Building Community
Jury is still out on personalized learning approaches
NGLC Team
Next Generation Learning Challenges
in USA
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When educators design and create new schools, and live next gen learning themselves, they take the lead in growing next gen learning across the nation. Other educators don’t simply follow and adopt; next gen learning depends on personal and community agency—the will to own the change, fueled by the desire to learn from and with others. Networks and policy play important roles in enabling grassroots approaches to change.
This February 15, 2018 article in EdSource looks to the research study of 40 NGLC schools which was conducted by RAND in 2015. The article centers on the researchers' findings that although some gains in math and ELA outcomes were found for the group of schools, adopting a personalized approach to teaching and learning is challenging, time-consuming, and involves a steep learning curve for everyone involved. The author concludes with recommendations that RAND compiled in their report that will support teachers and administrators who are trying to implement personalized learning.
“A lot of school administrators said, ‘I didn’t think it would be this way. I didn’t expect it to be quite so hard… We thought we would do this, but I can see it’s more complex and nuanced than we initially appreciated,’” Steiner said.
RAND found NGLC students scored about 3 percentage points higher in math compared to a group of students who did not attend NGLC schools, but were similar in gender, grade levels, starting test scores and geographic locations. And although researchers found higher scores in reading, the trend was not considered statistically significant.
The need to provide support for teachers and school leaders came up often, Steiner said. Teachers said it took a lot of time to create individualized lessons for each student and to offer them choices.
In addition, teachers wanted more time to collaborate with each other, especially if they were teaching interdisciplinary lessons across grade levels.
NGLC Team
Next Generation Learning Challenges
A dedicated team moving the mission of NGLC forward, helping to bring next gen learning to today’s students.
