Personalized Learning: What Does the Research Say? (Benjamin Herold)
Benjamin Herold is a staff writer for Education Week. He covers education technology and writes for the Digital Education blog. This post appeared October 18, 2016
The K-12 sector is investing heavily in technology as a means of providing students with a more customized educational experience.
So far, though, the research evidence behind “personalized learning” remains thin.
The U.S. Department of Education has given half a billion dollars to districts that embrace the trend, with limited findings to date. Since 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $300 million to support research and development around personalized learning, but officials there say it’s still “early days” for the field. School and district leaders have helped turn personalized learning into a multimillion-dollar market, but evaluations of their efforts remain scattered. (The Gates Foundation helps support Education Week‘s coverage of personalized learning.)
One big problem: proponents have struggled to define personalized learning, let alone demonstrate its effectiveness. The purpose, tools, and instructional techniques that make up the notion vary considerably, depending who you ask.
While a fair amount of research exists on specific personalization strategies, such as the use of adaptive math software, the literature includes very little on personalized learning as a comprehensive approach.
There are some bright spots. Researchers have found promising early signs at some schools, and some software programs have been associated with significant improvements in student learning and engagement.
But so far, at least, such encouraging results are often highly dependent on local context and how well a particular approach was implemented. That makes it hard to draw sweeping conclusions.
For skeptics, those dynamics reflect a larger problem. Given the unclear findings around personalization via technology, critics argue, schools would be much Personalized Learning: What Does the Research Say? (Benjamin Herold) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:
