Reflections on some aspects of ‘Personalisation’
The reading on personalisation has been interesting as it made me consider the concept from more angles. ‘Personalisation and choice’ is a phrase I often hear in the context of my work as it is a key principle of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), which the ‘national courses’ I work with are based on. I think Bulger (2016) captured my understanding of personalisation, from a work perspective, in the expression of a student-centred classroom. My role at work is related to assessment of the national courses rather than delivery, therefore I am not often involved in the broader pedagogy around how personalised or student-centred delivery translates into classroom activity. However, in the early days of implementation of new national courses there was interesting questions for us as an awarding body when considering national assessments covering potentially student-centred or classroom specific learning!
In allowing personalisation of content the focus for assessment aligns more easily with skills required to complete a task, if for example competency in a practical activity is being assessed such as a dance routine or the creation of a piece of woodwork. For courses with more knowledge-based content it becomes more challenging, especially where students have explored different contexts within a broad content area. Over time as CfE based national courses were reviewed additional content guidance was given to centres which allowed far greater ease of standardised testing.
I can see echoes of the desire to allow expressions of choice in relation to content personalisation in Edtech. This however made me wonder how performance is monitored where free expression of content choice is allowed. Are more inbuilt tests created at the outset for students taking different learning paths? Does student agency really empower the learner to choose their path, or do all paths lead the student back to where the learning platform was designed to end up, so all students end up with the same skill or knowledge level? Or as (Tsai et al. 2020) suggest does edtech allow personalisation which allows the student to reach their potential rather than merely reach the same level as their peers?
Consideration also needs to be given to the student being the centre of their own learning. Does this cause problems for students who are not mature enough to navigate their ways through the learning steps and keep their learning on track? Are the learning platforms designed to be engaging enough to counter act a dip in motivation?
Setting aside the idea of the student-centred learning aspect of personalisation but still considering the classroom setting. One of the key benefits often highlighted by Edtech companies is the ability of learning platform to give much more detailed feedback on performance to teachers, and students/parents. The impact of increased use of edtech could result in teachers being required to undertake additional training and/or spend more time understanding, and best using, the data they are presented with. As alluded to by Tasi et al (2020) there are already concerns about heavy teacher workloads. One of the recommendations put forward by OECD recognises the growing need for time specifically for administrative classroom duties for:
‘curriculum planning, for monitoring of student achievement and in support of moderation of assessment outcomes’. (OECD, 2020, p:13)
Would this potentially alleviate the situation? Perhaps more importantly would it take away from the role of the teacher in the classroom to be more of a tutor with the ‘teaching’ being assigned to Edtech?
Bulger, M (2016), Personalised Learning: The Conversations We’re Not Having. Data & Society working paper. Personalized Learning: The Conversations We’re Not Having (datasociety.net)
OECD (2021), Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence: Into the Future, Implementing Education Policies, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/bf624417-en.
Yi-Shan Tsai, Carlo Perrotta & Dragan Gaševic (2020), Empowering learners with personalised learning approaches? Agency, equity and transparency in the context of learning analytics, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 45:4, 554-567, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2019.1676396
There are some great reflections here on how personalisation might actually play out in practice prompted by the readings and your own experience.
Your comment about aligning assessment more easily with practical skills than with “knowledge-based content” is really interesting for surfacing the knowledge/skills debate. Wheelahan et. al. (2022) contend that a “skills discourse” or “skills fetish” underpins education and attaches importance to acquiring the “right sort of skills” for a productive society and for increasing individuals’ life chances in a competitive market. The skills discourse regards skills as discrete, disembodied, quantifiable and separated from the context in which they are acquired – useful for thinking about how personalized learning systems might (or might not) reproduce certain visions of knowledge, learners and education.
Biesta contends that the language of education can be problematic and that it is more helpful to consider what being knowledgeable or skilful means. He argues that this calls for moving away from thinking about what society wants for/of education, to what education might require of society!
Wheelahan, L., Moodie, G., & Doughney, J. (2022) Challenging the skills fetish, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43:3, 475-494, https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2022.2045186
Selwyn, N. (2022) Approaching education from the inside out – an interview with Gert Biesta Approaching education from the inside out (an interview with Gert Biesta) – Critical Studies of EDUCATION & TECHNOLOGY (criticaledtech.com)
Not ignoring this comment, but think it was perhaps a repeat comment from previous. 🙂
There are some great reflections here on how personalisation might actually play out in practice prompted by the readings and your own experience.
Your comment about aligning assessment more easily with practical skills than with “knowledge-based content” is really interesting for surfacing the knowledge/skills debate. Wheelahan et. al. (2022) contend that a “skills discourse” or “skills fetish” underpins education and attaches importance to acquiring the “right sort of skills” for a productive society and for increasing individuals’ life chances in a competitive market. The skills discourse regards skills as discrete, disembodied, quantifiable and separated from the context in which they are acquired – useful for thinking about how personalized learning systems might (or might not) reproduce certain visions of knowledge, learners and education.
Biesta contends that the language of education can be problematic and that it is more helpful to consider what being knowledgeable or skilful means. He argues that this calls for moving away from thinking about what society wants for/of education, to what education might require of society!
Wheelahan, L., Moodie, G., & Doughney, J. (2022) Challenging the skills fetish, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 43:3, 475-494, https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2022.2045186
Selwyn, N. (2022) Approaching education from the inside out – an interview with Gert Biesta Approaching education from the inside out (an interview with Gert Biesta) – Critical Studies of EDUCATION & TECHNOLOGY (criticaledtech.com)
Hi Cathy, thanks for sharing the info on Wheelahan, I haven’t come across this before and it is intriguing to hear importance of ‘the right skills’ being discussed as this is very much a feature of curriculum development, particularly just now as Louise Heyward is consulting on the future needs of Scottish educations qualifications and curriculum. The focus often seems to be on what society needs and future proofing skills (which I agree with to an extent) however I also have sympathies for ensuring the focus is on the learner and the learners needs. Getting the balance right between knowledge and skillset provision right for each individual seems an impossible task sometimes but we know that can and does happen at time in classrooms (and online). The question for me has been around how data translates all that goes on in that process into a tech product that can deliver the same?!