New report sheds light on challenges of implementing personalized learning

A new study has found personalized learning is strongly supported by teachers, but often lacks an innovative environment to succeed.

For two years, Betheny Gross and Michael DeArmond at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) studied schools, districts and external organizations that received grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to implement personalized learning in their classrooms.

Two of those districts — Lake and Pinellas Counties — are in Florida.

CRPE researchers surveyed 4,508 teachers, observed classrooms in 39 schools and conducted more than 450 interviews with superintendents, principals, teachers and office staff.

The key findings of the report show teachers were leading the effort when it comes to personalized learning. Educators were experimenting with different ways to engage their students. The challenge, however, is that teachers were often left on their own to define what personalized learning means and what problems it was intended to solve.

This made it harder for consistent, schoolwide approaches to take root. It also resulted in uneven quality and confusion among some students, according to CRPE. Few schools were able to implement personalized learning strategies that other schools could easily replicate, the study shows.

Even so, researchers cautioned the work on personalized learning is just beginning. Any new initiative will face some challenges at first. However, any district making a foray into personalized learning will have to get past the initial hurdles. And one district examined in the study — Lake — didn't. It's already backing away from the initiative, in part because key district leaders saw problems in the first few years of the Gates initiative.

In conclusion, the report recommends four ways school officials can support the shift toward personalized learning:

• Create flexibility at the classroom and school levels
• Help schools understand the problems that need to be solved and what needs to change to address them
• Identify which schools should innovate and which should adopt and adapt existing innovative policies
• Build support for adult learning and knowledge management strategies for innovation.

In short, right now, school districts aren't set up to innovate. If they want to better tailor instruction to every student, that needs to change. Tellingly, one school in Florida that's seen a smoother foray into personalized learning is Pk Yonge Developmental Research School — an institution built with innovation in mind.