How personalised learning can improve education

When students are given the opportunity to pursue subjects that are of personal interest, or to participate in seminars that devote as much as six weeks to a single topic, can they still cover all of the rigorous, highly specific standards they are expected to learn?

Advocates of personalized learning say yes. And in the Kettle Moraine School District in Wisconsin, these kinds of strategies—flexible scheduling, seminar instruction, and one-on-one technology—are helping all students learn challenging material at all grade levels. Students, teachers there say, still pursue the same learning goals they always have, but by studying different things and at different speeds.

At the KM Explore charter elementary school, for example, teacher Laura Dahm and a colleague teach two seminars—one on the Civil War, the other about insects. Regardless of which topic students choose, instruction still focuses on research and investigative reading. “The learning targets might be the same even though the theme or topic is completely different,” Dahm says.

In high school, the approach has helped students of differing abilities more than a rigid pacing approach previously did. “In my traditional classes, I would say one-third of my students were right with me doing exactly what I was doing, one-third were hoping we could review a bit more, and one-third were ready to move on,” says Eric Anderson, a math teacher at Kettle Moraine High School. “Even though the students are in the same course, they’re not in the same place.” Now, he says, high-achieving students have the opportunity to move on to new material, while those who struggle have extra time to learn the concept. “From the student perspective, that’s a whole different attitude. It’s, ‘Well, let’s learn it,’ rather than, “We’ve got to learn this by Friday,’” Anderson says.

Learn more about Kettle Moraine’s approach to personalized learning in Momentum.

Published in collaboration with Impatient Optimists

Author: Mark Toner is an award-winning writer, editor, and publications manager.

Image: Students at the Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School work on their laptops during a class in Dorchester, Massachusetts June 20, 2008. REUTERS/Adam Hunger.