Personalization

excerpts from Initial Guidance for the High School Restructuring Component of the Regulations of the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education Regarding Public High Schools and Ensuring Literacy for All Students Entering High School

There is a strong correlation between student achievement and a personal connection to school. Research shows that those students who have supportive learning environments with strong personal relationships have greater success in school, at work, and in the community. All school stakeholders have a shared responsibility to provide all students with the opportunities, guidance, and resources they need to become productive citizens in a global society and its future leaders.

The working definition of personalization in use for the Rhode Island Diploma System is:

Personalization is a learning process in which schools help students assess their own talents and aspirations, plan a pathway toward their own purposes, work cooperatively with others on challenging tasks, maintain a record of their explorations, and demonstrate learning against clear standards in a wide variety of media, all with the close support of adult mentors and guides
http://www.alliance.brown.edu/pubs/changing_systems/introduction/introduction.pdf

Effective personalized learning environments in schools offer all students individualized supports toward development in the academic, career and personal/social domains and in civic responsibility. Essential relationships between and among students and adults, a positive school culture, strong family and community collaboration, and a program of curriculum, instruction and assessment that all support the growth and achievement of students characterize personalized learning environments.

Students will benefit from the intentional efforts to meet their individual and personal needs by increased progress toward Rhode Island's proficiency-based graduation requirements (PBGRs). These include academic content and skills identified in content standards and Grade Level/Grade Span Expectations (GLEs and GSEs) and the habits of thinking and applying within the discipline. Most importantly, personalization strategies assist students in developing their own skills for directing their learning and ease the transition between the dependence of the child and the autonomy of the adult.

The Rhode Island Statewide Curriculum offers a variety of resources for all partners in the school community as they work to develop learning opportunities to fulfill individual students interests and needs.

¹The School Redesign Network. The Case for Personalization Resources.
http://www.schoolredesign.net/srn/server.php?idx=854

² Clarke, John. Changing Systems to Personalize Learning - Introduction to the Personalization Workshops. The Education Alliance at Brown University. 2003. p. 14