'Personalization' - the new buzz word?

   I recently heard our Minister of Education use the word ‘personalization’ in a radio debate. It is a word that as been used a lot in recent times but it the first time I have heard it from the Minister. I wonder if it is to become anew buzz word.

It was used a couple of years by David Milbrand, the UK Minister of Education, at conference in Birmingham organized by the National College for School Leadership. There are a number of excellent publications anyone interested in the idea can download.

Personalized learning is not new according to Dean Fink, who attended Milbrand’s address. 'No matter how you dress it up', he writes, 'it basically means adapting the school to the unique needs of the students as opposed to the traditional practice of making students conform to school'.

He continues that it is a revolutionary and exiting idea but, he repeats, it is not a new concept. It was the basis of much of the innovative thinking in the late 60s and 70s and, for a while, the idea of helping each learner realize their unique needs ‘shone brightly’. But, he continues, it was extinguished by political ineptitude, the power of the traditional model, and attrition. In Canada, in particular Ontario, a similar movement at the same time for a while seemed to point the way to exciting new thinking but suffered a similar fate.

For those who have been around long enough a similar scenario was played out in New Zealand. The first Labour Government influenced by the late Dr Beeby led the way. The sixties and seventies were exciting times to be a creative teacher. Unfortunately creativity was eventfully rejected by politicians in favour of a measurable accountable 'top down' standardized curriculum. And, anyway, little of the personalized philosophy ever reached the secondary schools which, to this day, remain locked in their Industrial Aged ‘mindsets’. It was, at best, a half finished revolution.

What are the chances of personalization being a significant movement in the first decades of the 21stC? Fink believes it is an opportunity worth seizing and a ‘chance to shake off the shackles of conformity and compliance, and imagine, create, innovate, do something'. But he has his doubts, there are he believes ‘four bumps on the road’ to get past we are to achieve the dream of personalizing learning.

His first concern is that we need principals who are ‘leaders of learning’. Up to now principals have become distracted with managerial concerns. Achieving personalized learning will be impossible unless something goes and Fink view is that it ‘should be most things that get in the way of heads being ‘leaders of learning.’’

The second ‘bump on the road’ is that for many principals the idea of personalized learning is rather scary , because they have been trained to be efficient managers’ and will now have to become expert at teaching and learning.

The third ‘bump’ is the standardized curriculum forced on schools by ‘brute sanity’ that schools have had the greatest difficulty applying to ‘non standard kids’. A personalized approach will have to work, at least for while, in this standardized 'compliance' environment.

The last ‘bump’ is most difficult of all. Is the community ready for personalized learning? ‘Good schools’ are seen by middle parents as those schools that are successful for their children. Most middle class parents like schools exactly as they are and, Fink says, ‘it will be a huge sales job to overcome the inertia of the smugly satisfied elites’. And this includes the powerful traditional schools as well!

So the promise of personalization will be challenge to implement but with 20% of all students currently failing, and with a growing issue of disengaged students at the early secondary level, the time is right to at least develop some innovative personalized alternatives in every community.

This would be an excellent challenge for a transformational government, a Minister of Education, and all educationalists to lead, if we really want to develop our country as a creative 21stC society. The new NZ Curriculum, to be delivered next month, provides the opportunity and freedom to develop such flexibility.

The question is, do we have the wit and imagination as a country, as politicians and as educational leaders, to take up the challenge?

Personalisation will have to become more than a 'buzz word' if we do!