Summary: Readiness theory would have us predict that learning will be real and non-trival to the extent that what is being taught about and how it is taught matches the content and learning strategies already "owned" by the learner. It seems that the education profession is quite comfortable with this as a general statement; however, the useful application of this maxim in classroom situations, i.e., something that results in improved student learning, is appallingly small . Class lectures and/or reading one chapter at a time from a text, as representative examples of current practices, are not good ways to maximize student learning. In this entry I offer one basis for understanding why this is so and then I sketch several ideas for making the ideal into the real.
Moving to Personalization from Large Group Instruction is a BIG Deal:
Assume that you have the objective sequences, tests, and instructional activities for several content areas planned; that map is lying in front of you. If you are teaching in an elementary school as a classroom teacher, you may have to teach each of thirty pupils in each of these content areas. If you are a secondary or adult-level teacher working in a typical situation, you may have as many as two or three content areas to cover for perhaps ninety to one hundred and fifty students.
Let's look at the elementary classroom. In that classroom, as stated before, you might be responsible for thirty students' progress in five curriculum areas. You would probably be responsible for reading, language arts, arithmetic, social studies, and science. As is illustrated in the first table, your personalization problems would be considerable. In these five areas you could, if each student had different objectives from all of the others in that area, have responsibility for personalizing in a classroom with instruction required for 150 (5 areas x 30 students) objectives.
Thankfully, since there are usually several objectives which are needed for more than one student, the required instruction would probably come closer to a distribution like that illustrated in the table below example (where instruction is required for approximately 85 objectives as the year begins ).
In such a situation there is no way that "whole class" lectures alone
could be a useful instructional activity for each of the
students depicted below (as x’s in the table below) .
Even if your lesson was perfect
, that lesson
could only say the appropriate thing to a small fraction of
your students (those who had sufficient skill levels to be
able to learn from the concepts that you were using).
The other students might sit still, might even acquire pieces of the information here and there, but would not learn in the sense that you assumed or were hoping for.
The
Personalizer's Dilemma |
|||||||||
Reading |
Language Arts |
Arithmetic |
Social Studies |
Science |
|||||
| Obj. # | # of Students | Obj. # | # of Students | Obj. # | # of Students | Obj. # | # of Students | Obj. # | # of Students |
| 1 | --0-- |
1 | --0-- |
1 | --0-- |
1 | --0-- |
1 | --0-- |
| 2 | --0-- |
2 | --4-- |
2 | --0-- |
2 | --0-- |
2 | --0-- |
| 3 | --2-- |
3 | --1-- |
3 | --0-- |
3 | --5-- |
3 | --2-- |
| 4 | --1-- |
4 | --1-- |
4 | --0-- |
4 | --5-- |
4 | --3-- |
| 5 | --1-- |
5 | --1-- |
5 | --0-- |
5 | --3-- |
5 | --3-- |
| 6 | --1-- |
6 | --1-- |
6 | --2-- |
6 | --1-- |
6 | --1-- |
| 7 | --1-- |
7 | --0-- |
7 | --3-- |
7 | --1-- |
7 | --1-- |
| 8 | --2-- |
8 | --0-- |
8 | --1-- |
8 | --0-- |
8 | --4-- |
| 9 | --2-- |
9 | --0-- |
9 | --1-- |
9 | --1-- |
9 | --1-- |
| 10 | --3-- |
10 | --1-- |
10 | --1-- |
10 | --1-- |
10 | --1-- |
| 11 | --3-- |
11 | --1-- |
11 | --1-- |
11 | --3-- |
11 | --1-- |
| 12 | --0-- |
12 | --1-- |
12 | --1-- |
12 | --1-- |
12 | --1-- |
| 13 | --1-- |
13 | --1-- |
13 | --0-- |
13 | --1-- |
13 | --1-- |
| 14 | --1-- |
14 | --1-- |
14 | --3-- |
14 | --0-- |
14 | --0-- |
| 15 | --4-- |
15 | --1-- |
15 | --2-- |
15 | --0-- |
15 | --0-- |
| 16 | --4-- |
16 | --1-- |
16 | --1-- |
16 | --0-- |
16 | --0-- |
| 17 | --1-- |
17 | --1-- |
17 | --1-- |
17 | --1-- |
17 | --0-- |
| 18 | --0-- |
18 | --1-- |
18 | --1-- |
18 | --1-- |
18 | --0-- |
| 19 | --1-- |
19 | --1-- |
19 | --1-- |
19 | --0-- |
19 | --0-- |
| 20 | --0-- |
20 | --0-- |
20 | --1-- |
20 | --1-- |
20 | --0-- |
| 21 | --1-- |
21 | --3-- |
21 | --1-- |
21 | --1-- |
21 | --1-- |
| 22 | --0-- |
22 | --3-- |
22 | --1-- |
22 | --3-- |
22 | --1-- |
| 23 | --1-- |
23 | --3-- |
23 | --3-- |
23 | --0-- |
23 | --1-- |
| 24 | --0-- |
24 | --0-- |
24 | --3-- |
24 | --0-- |
24 | --1-- |
| 25 | --0-- |
25 | --1-- |
25 | --1-- |
25 | --0-- |
25 | --1-- |
| 26 | --0-- |
26 | --0-- |
26 | --0-- |
26 | --0-- |
26 | --1-- |
| 27 | --1-- |
27 | --2-- |
27 | --0-- |
27 | --0-- |
27 | --1-- |
| 28 | --1-- |
28 | --0-- |
28 | --0-- |
28 | --0-- |
28 | --0-- |
| 29 | --1-- |
29 | --0-- |
29 | --1-- |
29 | --0-- |
29 | --0-- |
You can probably see that this same sort of reasoning applies to any secondary or college classroom situation that you might describe. While there might be fewer subjects taught during the day, there would be more students. The likelihood of one textbook page or one lecture being appropriate for all students is virtually zero. The difficulty of managing the delivery of personalized instruction is at least as difficult for the secondary or college teacher as it is for the elementary teacher. And , if maximizing the rate of student mastery of (not exposure to) material is the goal , it is equally crucial to the success or failure of the secondary and college enterprise
Organizational Assumptions
Normally, we interact with people spontaneously, and in a 1, 2, 3, 4 at a time fashion. However, teaching and personalization are not "normal" relationships. The relationship in each is purposeful and planned. Personalization, when it occurs, requires the simultaneous distribution of a teacher's purposes, plans, and interactions among thirty people, at maximum; and at minimum (as in the reading example in Table 1), among four to six individuals or clusters of individuals.
In order to have the maximum impact upon all thirty individuals in a classroom, there has to be a radically different organization to instructional activities than there would be, say, to a conversation.
Each personalizer has many forces with which he or she must deal in order to personalize. All of those forces mandate high organization in order to accomplish individually prescribed instructional objectives. A list of these forces is given in the following table.
Personalization Factors and Necessary Organized Responses |
||
| Assumption |
Factors |
Necessary Organized Response |
| 1 |
Students enter any sequence of instructional objectives with varied mastery |
Different lessons need to be taught to different students at the same time. |
| 2 |
Students have different perceptual requirements for learning. |
Instruction on each objective must be offered using more than one perceptual modality. |
| 3 |
Students have different physical/social needs for optimal learning. |
Instruction will need to be offered in varied physical/social settings simultaneously. For example, a small group and an individual study option might both be available for Objective 26 in the science sequence. |
| 4 |
Students require distinct motivational strategies. Reinforcers for the varied subjects will vary from student to student. |
Teacher will have to arrange the instructional environment so that varying motivational strategies (e.g., points with one, grades with another, praise with another, etc.) may be used simultaneously. |
| 5 |
Students will finish the same instructional activity at different rates. |
For 5, 6, 7: The teacher will need to develop and maintain procedures which allow her/him to be sensitive to the failure or success of instruction (7). |
| 6 |
Students will require varying numbers of instructional activities in order to achieve mastery of the same objective. |
These activities will need to be usable at any time (5,6). |
| 7 |
Initial plans for motivational and instructional activities will need repair as patterns of student response show where plans need improvement . Also, even the best designs will need some modification a as the times alter what students commonly experience. |
The teacher will need to periodically revise instructional and motivational activities. |
| 8 |
The teacher will not know the answer to all problems that show themselves. |
Each instructional unit,. i.e., department, building, learning team, the school as a whole, etc., whatever else it does, will have to provide problem-solving material and support to teachers in order that best solutions to problems. |
With these factors in mind, you can see that personalization requires a high level of classroom organization. It follows that a lecture format does not allow personalization and thus is not productive in terms of student learning. Implementing a high/middle/low grouping plan will allow finer tuning of instructional delivery. Everything else held constant this will enhance average learning of objectives per week but will be far short of what is possible.
The cause of personalization will be advanced considerably by moving the teacher out of the role of a bottleneck in the flow of instructional information and organizational and operational communication (One thing about large group lecture, choral recitation and all doing the same thing—fewer decisions for the teacher . When the teacher organizes the personalized classroom s/he is building in a necessity for many more moment to moment decisions. Why? Because decisions are no longer the same for all nor do they occur at the same time. Thus the need for careful planning and organization in the personalized classroom. The bottleneck is found when every or most instructional messages and organizational decisions must be created on-the-fly by the teacher. When the bottleneck exists the classroom pace grinds down to a snails pace within moments of the beginning of class.
On the other hand, if the volume of decisions is planned for, these decisions are anticipated and thus built into the structure and processes of the classroom. Class members act independently as signaled by place, circumstance or time. Once these signals are planned and then learned and practiced, the multiple organizational and instructional decisions will be carried out independently by members of the class. During class hours the teacher spends time on planned instructional delivery and on individual learning concerns that have not been built into the carefully designed personalized learning environment.
By having much of the organizational decision-making and instructional communication capable of occurring independently of here-and-now teacher action we eliminate the bottleneck. All students will have access to the instructional communication and organizational decisions that they need. Thirsty people will get to drink when they need it, or, in ‘instructionese’, each person will get the lesson that is appropriate to her or his level of readiness.
Teaching a System as Well as Subject Matter:
Your major trick will be to set up an instructional system that eliminates the bottleneck, and to teach students to use it. In such a system, you would reserve for yourself those instructional communications and organizational decisions that could not be made by students or materials. Naturally, the fewer of these on-the-fly the less likely there will be bottlenecking.
Components of Your Organizational System
The major idea of your system is the division of the total activities of the class into subactivities which are carried out at centers. For example, the centers might be as follows:
- direct instruction/individual counseling
- tape and filmstrip,
- group study,
- reading,
- individual work,
- mastery testing,
- daily monitoring of progress in each (orspecially targeted) subjects.
Each center has its organizational rules which govern its use and which are posted for all to see in its location. This particular subdivision of classroom activities is not the only one possible. Subdivisions could be based on subject matter (e.g. science, reading, math, etc.), or topics, such as environment, creativity, etc. in which all basic skills have a part. (For example, the environment center might have required math, reading, writing, and social activities associated with its objectives.)
[Edited for html problems readability 12/1. Also having trouble with MarsEdit and Radio Userland Handshakes]
