A Personalized Approach to Education?

My blogs have centered on the benefits and advantages of a progressives education: whole child focus, student engagement, wider definition of success, etc.

In a recent article entitled Teaching to What Students Have in Common by Daniel Willingham, a cognitive scientist from University of Virginia (who wrote one of my favorite books, Why Students Don’t Like School), somewhat calls into question the progressive tenet of a personalized and individualized education for students.

The premise of the article is that teachers are misguided in focusing their attention on the differences among students and should rather teach to the commonalities, specifically in the “fundamental features of cognition, development, emotion, and motivation.”

Willingham notes that there is obviously variety among children in areas like learning style, ability level, interest, backgrounds experience and personalities—and that teachers need to be sensitive to these difference and clearly get to know and understand their students as individuals. Yet he feels teachers should pay greater attention to the ways students are the same.

He breaks down cognitive characteristic into two parts: things the cognitive system needs to operate effectively and methods that work well to help students meet those needs.

In the first area, Willingham stresses the importance of factual knowledge or what he calls “domain-specific knowledge.” He also describes the need for student practice of knowledge and skills until they become automatic. Finally he outlines the value of students getting feedback from a "knowledgeable source", i.e. their teacher(s).

Orchard believes in focusing on the individual needs of the learner. However, I can be guilty as a teacher and as head of school of over-emphasizing this quality. The reality is that, while everyone is unique, there are more commonalities than differences in how students learn in the classroom.  Ensuring students have a core set of essential knowledge in each discipline, having ample opportunity to place this knowledge in long-term memory so recall is automatic, and getting guidance, support, and feedback from teachers are vital qualities in any classroom.

 As Willingham states in his article, it is “important for a teacher to realize that the observation that not every student can do everything the exact same way at the exact same time should not lead to the overreaction of hyper-individualizing the curriculum.”