Dive into Personalized Learning: A Call for Proposals is a Call to Action
By: Stephanee Stephens
Tags: Online Learning, Research, K12 Education, Blended Learning, Personalized Learning

Hey there, it’s me again! Your friendly neighborhood advocate of learning that is personalized! It’s been a while since I’ve given an update on my work to champion personalized learning(see: personalised for my pals across the pond) in P-20, and there’s not better time than the present…especially when the present falls poolside in the summer! So let’s dive in…

Photo by Taylor Simpson on Unsplash

The last 18 months, I have been working with Dr. Anissa Vega in an epic Yin/Yang partnership to approach the shifting paradigm of personalized learning. While I bring my personal K-12 practitioner’s and administrator perspective to the work, she adds the incredibly valuable researcher’s eye and online learning expertise. Together, we represent a unique and important cohesion of P-20 perspectives, expertise, and energy that is critically needed to improve, advance, and scale what learning and teaching. We have championed a State of Georgia endorsement in Personalized Learning with the Professional Standards Commission, have co-designed and co-taught graduate-level courses in personalized learning, and continue to find ways to collaborate and stretch our own understandings.

As institutions of learning continue to iterate their pedagogical designs to respond to the personalized paradigm which is emerging, we are forced to break down the assumptions and barriers between practitioner and researcher to best meet individual learner needs, skills, and interests. With the best intentions, schools have normalized practices which they believe ‘close achievement gaps’, in many cases without strong ties to research. Educators are expected to expand their pedagogical repertoire frequently to meet the needs of an abundantly diverse learner population. In their search for ‘what works’, often educators are lured in by the promise of a technology powered panacea, without understanding the role that technology can and should play. It has become common to hear educators use the terms ‘blended learning’ ‘technology integration’ and ‘personalized learning’ interchangeably. This is normal in an emerging paradigm, but we also know that we can do better if we know more.

It is often difficult to find ‘comprehensible and applicable’ research as a practitioner/educator that can be actualized quickly in a classroom. There is a general belief from those who teach in K-12 schools that research is stale, as researchers are often working in silos without a direct line into classrooms and schools. This perpetuates a (real or perceived) disconnect between theory, research, and practice. All of the potential benefits from collaboration would compound benefits to our learners, but in this emerging field, very little empirical and theoretical research is available.Anissa and I are committed to not just recognizing barriers, but to work towards overcoming them, and our next step forward to promote the study and practice of personalized learning is to co-edit a special edition of the Journal for Online Learning Research.