.

In 1968, Fred Keller introduced Personal Systems of Instruction (PSI), also known as the Keller Plan, to help students in Brazil master content at their own pace. In PSI, curriculum was broken down into short units, at the end of which students would take formative assessments on the skills and concepts they had studied. Students studied primarily written material, moving through content at their own pace. If they failed a unit assessment, they returned to the coursework until they could demonstrate mastery. PSI has considerable support from empirical research. Students in these PSI courses “learn course content better, remember it longer, and like the experience more than students in traditional classes” (see Fox, 2004).

In 1978, Lev Vygotsky further developed constructs for how each student’s needs could be met when the typical classroom is filled with a wide variety of learners. Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” describes the cognitive space where each student, with the assistance of adults or more skilled students, is provided with learning experiences that are slightly beyond their current competence level.

In 1990, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandated that every child with a disability be provided with an Individual Education Plan (IEP). IEPs take into account each student’s unique learning needs and articulate specific learning goals and supports needed to facilitate his or her success. While IEPs are universally implemented as the norm for children with disabilities, IEPs have yet to become widespread for all children, despite the potential benefits an IEP could provide.

In 2009, New Classrooms co-founders Joel Rose and Chris Rush developed School of One as part of the New York City Department of Education. School of One was one of the first attempts to utilize technology to tailor what, when, where, and how a student learned based on their unique skills. Named one of the “Best Inventions of 2009” by Time Magazine, School of One uses data from a short assessment at the end of each day to create a customized schedule for students and teachers based on what they had learned the previous day. Students encounter mathematics content in a variety of different ways, including teacher-delivered, small group collaboration, and independent or virtual instruction. Two years later, the pair founded New Classrooms and developed a new personalized learning model called Teach to One: Math, which shared some of the same principles and goals as School of One, but explored new academic, technological, and operational strategies. Results show that students participating in Teach to One are making significant growth gains compared to the national average.

In 2014, personalized learning is on the lips of policy makers, academics, educators, and parents across the country. An important debate about the characteristics that define personalized learning is being waged, with some decrying the concept an “empty vessel.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other philanthropies have produced a working definition of personalized learning, which many hope will encourage further discussion, exploration, and experimentation of strategies to customize instruction to students’ unique learning needs, abilities, and interests. State and local departments of education from Tennessee, Wisconsin, South Carolina, and others have created offices of personalized learning. And districts from Oregon to Texas are rolling out personalized learning initiatives. Bellwether Education Partners, with funding from New Classrooms, published a Policy Playbook for policy makers hoping to encourage personalized learning efforts in their areas.

Dieser Beitrag wurde unter dem Titel „The history of individual learning. Milestone on the pathway to personalize learnung“ auf dem Blog von New Classrooms erstveröffentlicht.