Learning Supports: Enabling Learning in the classroom

[Guest guest]

THIS article is brilliant and I will be using this quote often: “Personalization

goes beyond individualization”

http://bit.ly/zD4W7m

The following excerpt is my favorite part:

Step 3: Emphasizing Personalized Intervention

Personalization goes beyond individualization.

Clearly, how classrooms are arranged and how instruction is organized helps or hinders learning and teaching and affects behavior.

In essence, an optimal design promotes personalized and holistic learning and minimizes learning, behavior, and emotional problems. When a problem does arise, it is addressed immediately with response to intervention strategies (including a range of what in

the past have been called “prereferral” interventions).

The old adage:

Meet learners where they are! captures the commonsense view of good classroom practices and is the core principle for good instruction.

This sometimes is referred to as the concept of the “match” or the problem of “fit.”

Unfortunately, this core principle often is interpreted only as a call for

individualized instruction which emphasizes matching a student’s current

capabilities (e.g., knowledge and skills). The irony in this is reflected in the all too frequent teacher lament: “They could do it, if only they

wanted to! "

Students who don’t

want to are the bane of teachers and of efforts to assess a student’s responses to intervention (e.g., such students always appear to have more significant skills deficits than they actually have). For students with learning, behavior, and emotional

problems, motivation for classroom learning often is the primary concern.

Most school staff are well aware that

motivational factors (e.g., attitudes) play a fundamental role in determining instructional outcomes. A variety of instructional approaches are effective when a student is motivated to learn what is being taught. And good abilities are more likely to

emerge when students are motivated not only to pursue assignments, but also are interested in using what they learn.

Thus, in contrast to individualized instruction, we use the term

personalization to designate matching individual differences in both capability

and motivation.

And, from a psychological perspective, we stress that it is the student’s perception, not the teachers’, that determines whether

the fit is good or bad.

Good practice, then, includes ensuring a good

motivational match (especially an intrinsic motivational match), and this often involves overcoming

avoidance motivation. Schools strive to design instruction that fits, but the reality is that they can only approximate an

optimal fit. They are likely to come closest by personalizing instruction and other

interventions.

From:

NEW FROM UCLA CENTER

Learning Supports: Enabling Learning in the classroom

Access at:

http://bit.ly/zD4W7m

In our efforts to provide additional resources on learning supports to teachers and to those who work with teachers, we have drafted the

above practice notes. The focus in on what teachers can do to better address students’ learning, behavior, and/or emotional problems. The emphasis is on six fundamental steps for enabling learning in the classroom and schoolwide. The steps are intended to

enhance student and learning supports by:

(1) rethinking assistance and support in the classroom

(2) heightening the emphasis on positive classroom and schoolwide climate

(3) emphasizing personalized intervention

(4) ensuring a continuum of interventions and using a sequential approach in assessing responses to intervention

(5) extending ways to accommodate differences and disabilities

(6) expanding school improvement plans to include development of a comprehensive system of student and learning supports

K. Lipson, JD

Director, Parent Leadership Support Project

The Georgia Advocacy Office

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(404) 885- 1234 or 1 (800) 537- 2329 (voice or TDD)

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