Personalised learning – yes, but what does it mean?
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008An article last week on the BBC Education site made me smile. It describes the trouble MPs at a recent UK Children’s Committee had in getting someone to define what ‘personalised learning’ was:
Professor David Hargreaves, probably the country’s leading authority on personalised learning, said he had struggled for the past four years to define it but had now concluded that it was “a total waste of time trying to find a definition”. He suggested it was more helpful to see it as a constant challenge rather than a particular state a school could ever say it had reached.
Another leading expert, Mick Waters, from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, was asked if he could help out with a definition of “personalised” education. He neatly side-stepped the challenge, saying “unless I am pressed, I don’t use the word”.
Personalised learning is a great ideal – tailoring education to how individual pupils learn best. However, pursued ab absurdum it would mean everyone having a personal tutor. In the real world of classes of 30+, that means juggling the needs of a few individuals with particular needs (dyslexics, fast learners etc) with the needs of the majority. Wait.. isn’t that what every teacher does in every class?? Which is why the journalist quoted comes to the conclusion that personalised learning hasn’t lived up to the hype; nobody knows how to define it and so nobody knows how it is going to change things.
However, we recognise this is an ongoing issue for teachers with very mixed ability classes, and at Teachable we try to do our bit. Firstly, files can be tagged by SEN, Foundation, Higher and Advanced to encourage contributors to submit series of graded worksheets or activities. A good example is one on English Grammar – Suffixes. Secondly, we try to encourage different styles of lesson for the same topic. So that pupils that respond better to punchy Powerpoints (check out Henry Cordy-McKenna’s contributions) can be taught differently from those that respond better to practical activities (see Lisa Biddulph’s contributions).
We’re working on ways to make our resources more searchable by type of activity (visual, listening exercise, practical / kinastetic) so they can be matched to personal learning styles. If you’ve got good ideas how we could do this we’re always happy to hear from you at feedback (at) teachable.net.
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