Learning Personalized: The Evolution of the Contemporary Classroom

by Allison Zmuda, Diane Ullman

A real-world action plan for educators to create personalized learning experiences Learning The Evolution of the Contemporary Classroom provides teachers, administrators, and educational leaders with a clear and practical guide to personalized learning. Written by respected teachers and leading educational consultants Allison Zmuda, Greg Curtis, and Diane Ullman, this comprehensive resource explores what personalized learning looks like, how it changes the roles and responsibilities of every stakeholder, and why it inspires innovation. The authors explain that, in order to create highly effective personalized learning experiences, a new instructional design is required that is based loosely on the traditional model of learning by doing.Learning Personalized challenges educators to rethink the fundamental principles of schooling that honors students' natural willingness to play, problem solve, fail, re-imagine, and share. This groundbreaking the elements of personalized learning and offers a framework to achieve it Provides a roadmap for enrolling relevant stakeholders to create a personalized learning vision and reimagine new roles and responsibilities Addresses needs and provides guidance specific to the job descriptions of various types of educators, administrators, and other staff This invaluable educational resource explores a simple framework for personalized co-creation, feedback, sharing, and learning that is as powerful for a teacher to re-examine classroom practice as it is for a curriculum director to reexamine the structure of courses.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 10, 2015

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very useful resource, I don't know that it's transformed my teaching as much as provided reinforcement for what I already believe to be important, and, more important, what I believe to be dull, conservative and inauthentic pedagogically. The book nicely balances theory with real life classroom examples, explaining not only the philosophy behind personalized learning but also what this actually looks like in the classroom for teachers, students, administrators and other stakeholders. In that way, it should be required reading for all modern educators who know instinctively that something is wrong with lockstep one-size-fits-all lessons and assessments without really knowing what a viable alternative would be.

I have a few little nitpicky issues. Sometimes the authors seem to conflate online technology and personalization, ignoring many alternatives that could involve tactile or experiential learning that take place without screen-gazing. Also, the authors seem to believe that resistance to progressive models of education arises only from uncertainty. Certainly that's the case much of the time, but sometimes specific stakeholders are just top-down authoritarians, conservatives, or contrarians. Finally, although the authors wisely propose that institutional change involves restructuring through personal learning committees, administrators need to be mindful of how these committees might be perceived as one more thing piled onto teachers' plates by the institution's "meeting culture". If that happens, there will be resentment rather than buy in, which sabotages the whole process. Maybe this is obvious, but it should still be stated. Personalized learning is what needs to happen in schools, but increased instrumentalism is not.

Still, this book is a rallying cry for teachers and students trapped in a lockstep system of unengaging lessons and assessments because "we all need to be on the same page". I'd recommend that any teacher remotely curious about how to make learning more interesting and lessons less...well, boring give this a read. I'm probably an example of the choir being preached to when it comes to this topic, but teachers with a different stance might do well to have their values challenged or to arrive at a compromise position that informs some of what they do without radically reinventing it. Any step away from standardization is a net positive.

[amyextradot · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had it all--research-based reasoning for why the shift in making learning personalized for all students makes sense, lots of support from the ed-gurus, and finally (what I think was the best part) there are multiple concrete examples that teachers can start using right away. Great read!

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great tool for educators as it provides actual scenarios and templates to enhance student motivation and learning by making the classroom more student oriented rather than teacher directed.

[Melody · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed George Couros' The Innovator's Mindset (another book that a group of educators at my school read). This book had great ideas for personalizing learning in the classroom, but I found it to be really overwhelming. Basically, everything in this book with personalized learning is what I feel like would happen in an ideal situation in a school where teachers have complete freedom to design instruction as they see fit. And maybe we are headed that way, but we are a long way from that. So while I found there to be some encouraging ideas for starting to integrate more personalized learning in my classroom, I also found the overall big picture to be overwhelming and not quite realistic for where my district (and where I think a lot of U.S. public school districts are). We can certainly begin advocating for change, but there is a lot to be done to completely overhaul the way we think about education and personalized learning.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive text that delves deeply into the tenets of personalized learning for K-12 students. All of the figures and tables do slow down one's flow while reading. However, the importance of the ideas shared here make it worth your time.