This is similar to a refrain I’ve heard from others about aspects of PBE that are “good” — “it just makes sense.” My question is why are we instituting new ways of educating kids based on it “making sense” — and not based on actual research? Things that make sense to some, don’t always make sense to others. And this is EDUCATION. We should be basing how we teach our kids on more than someone’s gut feeling. Use the gut feeling to justify doing the research — and find out if your gut was right. Don’t jump past the research stage and into changing a system for thousands of kids based solely on it “making sense.”
From the article:
Perhaps the basic reason for Zuckerberg’s enthusiasm is that, as he has said, “The model just intuitively makes sense.” That is, it intuitively makes sense to people like Zuckerberg and Gates, both highly motivated Harvard dropouts. No doubt they would have enjoyed school far more if they’d been able to race ahead at their own pace and choose what they wanted to learn.
Full article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2018/04/19/mark-zuckerbergs-plan-to-personalize-learning-rests-on-shaky-ground
Personalized learning is a slippery term, but the basic idea is to tailor learning to individual students and have them demonstrate they’ve mastered one component of learning before moving on to the next. Technology plays a key role, with students using software that is supposed to fit their needs.
And here’s where it seems the author points out that they don’t appear to have any evidence, yet, of its effectiveness:
The idea of personalized learning has proven appealing not only to Zuckerberg but also to his fellow tech titan Bill Gates. “I love this cutting-edge school design,” Gates has declared on his blog. Between 2013 and 2017, the Gates Foundation invested over $300 million to support research on personalized learning. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have announced that their own education initiative will invest “hundreds of millions of dollars a year” in the field, which they believe will provide “every student with a customized education.” Gates and Zuckerberg have even teamed up on one joint grant—a relatively modest $12 million—to promote personalized learning and build an “evidence base” that proves its effectiveness.
That’s unusual. Generally speaking, education reformers like Gates and Zuckerberg say they want to see an evidence base before they invest in an idea. They want data and “proof points” that show the idea works. And when it comes to personalized learning, the data is inconclusive at best.
The most encouraging study to date found that personalized learning had a modest positive effect on math test scores and no significant impact on scores in reading. But other studies have found that some personalized learning programs can reduce students’ enjoyment of learning or make them less likely to feel there’s an adult at their school who knows them well.
And people wonder why some parents are pushing back?
