How Voice Empowers Personalized Learning

Through field-based experiences, the authors have identified four attributes for building a supportive culture inside schools

School communities are reimagining policies, practices and technologies to personalize student learning in the here and now of the classroom as well as anticipating the uncertainties of the future.

Schools often adopt technologies that require students to navigate instruction through a series of topics independently and that communicate how students are growing in relation to desired outcomes.

However, technology needs to be disentangled from personalized learning to adapt to a culture that is personal and relational. A noticeable shift unfolds in a school’s personalized learning culture when every teacher’s voice is respected and given weight. Teachers can harvest the seeds of their ideas, imaginings and innovations, and effective thinking and problem solving flourishes.

Our field-based experiences with hundreds of schools around the world helped us generate four key attributes that help educators build a personalized culture. These attributes, in conjunction with a clear definition for personalized learning, provide a guiding framework to help us know how to design and measure learning in that culture.