Personalized Learning
We looked at continuous learning in the previous blog, but the question now is does the learning need to be standardized for all?
It has been noticed that the bell rings to signify that the class has ended, but there are students who still are ambiguous and have questions, while there are students who’ve understood it all presumably because they already knew about the topic being taught.
In a world of 7 billion-plus people, everybody has a different pace and different styles of learning. Every person has different kinds of mindset, strengths, and abilities. This means that having a standardized learning pattern might not benefit to the optimal level. This is usually related to the area of K-12 education where standardized learning is still widely implemented especially in countries like India.
This brings us to the need for introducing personalized learning programs that can benefit people with different learning abilities.
Personalized learning is a type of customized learning program developed for people according to their grasping power and ways of imbibing the knowledge being imparted. The curriculum is made in such a way that takes into consideration the needs and abilities of each individual student. Schools implementing personalized learning programs have different techniques and paces of teaching. Although, the ultimate aim and academic criteria remain the same, which is to train the students to a certain level of mastery by the end of the year or grade.
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There are various benefits of implementing personalized learning and some are really worth it. Introducing and continuing with such customized learning can nurture students with different abilities in a much more efficient and effective way which probably is not happening in the current scenario.
One major contributor to personalized learning would be the teachers and instructors. It is the responsibility of the teachers to be creative, adaptive, understanding, and agile to handle all kinds of students. Students see teachers as their role models (at least in the primary standards) and therefore the teacher’s attitude matters the most by being equal and fair to all students. Students with low pace should not feel demotivated by the fast-paced ones. It is the teachers' duty to inculcate a sense of empathy in each student along with teaching the attribute of unity.
There can be excellent outcomes if personalized learning is correctly applied by schools. This positive outcome can be both on an individual and societal level. The individual will get the appropriate learning in the most efficient way, while the society will benefit by creating an educational system with different learning styles aiming for the same goal of unity, kindness, and happiness.
Training teachers to impart personalized learning is one way of creating a learning environment. In addition to this, there are some more like using the ED-Tech resources available in this growing digital world. Today with the help of technology, everything is possible and it's best to utilize it to the optimal. For instance, games made on math, quizzes on sciences, and social sciences can contribute to enhancing students learning. Letting students choose their way of learning and not enforcing certain predetermined ways can also be helpful for students. Making classrooms flexible is another way of inculcating personalized learning. Sitting in a class all the time and teaching is good but it can be changed according to the topic being taught. A topic related to nature can be taught by actually taking the students to the open area and experiencing nature. Similarly, changing some standardized rules like teaching or giving a lecture in the classroom and allotting homework related to the topic taught can be reversed by letting students learn the topic at home through recorded video lectures and other resources and then solving questions and doubts in the classroom. This allows the students to learn about a particular topic at their own pace by pausing and rewinding the video wherever they feel so. Likewise, many such kinds of techniques can be followed to bring in personalized learning.
These were some ways of inculcating personalized learning, while there might be many more and many more that can be created. With this, it can be said that though the prevalence of personalized learning is not seen much currently, it is definitely recommended for schools to adopt this way of imparting education to reap its benefits and give the best results to society.
Great post again Simran! You are so right, every child is different and needs a personalised approach suited to that child's interests, passions, and pace. One-size-fits-all approach holds back some children and unduly stretch others. That's a procrustean approach – forced uniformity and conformity, with no room for individualisation. The challenge in the Indian education system for implementing personalised education is how to scale it. We know how to do it in small artisanal gurukul-style schools, where the teacher knows each student's interests, passions, and limitations. But most schools have a huge student-teacher ratio. Often over a hundred students to a teacher. In this situation, and with the pressures of meeting exam deadlines and syllabus completion, personalised education takes a back seat. Any ideas of how to scale up personalised education? How to implement it in a 5,000 student school, with a 100:1 student teacher ratio? There are some tech solutions beginning to emerge where personalised individual attention and customisation can be scaled up. But I have not yet seen a real-world implementation of it.