Personalized Learning and Student Choice

"It is frankly difficult to understand how anyone can talk about school reform without immediately addressing the question of how students can be given more say about what goes on in their classes." —Alfie Kohn, "Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide"

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a moment and ask, "Why talk about school reform at all?" The old school model of "I teach, you learn" works—sort of. During the twelve years or more when students are in school, a large percentage of them manage to learn. If not everything, at least something. Most graduate and eventually get jobs.

It isn't a perfect system, but what is? Why not continue to teach our children in the same way that our parents and grandparents learned?

If this doesn't strike you as absurd, then you may be the type of learner for whom the system was designed. You might like following instructions, knowing what to expect, and having everything planned in advance for you. Perhaps you learn well from books and lectures and are very good at recalling what you have read or heard. Maybe you get high marks on standardized tests. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with learning in this way; in fact, I happen to be one of the people for whom this old-school model works pretty well. It simply isn't optimum for all people, all of the time.

There's another problem with doing things the same way we've always done them: it doesn't result in progress. To improve upon an idea, we have to be willing to try something new. Even if we acknowledge that the old model "worked" well enough to provide an adequate education for large numbers of students, no one would describe our current educational system as flawless. There's always room for improvement. No educator deserving of the title would be satisfied with "good enough," so we have to keep asking ourselves: How can we do a better job?

Here's where I agree with Alfie Kohn: one way we can do a better job is by giving students "more say about what goes on in their classes."

I'm familiar with Kohn's books (Punished By Rewards, The Case Against Standardized Testing, The Schools Our Children Deserve) and was pleased to see his article listed among the course materials for Week 4 of DLMOOC. Kohn summarizes the benefits of including students in the decision-making process, such as an improved sense of well-being, better self-discipline, greater academic achievement, avoidance of burnout (student and teacher), and democracy in action. He writes:

"There is nothing new about the idea that students should be able to participate, individually and collectively, in making decisions. This conviction has long played a role in schools designated as progressive, democratic, open, free, experimental, or alternative; in educational philosophies called developmental, constructivist, holistic, or learner-centered; in specific innovations such as whole-language learning, discovery-based science, or authentic assessment; and in the daily practice of teachers whose natural instinct is to treat children with respect."

The theme for Week 4 of the Deeper Learning MOOC has been personalized learning, student voice, and student choice—topics I have written about in several earlier posts (see, for example, Choices: Too Many, Not Enough, or Just Right? and Treating Students as Equal Partners). I'm delighted to have been introduced, through the DLMOOC, to many people who are working hard to create opportunities for students in schools to have a say in what and how they learn. The panelists for this week's discussion were inspiring.



Keven Kroehler, Executive Director for Edvisions Schools, talks about creating a "level playing field" in schools, where the contributions of students and teachers are equally valued and respected. He comments that "students think of things that teachers hadn't thought of," which reminded me of a few situations I faced last year (When Your Students Know More Than You Do, and Lessons Learned). Kevin also emphasized the importance of offering students authentic choices—the ability to make decisions about things that matter to them—rather than false choices, as in, "Which of these two preselected, mandatory activities do you want to do?" Kids know when they are being manipulated.  

Likewise, I appreciated panelist Kathleen Cushman's perspective on student voice. She talked about students being "citizens, not subjects," and described student voice as an "equity issue."She asks teachers to consider: "Whose voice gets listened to? Who gets to speak?" She recommends what I call "The Smorgasbord Approach," exposing students to a variety of things and allowing them to choose what interests them (as I describe in my post on Nurturing Interest-Based Learning). 

Panelist Brandon Wiley, Director of Asia Society's International Studies Schools Network (ISSN), talked about the importance of "recognizing students as key constituents, clients, customers," and giving them "a seat at the table," and I nodded my head in agreement. If students are the "key constituents," then it's inconceivable for them to be left out of the planning, implementation and evaluation of their work. This requires us to change how we think about everything: what students learn, how they learn it, and how they demonstrate their learning.  

I enjoyed hearing the DLMOOC panelists describe their iterative design process (similar to what I blogged about in Kindergarten-Style Planning), and it was interesting to me to see how this approach works in a school setting. Teachers collaborated not only with their students but with other teachers, parents, and members of the community. They developed a student's plan of study incrementally, continually learning and building upon what they discovered as they went along. During each stage of the project (planning, implementing, assessing), all the people with a vested interest were consulted and given opportunities to provide feedback. While this must have complicated the decision-making process, it also helped everyone make new connections, personally and cognitively.

The students who were on the "Lens into the Classroom" Student Panel for Week 4 were engaging, too.


Allowing students to have a say in how they learn is a school reform that has clearly made a big difference in the lives of these students. While this doesn't prove that all students' learning would necessarily be deepened in a High Tech High type of school, it seems likely that it would. Even the students who prefer a more traditional approach would benefit, because they could choose that method for themselves.

When my youngest daughter was fourteen, she said she wanted to attend the public high school in our town. Up until that point, she had always been homeschooled and free to choose what, when and how she learned. Why would she want to give that up? There were a variety of reasons—she wanted to see what school was like; she was interested in meeting more kids her age than she could find in the homeschooling community; she wanted to learn in a classroom setting. Ultimately, what mattered most was that she had a choice. She could return to homeschooling at any time, and she knew that was an option. That made all the difference in how she approached her education. She evaluated her own needs, assessed what the school had to offer, and figured out how to make the best use of her time there.

Giving kids choice doesn't mean deciding what that choice should be. It means we allow kids to figure out who they are and what they need to grow and thrive. A structured classroom with a teacher lecturing in the front isn't necessarily going to prevent deeper learning, but it shouldn't be the only option.