What is Personalizing Learning?

Personalizing learning is an instructional approach that empowers students to build ownership of their learning. Educators personalize learning by targeting instruction, fostering collaboration and creativity, facilitating reflection and goal-setting, and designing flexible learning experiences. Personalizing learning is an active and ongoing process. It is a student-centered approach to learning that calls on educators to be responsive to the needs of their students. When students get the instruction they need, when they need it, they are more engaged, successful, and better prepared for college and careers.

The Core Four of Personalizing Learning

The Core Four is a framework for understanding the practices, mindsets, knowledge, and priorities that best personalize learning for students. Classrooms that personalize learning shift away from teacher-directed lessons towards experiences that build every student’s ownership of their learning. Those learning experiences require educators to have a foundational understanding of social emotional learning and culturally responsive instruction. Educators who are most successful at personalizing learning embrace the beliefs that: Students are more important than content. We must prioritize students as unique individuals with their own strengths, interests, and perspectives. Caring and supportive relationships with students that honor their identities and background are foundational. You must understand and care about your students in order to personalize their learning. Equity provides a powerful reason to personalize learning for students. Empowering every student to be successful in a way that is authentic to them turns equity into a powerful purpose for personalizing learning.

www.edelements.com/hubfs/PL Core 4 White Paper Final.pdf