Pedagogy

Personalized Learning Can’t Trump Content & Pedagogy

The problem I’m seeing with personalized learning (overall and especially as it pertains to math instruction) is the common understandings about what it is, what it can look like, what it shouldn’t look like, and how it works as related to our own learning experiences are fragile at best.

Many school systems, including my own, are looking at personalized learning as a means to improve math instruction, raise math test scores, and increase student engagement. These goals are great and many systems have them in some form or another. However, when personalized learning forces teachers into using sweeping generalized practices that often trump solid content pedagogy, something is drastically wrong.

I don’t think this is necessarily the fault of personalized learning as a concept,  but I do think it is problematic when common understandings become compromised.  These compromised understandings lead to sweeping generalized practices like:

  1. No whole group instruction – ever
  2. Students should be on a self-paced computer program for personalized learning
  3. Teachers have to create new groups of students every day/week to make sure learning is personalized
  4. Teachers should do project based learning several times per unit to engage learners
  5. Teachers need to use choice boards for every standard they teach.

This is not a definitive list – just what I’ve heard from within my own district over the last few years.

I may not have a response to each of these, but I can point out a few sources in addition to my thoughts:

  1.  No whole group instruction – ever – Dan Meyer’s post: http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2014/dont-personalize-learning/  my favorite idea from this is from Mike Caufield: “if there is one thing that almost all disciplines benefit from, it’s structured discussion. It gets us out of our own head, pushes us to understand ideas better. It teaches us to talk like geologists, or mathematicians, or philosophers; over time that leads to us *thinking* like geologists, mathematicians, and philosophers. Structured discussion is how we externalize thought so that we can tinker with it, refactor it, and re-absorb it better than it was before.”

2.  Students should be on a self-paced computer program for personalized learning – Personalized learning is not something you get get from the App Store or Google Play  or from any ed tech vendor.

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 3.31.02 PM

Some other comments from Dan Meyer:  Personalized Learning Software: Fun Like Choosing Your Own Ad Experience  and from Benjamin Riley:  “Effective instruction requires understanding the varying cognitive abilities of students and finding ways to impart knowledge in light of that variation. If you want to call that “personalization,” fine, but we might just also call it “good teaching.” And good teaching can be done in classroom with students sitting in desks in rows, holding pencil and paper, or it can also be done in a classroom with students sitting in beanbags holding iPads and Chromebooks. Whatever the learning environment, the teacher should be responsible for the core delivery of instruction.”

3.  Teachers have to create new groups of students every day/week to make sure learning is personalized – I’m not sure this is the case.  If teachers really know where their students are in their mathematical progressions (lots of ways to do this – portfolios, math journals, student interviews (GloSS and IKAN from New Zealand, etc.)  These types of data are much more effective that computer testing programs because teachers are able to see and hear students’ thinking as well as their answers.  In my opinion, you can’t get more personalized than that!

4.  Teachers should do project based learning several times per unit to engage learners – anyone who has had PBL training knows that 1 per year is a good start!  PBL takes time – to plan, and plan some more (most often with other content areas).  If anyone expects more than one per year or semester initially, it’s time to have some Crucial Conversations!

5.  Teachers need to use choice boards for every standard they teach – student voice and choice does not have to be a choice board.  And really, how much of a choice do students have if we’re giving them all possible choices with no input from them?

To sum up: In order to really improve those goals of improving math instruction, increasing student engagement, and raising math test scores one thing is certain – an investment to increase teacher content and pedagogy knowledge must be at the forefront.  There is no other initiative or math program that will help districts reach these goals more effectively than this!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Change vs. What Worked in the Past

So, I’m at this Standards Setting meeting in Atlanta this week.  I’m working with people I’ve never met before.  As we settle into our assigned seats, we begin the small talk:

I introduce myself (since I seem to be one of the last ones to arrive).

Others at the table introduce themselves as well and before long we’ve found some common ground (many of us are in a coaching role) and start building a professional relationship.  I love this part of attending professional learning sessions at a state (and national) level.  “All of us are smarter than one of us.”  By day two of our work, you would think we worked at the same school.  Our conversations, while still mostly professional, are much more relaxed.

During one of our breaks, we begin talking about some of the teachers we work with who are “stuck in their ways.”  The question bouncing around (at least in my head) is “Why?”  Why are they so stuck?  As we talked at our table, the “reason” that seemed to dominate the conversation was one that many of us have heard before:

The teachers “reason” is that teaching this way has worked for the past “y” years so why should I change now?

Our conversation then takes an interesting turn.  A “what if” turn.

What if Apple thought the same way.  How would our world be different?  Would we still have iPads, iPhones, Apple TV, etc.?  It’s unlikely.  We’d probably have something that looks like this:

First Apple Computer

because what worked in the past should be good enough now, right?

What if Ford Motor Company thought the same way.  How would our driving experience be the same?  I doubt we’d have radios, or even seat belts.   Our new ride may look like this:

1910Ford-T

because what worked in the past should be good enough.

What if we wanted cataract surgery?  How would that look, if the surgeons of today had the same attitude about what works best?  Did you know that cataract surgery goes back to ancient Egypt?  Would you rather have Lasik or have a surgeon come at you with one of these?

Ancient Eye Surgery

If the only thing keeping you from changing is because it’s the way you’ve always done it, then it can’t be the best.  We’ve been growing and changing the way we do things because we are always searching for the most efficient way, or the more cost-effective way, or the safer way, or the way that will improve our lives.  Have we done that for students.  Is the way you’re teaching mathematics what’s best for your students?  Is your pedagogy guided by what’s proven through research or just what you’ve done for years?

Our conversation ended abruptly because we had to get back to work on standards, but as I met and reconnected with others at the workshop, this same conversation came up multiple times.  My thoughts on this are below, but I hope others chime in here with their own thoughts on this.

Steven Leinwand wrote something several years ago that I think relates well to this.  What he wrote was (and I’m totally butchering this, I’m sure) that we shouldn’t expect more than 10% growth/change per teacher per year.  On the flip side of that, he also said that teachers should strive for more than 10% growth/change per year.

This is something I’ve really tried to work on in my coaching role with teachers.  When learning something that seems daunting to a new or veteran teacher (moving toward a standards-based, student-centered approach to teaching mathematics for example), I suggest teachers choose one thing, one piece of what we’ve discussed that they think they can become really good at over several months, rather than trying to make everything fit at once.

Letting teachers know they are not expected to become experts all at once is great, but following through is even more important.  Without constructive feedback, teachers will likely fall back to their comfortable habits.  Just like teachers need to really listen to students, coaches need to listen to teachers.  We need to model what we expect.

If we don’t, we may end up with this 20 years from now: