Personalising Curriculum?
The alignment of personalised learning with curriculum goals is often difficult for teachers. This is because the personalized learning approach requires teachers to tailor instruction to the individual learning needs of students, which can be time-consuming and difficult to manage; particularly when there is a need to cover a set curriculum. Additionally, teachers must also ensure that their instruction is meeting the curriculum goals set by the school or institution. It can be difficult for teachers to balance competing priorities given that they only have a limited amount of time to spend with their students each day. However, identifying the barriers within the curriculum that prevent personalised learning from being implemented is key to fostering a supportive learning environment for students to achieve their full potential.
I asked John what he thinks. Listen to him below:
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Dr. Downs talks about the importance of having: flexibility, negotiation, integration, and embedding transferable skills to make the curriculum more interesting for students.
So, teachers can let students take the directions that they want to take but teachers are there to give them support and feedback on how they are taking this journey. These flexibilities may be present in some classes where students have more choice and voice in developing their key understanding. Some of our current pedagogies such as inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, service learning, etc. However, the impact would widely depend on how teachers practically use these pedagogical strategies.
Negotiating the curriculum
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The curriculum areas can be negotiated with the students (which means which topics they want to investigate, which books they would like to learn and so on); teachers can consider the essential knowledge and understanding and the big ideas that they arrive at through the process/ this does not mean that they do not recognise the value of a curriculum
Negotiating the process of learning
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Students can choose the projects based on their interests and inquiry pathways (questions) that they want to take
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Students can work in groups or independently based on their preferences (they have their choice)