The Future of K-12 Personalized Learning: A Whole-Child Approach

Educators everywhere are looking to personalize learning to ensure every student has the opportunity to learn in a way that’s right for them. But what does personalized learning look like for teachers, students, and in the classroom, school, or district?  

This blog offers comprehensive insights into what personalized learning is, how it works within a personalized education framework, and best practices to implement effective, tailored experiences for students.

What is Personalized Learning?

Personalized learning addresses the need for every student to learn in a way that’s right for them. It provides an educational strategy, mindset, and approach to education that sets each student on a customized path to realizing themselves as learners and contributors based on their strengths, challenges, skills, and passions.  

Personalized learning is the result of tailoring curriculum and instruction to meet each student’s individual needs. This approach is generally limited to classroom activities and differentiation is spearheaded by the classroom teacher.​ The process of personalized learning involves teachers adjusting lesson plans based on available knowledge of their students. And, given resources and bandwidth, differentiation is usually addressed with small group learning leading to assessments.​ 

Classroom structures and practices based on the principles of personalized learning meet students where they are and intentionally move them forward by offering choices, building confidence, and providing customized learning opportunities. To incorporate personalized learning into schools effectively, they must be able to observe, categorize, and measure how educators and students are personalizing learning and, ultimately, what’s working and what’s not. 

The act of personalized learning is accomplished within the framework of personalized education, which brings together the people, tools, and student data needed to tailor teaching to customize a student’s individual learning.

What is the Difference Between Personalized Learning and Differentiated Learning?

There is no shortage of instructional approaches and pedagogies for educators to apply in the classroom. In fact, with such an abundance of different ways to impact the learning experience—especially in the age of digital learning—it’s easy to get confused.

People often use the terms differentiated learning and personalized learning synonymously, when in reality, they have a number of differences. At a high level: 

• Differentiated learning is a step in the direction away from the “one-size-fits-all“ approach to teaching and considers the content, process, product, and learning environment. This approach takes the needs of students into account—whether that’s looking at what content is best suited for their learning needs, how they best process information, or what product will be the best demonstration of their understanding. 
• Personalized learning provides the most student autonomy. Students have an active role in designing lessons and projects that are meaningful and relevant to them based on their interests, aspirations, and passions.

Personalized Education Takes Personalized Learning a Step Further

A simple way to understand the difference between personalized learning and personalized education is that personalized learning takes place within a classroom, spearheaded by a teacher, and based on a smaller set of student information. Personalized education expands beyond the classroom, involves administrators, educators, and families who tailor educational experiences with multiple data points to personalize the student’s learning experience.  

Also, personalized education is the result of personalized learning. The former can’t happen without the latter. Personalized learning—when students learn in a way that’s right for them—is the result of the more comprehensive, tangible structure of personalized education.  

Within personalized education is an understanding that to truly differentiate or tailor instruction, educators need access to all the data that goes into making the best-informed teaching decisions. Personalized education ensures everyone involved has access to the right resources, data, and tools.​ Otherwise, it puts the burden on the classroom teacher who generally only has access to some of the most critical student information that makes up the whole child.

5 Key Components of Personalized Learning

Teachers personalize learning for students, while also helping students personalize their own learning. Five key components of personalized learning include: 

1. Flexibility—Students need the ability to learn on their own terms—anytime and anywhere. It’s about the “how, when, and where they learn.” 
2. Empowering—Students have the freedom to make choices and be active in the learning process (and, by extension, to have an impact on others’ learning interactions). 
3. Tailored—Students’ personal needs are matched with specific content and instruction by considering “each student’s strengths, needs, and interests” to customize learning opportunities. 
4. Mastery-based—Students are evaluated on proficiency in key subject areas (against defined standards) as a better way to understand where students are excelling, making progress, or struggling. 
5. Learner Agency— When students have a sense of agency, or the degree of control and autonomy in their learning process, they are typically more motivated, engaged, and invested in their education.

Examples and Best Practices of Personalized Learning

Personalized Learning Keeps It Flexible 

• Flexible pacing—One way to incorporate flexible pacing into your personalized learning environment is by providing various ways for students to access and process information in a place that makes sense for them, according to the Aurora Institute. That might be a video that can be rewatched or paused, a set of online activities that allow students to move as quickly or slowly as needed, or reading selections that students can process at their own speed. 
• Anywhere, anytime learning—Technology allows students to access, practice, and produce anywhere, anytime, and on their own terms. This type of blended learning works best within your learning management system (LMS), which can be used to assign, assess, and collaborate in and out of school, no matter the types of devices your students are using or where they are learning.

Empower Students with Personalized Choice and Voice 

• Student agency—Centers, flipped learning, and playlists all promote and support student autonomy. Structures that offer students choice and exercise their voice build student agency. Students choose which and as many resources as they need to gain knowledge and understanding. In some cases, they suggest or provide their own plan for understanding concepts. 
• Deeper learning and problem solving—Project-based learning and group work challenge students to understand the task, identify and assign roles, and maintain momentum as they produce evidence of authentic learning. 
• Performance-based assessments—Performance-based assessments go beyond traditional methods of assessing students, as they involve students demonstrating knowledge, understanding, and proficiency in an authentic way—and in a way that encourages students to choose how they will accomplish a task. Performance tasks are open-ended and there can be different responses to the task that still meet success criteria. These tasks are also open in terms of process (i.e., there is typically not a single way of accomplishing the task). Since feedback is a key component in personalizing learning, it’s crucial to help students understand how and why they earned the score they received. This way, they are empowered with an understanding of what they need to focus on.

Tailor Instruction to Individual Students 

• Differentiated instruction—To effectively differentiate instruction, consider the content, process, product, and learning environment. How you present the content to students, how they interact with the content, and how they produce evidence of their learning is wide open. 
• Individual student profiles—Individual student profiles are tools for customizing learning and addressing learning loss. Student profiles capture information about the performance history and personal interests of each student. That information can be used to develop and plan personal learning pathways that include the support and services each student needs to master content at their own pace.

Personalized Learning Focuses on Mastery 

• On-demand and immediate instructional interventions and support for each student— Assessing and addressing student progress as learning is happening helps inform the appropriate next steps for each student. 
• Frequent feedback from both instructors and peers—Feedback comes in many forms and helps students stay on track. Classroom practices including providing structures that build in peer feedback—like student commenting on the LMS and peer rubrics or one-on-one conferences — keep students informed of their progress, so they have a better idea of their learning process. 
• Standards-based knowledge and skills—Standards-based instruction and grading help take the guesswork out of what the curriculum will cover and how student progress will be measured. Providing the standards for a lesson or unit ahead of time—and in student-friendly language—helps the students understand what they are learning and how to begin engaging with the content.

Moving from Personalized Learning to Personalized Education 

Personalized learning has traditionally been focused on classroom learning: individualizing instruction within a classroom setting. But to truly differentiate a student’s educational journey, personalized education provides the tools to access all critical data to see the whole child. With an individual student’s complete information—including grades, test scores, attendance history, behavior, extracurricular activities and performance, and external factors—educators can make the most informed decisions to tailor instruction and support for that student.  

Personalized education requires integrated edtech systems that provide access to deeper insights to see all of these data points together in one simple view. At the same time, educators need adequate training and support for personalized instruction in place.   

An effective personalized education foundation includes an integrated education technology ecosystem and a community of informed, dedicated people working to ensure students feel connected to their learning experiences.​ That foundation includes: 

• A full set of PK-12 capabilities needed to guide students throughout their learning journey, enabling educators and parents to fully engage and make an impact at every step 
• Connected technology to create a comprehensive understanding of the individual student that allows for tailored learning experiences in the classroom and beyond 
• Student-first approach bringing best-in-class edtech to students, along with their families, teachers, and administrators

How PowerSchool Supports Personalized Education for the Whole Child

Today, we know more than ever about students. Schools and districts collect data on academic performance, attendance, behavior, extracurricular activities, and information on external conditions. Together, we can see the whole child.  

As a leading provider of cloud-based K-12 software, PowerSchool is uniquely qualified to help schools and districts deliver successful personalized education experiences. We provide the tools and information so that classroom teachers, administrators, principals, and counselors can easily access critical student data tailored to their role. The key is having a comprehensive and systematic view of the whole child and putting it all on one screen so educators can focus more of their valuable time and energy on what students need. 

PowerSchool understands K-12 education and supports educators’ need for customizable, connected solutions that help them drive student outcomes. Only PowerSchool has the tools that provide the comprehensive data teachers need for a complete view of the student that informs personalized learning.  

We are committed to: 

• Supporting every part of the learning journey with a breadth of educational and operational tools that impact every student’s experience 
• Connecting information across the educational ecosystem—from the central office to the classroom to the home—to enable educators to understand the unique needs of each student 
• Bringing the people and the best of K-12 technology together to make it easier to achieve our shared goal of delivering a learning experience designed specifically for each student​ 

PowerSchool’s Personalized Learning Cloud offers a comprehensive set of assessment, curriculum and learning management, and instructional content that enables your teachers to create customized learning experiences for every student. With one integrated set of tools and functionality, educators can better support outcomes by connecting curriculum, student performance data, and instructional delivery in one central location.