ERIC Number: EJ1230401
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Aug
Pages: 5
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0276-928X
EISSN: N/A
Want to Personalize Learning for Students? Experience It Yourself First
Geurkink-Coats, Amy
Learning Professional, v40 n4 p50-53, 57 Aug 2019
Personalized learning for students is gaining steam across the country and pushing on traditional instructional practices. But many teachers have never experienced personalized learning themselves, making it challenging to implement it for students (Sawchuck, 2015). As personalization experts Tom Vander Ark and Karen Cator (2015) said, "If we want more students to experience powerful learning, we need to create development pathways that allow school and district leaders to benefit from the same blended, competency-based, and deeper learning experiences that they seek to create for students." Parkway School District in west St. Louis County, Missouri, sought to develop a professional learning process that follows this advice and puts educators in charge of their learning. In an annual educator needs assessment survey data, it showed a desire to include a personalized professional learning option in addition to the workshop-based professional learning structure most often used across the district. Educators wanted a flexible personalized professional learning model that ensured all educators could participate in meaningful, applicable professional learning. Administrators wanted a professional learning model that ensured application of new learning to the classroom. The district professional development committee, a representative group of educators from all levels and areas, identified four critical components that would guide the development of a new, personalized professional learning option: (1) Educators should have the opportunity to select topics to meet current needs for students, content, or pedagogy; (2) Educators should be offered incentives to participate; (3) Flexibility in the timeline and mode of learning (online/ in person, individual/group) should be a priority; and (4) Transfer of professional learning to instructional practice should be at the core of the process. This article is about the approach the district took to achieving these four components. Just as it is expected teachers to do, they learned from each experience, reflected, and transferred the learning into changed practices so that teachers and students could improve.
Descriptors: Individualized Instruction, Faculty Development, School Districts, Teacher Attitudes, Electronic Learning, Incentives, Transfer of Training, Elementary School Teachers, Secondary School Teachers
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Education; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Missouri (Saint Louis)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A