THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
PERSONALISED LEARNING
Amélie Flies
20th of April 2009
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Personalised and independent learning in the official documentation
3. The concept of “personalised leaning” in the literature
4. The learning environment; emotional needs that impede pupils to participate and achieve
a) What is a case study
b) Research and procedure
c) Analysis of the data and conclusion
d) Strengths and weaknesses of my methods
Conclusion
1. Introduction
In this assignment I will explore the term and concept of personalised learning in the government documentation and in the literature.
During my school placement, I undertook a case study and collected data in order to experiment and understand what personalised learning was. I will, in this paper, present and discuss the findings of my own research and how it helped improve my teaching.
Finally, I will try to explain how the principles of personalised learning can be put into practice referring to my experience and the literature I have read for this assignment.
2. Personalised and independent learning in the official documentation
In the National Curriculum, personalisation in education is the process of making what is taught and learnt and how it is taught and learnt match as closely as possible the needs of the learner. For teachers, it means observing learners closely, recognising their strengths and areas for further development and drawing on the full repertoire of skills and strategies to meet their needs. For learners it means being engaged not just with the content of what is being taught but being involved with the learning process, understanding what they need to do to improve and taking responsibility for furthering their own progress which could be obtained by establishing a constant dialogue between the pupils and the teacher.
The Key Stage 3 (KS3) Framework stresses the fact that while it is intended for all pupils in KS3, the lesson level, strategies and specific objectives in place should match all pupils’ learning needs as well as maintain a high level of challenge. While some pupils will work and progress “naturally,” some others will need extra help or a different approach to be able to reach the same level. In order to match all these needs, strategies of differentiation can be used such as varying the speed and pace of the lesson, set different objectives and level of complexity for the pupils, adapting the target language, assigning different tasks such as group work, ongoing project, extension work et cetera.
Independence in terms of learning seems to be linked to more able pupils. By this I mean that in the teacher’s planning, independent learning could be used as a differentiation point to allow the most able pupils to progress at their own pace and level while the teacher can concentrate on the less able pupils or the rest of the class.
In other words, there is one Framework but many different strategies to give the opportunity to all pupils to succeed through appropriate methods, objectives, targets and different approaches personalised for every pupil’s need.
Every Child Matters (2008) will also allocate a great importance to “personalised learning” by encouraging a programme based on very child’s needs, abilities and background circumstances. ECM already plays a great part in the pupils’ health and safely lifestyle inside and outside the school but also focuses on the academic aspect of the child’s development and improvement in the classroom. To support every pupil, a personalised approach should be put in place in order to adapt the learning to the pupils’ needs as well as provide tools to learn and give the opportunity to each child to achieve their potential which again reinforce the idea of setting a strong system of dialogue between the school and the learners in order to identify those needs.
There are also a number of qualified teacher status (QTS) standards mentioning personalised learning such as having teaching and learning management strategies and adapting these to the pupils. And also to be able to take action and put in place a system to personalise learning, “teachers should understand first of all how young people develop and that the progress and well being of learners is affected by a range of developmental, religious, ethnic, cultural and linguistic influences”. A way to do so could be assessing and monitoring the pupils to be aware of their needs and progress and following this, planning for progression across the age or ability range. Another way could be to communicate effectively with young people, colleagues, parents and carers to identity every pupil’s personal need.
Once the needs are assessed and understood, teachers should make effective personalised provision and adapt their language to suit the learners they teach (for example for those whom English is an additional language, special needs or disabilities) as well as provide a wide range of skills that pupils will need in their future life.
3. The concept of “personalised learning“ in the literature
“Every parent knows that all children are unique with different talent, different strengths and different weaknesses.”
Teaching and Learning in 2020 Review
In his speech about personalised learning, David Miliband (2004), at the time Secretary of State for Education, defines personalise learning as a high expectation of every child, given practical form by teaching based on knowledge and understanding of each child’s need. Personalised learning includes several practical strategies of differentiation for classroom application, each including tailored aims, step by step targets, adaptation and extension according to each pupil’s needs.
Miliband (2004) in Thomson and Gunter’s article (2005) also claimed that the most important factor for change is assessment for learning and the dialogue between the pupils and the teachers to identify every learner’s personal needs. Secondly, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each individual learner is the key to develop their competence and confidence.
Alison Jackson (2004) mentions in one of her articles the “we’ll sit here and you teach us” attitude which shows that most pupils are not aware of their need in being active in their own learning process and the fact that they should play a partnership role with the teacher in order to achieve this part. Williams and Burden (1997) in Jackson’s article have also observed that learners who believe they can influence their own learning are more likely to succeed in school than those who think their learning is controlled by other people.
So how can personalised learning influence and improve pupils’ learning development? One of the aims I have observed in the literature I have read is to make the pupils more independent and more responsible for their leaning. Murdoch, K and Wilson, J (2006) suggest that giving more responsibilities and involvement for the construction of their learning process will assist them in developing the skills and knowledge they need. To accomplish that, Murdoch and Wilson put forward the idea to make pupils set their own personalised goals to avoid the pressure of general expectations which are too high from the teacher. This is also supported by Selingman (1995) in Jackson’s article where it is explained that if the expectations are too high and the level is not appropriate, some learners could feel they are lacking in control and lose motivation which will impede a positive progress. However, Miliband points out that giving independence to pupils does not mean leaving them to their own devices but that attention should be paid to their individual learning styles, motivations and needs.
Therefore, we could say that in order to be aware of every learner’s academic need, a dialogue between the pupils and the teacher seem necessary. We could also say that and paying careful attention to the pupil’s emotional needs and behaviour could also help create the right environment in the classroom and therefore help some pupils to improve their learning.
4. The learning environment; emotional needs that impede pupils to participate and achieve
“Children need the right environment to be able to learn and thrive.”
The Children’s Plan (2008)
When we talk about learning environment it is often to evoke the practical aspect of it. For example good lighting, heating, ventilation, acoustics, access for disabled pupils, good decorative order, the appropriate use of colour and visual displays access to resources to support learning. These also include visual resources which may be on display, for example learning walls, ICT resources etc.
However, for most pupils, their needs are not practical or academic. They are not underachieving but they have emotional needs that stop them from participating and therefore accomplishing certain tasks or enjoying the lesson. These needs include stress and fear of having to talk in front of other people and fear of giving a wrong answer.
For this assignment, I have decided to investigate and work on “how to find strategies and methods to reduce stress and increase the confidence of some pupils in order to allow them to participate in the classroom and progress as much as the other pupils.”
My research and project had the purpose of helping the pupils to develop the right skill (in this case speaking) and attitude (well being) for learning which will be useful and necessary at school and in their future professional lives.
a) What is a case study
I could say from what I have understood from the literature that research is composed of two main streams; the evidence, and the theory. In a case study, the researcher needs to collect data from different perspectives, using different methods in order to answer a question and extract from the evidence a theory that needs to answer and make sense of that specific research question. In my case study, the different methods used were a questionnaire, interviews and scripted observation on the pupil’s behaviour.
A case study is one of the methods that could be used in research; a case can be individual or as a group such as a family, a class etc. In his book about research methods, Bill Gillham (2000) explains that when it involves human being and not “material” it is more difficult to have perfectly objective results as those could be influenced by different factors and those should be taken in consideration. For example, Gillham explains that the subjects in experiments have some kind of understanding of what the expectations are, and this could affect the results.
Therefore, we cannot say that a case study is an exact science and should be considered carefully.
b) Research and procedure
For my research I decided to work with my year 7, top set pupils. In this class, all pupils are achieving very well on paper, however, I noticed that a lot of pupils were being very quiet in the classroom and were not participating. It also seemed that they step aside from a group of very loud and extravagant pupils who have managed to capture the attention of the teacher and dominate the lesson by themselves.
I therefore chose to make a questionnaire for all the class about how the pupils felt in the classroom in general and if they were comfortable with it. I also proposed some scenarios where they could be a lot more involved and participate in the classroom and asked for their opinions. Out of 28 pupils, 8 of them claimed to be stressed in the classroom but wished they could participate more. Out of those 8 pupils I decided to pick 2 girls and 2 boys who seemed to show the most extreme signs of stress and low self-esteem despite the fact that they were doing well in French.
Following this, I decided to follow the Figure 3 called “taking ownership of learning” in the Teaching and Learning in 2020 Review (p.20) which is composed of three stages; learning how to learn, pupil voice and assessment for learning. The first one, learning how to learn would be set by me, as the teacher. I would put in place strategies (four all together spread in a period of two weeks) and try them on the pupils in order to develop their skills and attitude in the classroom. The second stage will be done by the pupils concerned themselves. Firstly, their feedback (under the shape of interviews) and my own evaluations of the strategies, will help me understand if my methods are valuable or not and if their feel comfortable with them as well as help me improve my teaching strategies.
The third stage of the process is, together with the pupils, to come out with “agreements” to set goals and targets in order to improve their participation, speaking skill and their personal well being in the classroom.
c) Analysis of the data and conclusion
The first strategy was to pick on the pupils I chose for the case study in the classroom to answer questions, even though they did not put their hand up. According to my own observation, those pupils seemed surprised and lost, I could also observe that stress was clearly stopping them from giving an answer and concentrating, for example, they looked stressed and started asking the person next to them for answers, they also looked at me in a “desperate” way hoping for me to ask someone else. One of the pupils who was asked to stand up to read a few sentences in French looked and me and said: “Miss it’s cruel”. During the interview after the lesson, the same pupil said: “I don’t want to put my hand up because I don’t want to talk in front of the class”. However two other pupils said:” I am happy that the teacher knows about my fear” and “I am happy to know that the teacher is not angry if I give a wrong answer and it’s okay.
For the second strategy, I intended to make those pupils aware of their amount of participation in the classroom and make them more responsible for their own learning. All four of them had to set targets for themselves by putting their hand up a minimum of once for the first lesson, and so on gradually during the two weeks of the experiment.
For this method I noticed some great improvement especially with the two girls. After a week, they almost seemed perfectly confident and went beyond my expectations. The boys needed more support and were less independent, in particular in pupil 4’s case. Pupil 4 did not improve on this task and I suspect that it is because his fear is probably stronger than his willingness to do well: “I didn’t want to put my hand up because I wasn’t sure of the answer”. However, Pupils 4 did very well in strategy 4 which consisted in writing the answer in a mini white board instead of saying it out loud. In this task, I saw a completely different pupil; he was participating, enthusiastic, and seemed to enjoy the exercise. This method fulfilled completely my aim to make them participate more in the classroom, however, it did not improve the speaking skill at all.
Strategy 3 was not successful for my own research as I had to deal with management issues in the classroom. While this strategy was aimed to help the pupils to develop their body language and appropriate themselves some space to put themselves forward, it also gave the opportunity to some pupils to be extravagant and “spoil” the activity. However, this was helpful for me to become aware of the difficulties of personalised learning and to realise that when strategies of differentiation were put in place for some pupils in particular, other strategies should also be put in place to occupy the other pupils in the class. For example, independent learning, extensions tasks or ongoing projects could be solutions in that situation.
I observed a clear difference between the 2 girls and the 2 boys in terms of development and willingness to improve. The 2 girls I worked with seemed more receptive and happy to be challenged, however, despite their goodwill to please me, the 2 boys seemed to be less enthusiastic about the strategies put in place and the reason why it was put in place for example, during the interview pupils 4 said “I didn’t like it, I prefer the normal way.”
According to my observation, I would say that the boys’ attitude could have been more due to their shy and reserved personalities, while the girls could have more “suffered” from the situation to be a in a class where the majority were loud and extrovert male pupils. For example pupils 2 said “I liked it (the game using the mini white board) because it’s not always the same people who answer and it’s less noisy in the classroom.”
However, as explained in Gillham’s article about quantitative methods, inferential statistics will enable to observe the difference, in this case between the boys and the girls, but cannot promise a significant conclusion and generalisation cannot be made on such a small sample observed.
Another aspect that I have noticed is that some pupils I have worked with did not think that participating in the lesson is part of their learning process and preferred to leave this task to other pupils. However, the dialogue between the pupils and me seemed to have made them aware that, participating and speaking in the classroom were a skill they needed to acquire and that it was useful in their learning process and well-being in the classroom.
I think that what comes out this project the most if that shyness and low self-esteem is damaging some pupils’ behaviour and inevitably has a negative impact on those pupils’ learning development. They are scared to give a wrong answer and they think giving a wrong answer is not acceptable, therefore, they would prefer to stay silent. The strategies I used, “forced” them to challenge themselves and realise that it was fine to say a wrong answer (even though most of the time they gave a right answer) and it was not so difficult to speak in front of the class.
During my research I experimented that personalise learning could also be difficult to deal with as it does not only involves the pupils concerned with special needs but the entire classroom. If some pupils need extra help or attention, measures should also put in place for the others to be able work at their own pace and challenge themselves.
To conclude with the results of my research I would say that it is very tempting to claim that the strategies put in place did have a positive impact on the pupils’ behaviour and learning development as it did to a certain degree, for example, talking and listening to the pupils about their fears helped them dealing better with the stress and they started building more confidence in themselves. However, it is probably too early in the process to draw constructive conclusions about the strategies used and it would need to be carried on in a longer period of time.
d) Strengths and weaknesses of my methods
Analysing my data was a difficult task as the area I decided to work (stress and anxiety) on is not easy to measure concretely without taking the pupils at their word. I also experienced what Gillham (2000) mentions in his article about the understanding and expectation that the subjects have while doing the experiment and in my case, I noticed that some pupils sometimes express the desire to please the teacher.
I would say that one of the strengths of the methods I used is that they showed effective results rapidly and I saw a significant change in my pupils’ behaviour. On the other hand, I think that this sort of research requires to be done in a period of at least one full term if not a full academic year as well as their behaviour and state of mind should be compared in different subjects, which is a task that I did not have the time to execute.
To measure the stress and anxiety, and have accurate and exact results, it would have been useful to have resorted to a specialist in psychology, however, in terms of the academic improvement, the pupils showed signs of confidence in the classroom and started to develop their speaking skills significantly in comparison to what they used to do before the project.
To increase the credibility and validity of the results, it would have been more valuable to include an external body to observe the pupils’ behaviour and reinforce the concept of the triangulation system which was lacking in my research methods. This would have allowed to have an external point of view, therefore a different source of data, perhaps psychological, to explain more fully the complexity of the pupil’s behaviour in my research.
Conclusion
My research taught me that the dialogue allowed the pupils to develop self-awareness and independence in their learning to some extent. Sharing their fears with the teacher also had a great impact on the pupils’ development in the classroom and helped them learn in a more peaceful emotional environment. However, personalised learning could be very difficult to deal with in some situations especially with big classes.
I found in my research similarities with what Jackson (2004) says in her article about the fact that the pupils did not feel they had a part to play in the process of learning. It was also clear that discussing with the pupils about their attitude in the classroom made them realise the influence they could have on their own learning which coincides with what Williams and Burden (1997) say in Jackson’s article and I agree with Thomson and Gunter (2006) saying that the dialogue between learners and teachers along with assessment does have a great effect to indentify the pupils’ needs.
In my findings, I observed a lot of similarities with what Gillham (2000) warned in his book about the accuracy of the results in a case study when the subjects were aware of the expectations, however, this did not necessary impede the fact that the pupils still did work and improve on certain skills despite the reason that motivated them.
