Personalisation - just a slogan in search of a meaning

"Is there any way a teacher can personalise the learning experience for their charges, thereby transforming an ill-defined, throwaway political idea into action that would benefit children?"

asks Phil Beadle in this scathing Comment in today's Education Guardian. I've written previously and with scepticism about the rapidly spreading "personalisation virus", and I feel particularly critical of how the term is used so loosely in education, and especially in relation to ICT and e-learning. But that said, I think Beadle is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For example giving users (including learners) choice is at least sometimes a good thing, as is involving users in the design of services, both of which Beadle contests, with weary cynicism; and I found Charles Leadbeater's Demos pamphlet "Personalisation through participation" which Beadle slags off without even giving it an author or publisher, and without acknowledging that it was written about public services in general rather than education in particular, gave me plenty to think about during work I did in 2004 with Neil Smith and Nicky Ferguson for JISC, to the extent that we included a table of Leadbeater's as an appendix to our report. I can see why teachers view personalisation as "a duplicitous gimmick".  But the problem is not that offering choice and control  to learners is wrong per se, but that personalisation is being used as a gimmicky panacea, not backed up, in education, by evidence of benefit.

Notes

1. Thanks to Kevin Donovan, who wrote this Guest Contribution earlier this year, for telling me about the Guardian article.
2. With Neil Smith and NickyFerguson I recently finished a peice of follow-up work about personalisation for JISC , which I think will be available on the JISC web site later this year.
3. 10 October 2006. Charles Leadbetter has just published his new book We Think, which argues that the new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a society in which participation will be the key organising idea rather than consumption and work (tell that to a Chinese shoemaker working 6 14 hour shifts per week) in a form which will allow comments to be made on it, for potential incorporation into the final product, which is due next year.

Comments

[Kevin Donovan]

I agree that we don't want to lose the potential (and, in lots of cases, actual) benefits of education tailored to the needs and strengths of individuals. That's what good teachers have always done and what good education systems have supported. But I think there are lots of tensions hidden within the concept, not least of which is the contradiction between personalisation and education policies which are obsessed with buildings, systems and structures - such as specialist schools and academies. Only root and branch reform - and which is comprehensive in all its meanings and manifestations - could marry the progressive intention with the political reality. And that's another story.

[David Wilson]

Seb, we have looked a little at personalisation within our research the corporate learning and e-learning area, and its a topic that I feel needs much greater exploration. Firstly, I agree with your sentiments about its use as a slogan in search of a meaning. Like many of the terms in the learning area, it has become used as a bandwagon without much reality of substance. A sense of a good idea, without much in the way of tangible execution.

But having said that, I also feel it very important, and in many encapsulates the shift in thinking from training to learning. If we are to make progress on the potential for personalisation, I think our research would support the view that we need to tackle it at two levels - and I feel some synergy here with your arguments and Kevin's comments. Personalisation impacts structure at the macro-level, and it impacts choices and options at the micro-level. Much of the debate about the meaning of personalisation at an institutional level is about my macro-level; the structure of services, how they relate to the learner, and the organisation providing them. Without a fundamental rethink or realignment of current structures (in both academic education and corporate training), it is difficult to see how personalisation can have much real meaning or make much of a difference.

But if that is true, maybe personalisation at the micro-level. The choices that individual learners are offered or make related to their specific learning process; the resources they choose to engage with, the way they use or interact with peers, even to a degree, the role they expect from the teacher, trainer or facilitator. These are all areas of much greater flexibility and potential for personalisation than we give them credit for - already.

We must be wary of rejecting the concept of personalisation, but we must also be realistic about understanding its challenges. My personal view is that learning becoming more personalised, is an inevitability.

David