September 1999 | Volume 57 | Number 1

Personalized Learning

The Students Are Watching

Marge Scherer

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No Two Are Quite Alike

Theodore R. Sizer

Recognizing that we cannot teach students well if we do not know them well, leading educator Ted Sizer discusses how personalized learning requires profound shifts in our thinking about education and schooling. In secondary schools, students and educators are confined by a rigid system that, ironically, was originally designed to maximize learning options. But the reality is that practices from age-based grading to standardized assessment are predicated on the assumption that students should be treated alike. Sizer argues for schools that offer realistic student loads, adequate time for educators to get to know students, and the authority for teachers to act on their knowledge of individual learners. Simple school programs allow flexible, complex learning.

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Mapping a Route Toward Differentiated Instruction

Carol Ann Tomlinson

Differentiated classroom curriculum and instruction can help schools fulfill the twin goals of equity and excellence, but only if teachers begin with a solid understanding of what students should learn as well as how they can learn it. In other words, teachers have to be sure that they have solid curriculum and instruction in place before they differentiate them.

The author examines the classroom practices of three teachers with different teaching styles to illustrate their impact on student engagement and student understanding. In one classroom, the teacher lectures and students take notes. There's nothing much to make learning appealing, and it is doubtful that much real student understanding occurs. The goal seems to be memorizing data. In the second classroom, the teacher engages students by providing a choice of activities and building a comfortable environment, but does not tie together the ideas and information that students encounter. Activities are more about being happy than about making meaning. A clear sense of what students should understand as a result of their study is missing.

The third teacher has planned her year around a few key concepts, developed generalizations that govern how the concepts work, established facts and skills that are essential for students to learn, and developed essential questions to cause students to engage with her in a quest for understanding. She addresses student differences in interest levels, learning readiness, and learning profiles. Because she knows where her students are and where they should end up, she can differentiate her instructional practices.

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Why Students Lose When "Tougher Standards" Win: A Conversation with Alfie Kohn

John O'Neil and Carol Tell

Author and educator Alfie Kohn describes how the "Tougher Standards" movement is incompatible with personalized learning. In particular, narrow, norm-referenced standards that list specific skills that students need to know ignore individual differences—especially when these standards apply to elementary grades. The best teachers, Kohn suggests, understand that students must be involved in creating their own projects and learning experiences. Unfortunately, and contrary to what many commentators say, most classrooms are still "stultifyingly traditional," with students having very little input into what or how they are taught. But to become lifelong learners and engaged citizens, students need the freedom to make decisions about their academic lives.

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Whole-School Personalization, One Student at a Time

Dennis Littky and Farrell Allen

Reorganizing learning to start with the student, not the subject matter, helps educators fulfill each student's promise. With funding levels comparable to other public schools, The Met School in Rhode Island takes the philosophy of "one student at a time" to a new level. At the Met, each teacher is responsible for the total educational experience of 13 students. School families and internship advisors are also an integral part of each student's learning team. And beyond developing powerful, close-knit relationships for each student, the school tailors a specialized curriculum for each student. The Met School is serving as a model for personalized learning, learning in which students develop their passions and interests instead of competing with one another on one set of goals.

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A Test Worth Taking

Claudia Geocaris and Maria Ross

Good teachers know how to vary instructional strategies to match a wide variety of learning styles in the classroom. But what about the tests that they give? In one Illinois school, teachers realized that their testing practices were out of sync with their instructional beliefs. Through research, meetings, and reflection time, they developed guidelines for creating tests that give students choices and accommodate for different learning styles and multiple intelligences. Students responded positively to the change in testing formats, and they especially appreciated the freedom of choice. Teachers, too, were able to see more clearly how and what students learned.

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Relationship-Driven Teaching

Spence Rogers and Lisa Renard

Teachers who foster positive emotions among the students in their classrooms set the stage for increased student engagement and motivation and, ultimately, for increased learning and achievement. By focusing on positive relationships and emotional needs, teachers help students want to learn and achieve, a conclusion that is supported by brain research. The authors propose a learning framework that is based on two general principles. First, teachers must understand students' needs and beliefs as they are, not as teachers think they should be. Second, teachers must shift from managing students to managing the learning context.

The learning framework has six elements for effective learning. From the students' point of view, the learning context must be physically and emotionally safe, valuable, successful, involving, caring, and enabling. When these interconnected standards are met, students' emotional needs are met, and learning can occur.

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Countering Anonymity Through Small Schools

Susan Klonsky and Michael Klonsky

To combat anonymity, Chicago has created a number of small-by-design schools supportive communities for kids where caring adults play a leading role. These learning communities focus on personalized instruction, and each has its own curricular theme. The small schools take many forms—schools-within-schools, charter schools, alternative high schools and have partnerships with universities, museums, and community development organizations. Two qualities are vital to these schools: teacher collaboration and student visibility. The authors briefly present the development of small schools in Chicago and describe four successful small schools.

One method for promoting a strong professional community among small-schools teachers is a protocol for promoting professional dialogue. Called Teacher Talk, this method brings together teachers in a school to discuss classroom environment and a specific student.

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Looping: Moving Up with the Class

Thomas S. Little and Nannette B. Dacus

Most students don't have a choice whether they will move to a new class with a new teacher at the start of each academic year. The change forces students, students, and parents to learn new names, new faces, new rules and procedures. And the stress of the new environment may negatively affect a student's learning and behavior. The faculty of Linden Elementary decided to give teachers, parents, and students the option of participating in a two-year looping program. After gently acquainting parents with the concept of looping, the faculty let parents and students of three classes Chose whether to continue the next year with the same class and teacher. Only one student in the three classes objected. By the end of the second year, participants began to see positive changes in student learning and behavior, improved parent-teacher relationships, and increased staff interest in the program.

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Academy Rewards

Denise K. Schnitzer and Michael J. Caprio

How does a comprehensive high school restructure itself to offer the academic choices of a large school with the personalized learning of a small academy? Granby High School in Norfolk, Virginia, took on this challenge. The school is now divided into four academies, 9-12, in which students and teachers stay together for all four years. Students take basic courses in their individual academies and elective courses in a centralized setting. The administration and guidance offices are decentralized, with each academy housing its own administrator and guidance counselors. Although the academy concept is still new to the school, students, teachers, staff, and parents are finding that this school-within-a-school helps personalize learning, decreases discipline problems, and increases student achievement.

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Reducing Class Size Leads to Individualized Instruction

John A. Zahorik

Wisconsin researchers have found that class-size reduction in a variety of formats is leading to increased attention to individual students. Teachers in schools participating in the Student Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program in Wisconsin are experiencing fewer disciplinary problems, greater opportunities to know students well, and more enthusiasm. Teachers of smaller classes are individualizing instruction—not content. They are continuing to use teacher-centered methods in a more personalized way. However, participating schools are not individualizing the content of the curriculum.

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The Multiple Ways of Teaching and Learning

Launa Ellison and Betty Rothenberger

The government of Bangladesh declared the 1990s the decade of "Education for All." Two teachers from the United States undertook the task, as consultants to the UNICEF/Bangladesh Education Section, of introducing to Bangladeshi officials, teacher trainers, and teachers the latest research on brain-based learning and multiple intelligences, then demonstrating the practical implications for classrooms. Their recommendations became the basis for establishing national policy. They taught local teachers about brain-based learning and multiple intelligences, proposed strategies for classroom management and self-reflection, demonstrated how to use no-cost materials to produce classroom manipulatives and games, and encouraged parental involvement.

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Partnering with Homeschoolers

Vicki Caruana

As more homeschoolers enter public schools part-time, how can educators forge meaningful alliances with home-schooling families? Although parents choose to home school their children for different reasons, ultimately they all take an active interest in their children's education. Teachers, principals, and school staff can work with them to make the transition smooth. Teachers need to be patient and accepting: home-schooled students sometimes must learn new school behaviors. But by collaborating with home-schooling families, teachers and principals can present their schools and programs positively to the community. And the students themselves have opportunities to learn from and with one another.

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How Innersense Builds Common Sense

Claudia Marshall Shelton

When students find their unique innersense, they consider what makes them different and what gives their lives significance. Such understanding ultimately improves academic achievement. In a Connecticut school's social and emotional learning program, middle school students explore the unique ways in which they experience the world and share their gifts with other people. The students participate in a three-year curriculum that involves carefully focused discussions, self- assessment tools, essays, and peer conversations. Students apply their knowledge of innersense to conflict resolution, career planning, and academic performance.

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In Search of the Roots of Adolescent Aggression

Robert Sylwester

Given recent violence in schools, educators must look to the roots of adolescent aggression to begin countering such destructive behaviors. Our brains have two response systems—one reflective, which responds to nonthreatening situations, and the other reflexive, which responds to dangerous or opportunistic situations. Children from birth through 10 develop their personal and social skills so that basic social skills become reflexive or automatic. From 10-20, students learn to be productive human beings, during which they also develop morally, sexually, and intellectually. However, adults are often less tolerant of the awkward acquisition of such skills in adolescents. Thus, teens often seek validation from peer groups that are sometimes negative and destructive.

Many attribute adolescent aggression to various factors—nature or nurture, technological glorification of violence, malfunctioning brains, chemical imbalances, and even high testosterone levels in males from 10-14. All these factor in. But as educators determine how best to respond to surmounting violence in schools, perhaps the best first step is to create an accepting climate in schools and classrooms. We can help students to understand their dual reflective/ reflexive systems and recognize each system's appropriate use.

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The First "R": Reflective Capacities

Jonathan Cohen

Promoting social-emotional literacy and learning to detect social problems early are among the most powerful tools we can use to prevent youth violence. The first "R"—reflecting on ourselves and others—is the foundation for social-emotional competencies. There is compelling evidence that first-rate social-emotional learning programs can promote the first "R," reducing violence, creating caring and responsive school communities, and, in many instances, enhancing academic achievement. Further, educators can learn to recognize early warning signs of social-emotional problems to prevent school violence.

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The Advantages of High/Scope: Helping Children Lead Successful Lives

Lawrence J. Schweinhart and David P. Weikart

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The Benefits of Direct Instruction: Affirmative Action for At-Risk Students

Siegfried Engelmann

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Alaska's Logging Camp School

Robert E. Millward

Many U.S. students attend schools with a large student body, where they must compete for resources and the attention of their teachers. But the 10 students who attend J. R. Gildersleeve Logging Camp School in Alaska benefit from their small class size and a unique curriculum that uses multi-age grouping, peer tutoring, and multi-disciplinary teaching. Their unique lifestyle frees them to explore different uses of technology in education, such as using computers to create a newspaper, and to enhance their education through a variety of extracurricular activities, such as field trips to the continental United States, theater productions, and contests.

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Web Wonders

Larry Mann

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Giving Our Students the Time of Day

John Holloway

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Reviews

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ASCD in Action

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Portfolio

Joan Montgomery Halford

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