Resources

Peter Humphreys, Chair, Personalised Education Now

The crisis in education deepens. Schooling is particularly problematic - dated, inflexible, bureaucratic, wedded to institutional need and deficit models at the expense of learners. Young people are coerced through an age-stage model that fails to resonate or keep up with real world developments and issues. Teachers, young people, parents, employers and communities know instinctively there should be something better. Massive proportions of system and societal resources are directed at policing, controlling and mopping up self-inflicted 'problems'. The costs are incalculable, but the default response continues - the same, and more of the same. We are over-schooled and under-educated.

For many learners schooling has little relationship to their realities many young people 'power-down' at the school gates and are prevented from using the available digital tools and environments. They live in a parallel universe - one which is moving further and further away at enormous speeds.

Personalised Education Now is clear on why we educate and what a good education leads to. Our principles of personalisation are founded on successful learning and living. They provide an agenda for transforming our learning systems and the context for our digital technologies. They are identified here, each with a few pointers as to their rationale.

1. Learner-managed and co-constructed learning meeting learning styles and preferences and supported by a range of others:

• evidence, from brain science, child development, from practice and common sense tells us choice, ownership and responsibility are keys to engaged, deep learning
• few people learn alone - we are essentially social learners and will request a variety of support, monitoring and challenge; in this sense learning is co-created or co-constructed with others - the core issue is whether learning is invited or imposed
• learners, who lead, manage and co-create their own learning draw upon a wider educational landscape, are able to choose and challenge their own preferred learning styles and develop their own 'learning and teaching capital'; this is in turn shared with others and develops a learning capital within family, community and society as a whole.

2. Shift from dependency to independence and interdependency based on the principles of subsidiarity, personal responsibility and choice:

• our dominant learning systems create dependency and are contrary to a sustainable, adaptive, innovative and mature 21st century democracy
• dependency is disabling to self-development and maturity
• dependency exacerbates issues for different generations - young children, teenagers, and the elderly in particular; most of these issues are social constructs rather than actual problems
• the principle of subsidiarity is useful in determining those who are capable and able enough to take responsibility for their learning and life regardless of factors like age, sex, race or disability
• living and working more interdependently is an advantage for family, societal and global sustainability and social cohesion.

3. Invitational learning institutions, settings and experiences:

• choice, ownership, responsibility are all key to engagement and deep learning; this cannot continue in a learning landscape where schooling operates an effective monopoly and compulsory role
• invitational learning is learner-driven, responsive, flexible and adaptive
• invitational learning is financially effective and efficient; it doesn't incur the massive cost of addressing the casualties of schooling.

4. Learning from an educational landscape of opportunities within physical/virtual places and spaces:

• there is currently limited recognition or use of the wider educational landscape and the massive formal/informal/professional/community learning resource (actual and virtual)
• we need to legitimise, support and fund a Personalised Educational Landscape (PEL) and move beyond detached institutional and sector silos; this approach removes linear thinking, responding more flexibly and adaptively to learner and societal needs
• diversity - 'edversity' is needed - not the vulnerability of current schooling 'monoculture' models.

5. Re-integration of learning, life and community: life not necessarily lived to a pre-determined linear pattern - interweaving learning, living and community:

• lives, education and learning have been scripted into poor 'shorthand' called schooling
• institutions are organised around outdated notions of childcare, linear patterns of life, work and careers
• family and generational cohesion are threatened by age-stage and institutional silo thinking
• people are looking for more creative and flexible non-linear patterns of living; provision for learning needs to respond
• there is limited recognition and use of the massive community learning resource; we miss the opportunity to develop family, community and societal learning capital
• learning and social cohesion could be developed more through action and community-based issues education
• schooling organisation exacerbates travel and congestion peaks, skews and limits shopping, leisure and holiday patterns.

6. Democratic values, organisation and practice: democracy is not pre-determined and requires cultivating:

• much of current democracy is uniformed, fragmentary and tokenistic
• valuing democracy needs continuous cultivation
• we need to live out democratic values and organisation in our daily lives
• guides to these values already exist in UN Rights and Responsibilities
• reasoned persuasion, the needs, rights and responsibilities of all need to be acknowledged
• young people are just as capable of understanding democratic values, organising and practising democratically
• the casualties of our limited democracy threaten its existence; we cannot afford disengaged citizens or we risk totalitarian regimes
• lack of democracy strikes at family, societal and global sustainability and cohesion.

7. Catalogue and natural versions of curriculum and assessment: no imposition - choice from pre-existing curriculum catalogues or developing learners own natural preferences:

• the dominant approach within the schooling system is an uninvited, pre-packaged curricula and assessment progression breeding disengagement and shallow learning
• we are over-schooled and under-educated
• many superficial accreditations are taking on a value beyond their actual worth
• too little learning originates from learner choice and dispositions
• all sorts of curriculum are needed - pre-packaged, bespoke, natural; all have a place in a learner's journey and all can be part of catalogue curriculum
• we need engaged, motivated lifelong learners - society cannot afford disengagement and shallow learning.

8. De-coupling of age-stage progressions and assessments: learning linked to readiness and the principle of life-long learning:

• the brain-based, practical evidence for age-stage is not convincing
• age-stage thinking is very different thinking from that on based learner's needs
• age-stage thinking creates 'one-size-fits-all' solutions, underachievement, spurious notions of success and failure whilst also fuelling the 'special needs' industry
• age-stage thinking 'infects' both educators and learners, inhibits learning and creates institutional silos
• age-stage thinking develops criterion referenced, routinised target culture fuelling disengagement
• age-stage thinking assumes we can capture all learning in pre-determined, pre-packaged curricular and assessment; it is continually inflexible and outdated
• age-stage thinking develops ageist approach to living and learning, weakening social cohesion
• 'readiness' is a better guide - representing motivation and commitment as much as it does notions of current capacity and future potential.

Digital technologies need to take on a transformational role and not merely amplify existing scenarios. Schooling as we know it is too problematic and may not be the best place for investigation and new developments. Many educational thinkers have alluded to key ideas of learner-centric approaches; we have attempts to articulate these in a Declaration of Learners Rights and Responsibilities (Wondertree Foundation 1995) and in a Learner's Charter for a Personalised Learning Environment (Futurelab 2005). These offer us positive direction.

However, we are well beyond first-base; a vast resource exists within non-compulsory mainstream sectors of learning. Rich veins can be sourced in the traditions and achievements of free and democratic schools, in self-managed learning communities, in the lessons from home-based, learning centre and autonomous learners, from informal educators in community education and community arts fields. The successes of Notschool and settings working with those who are detached from formal institutions signpost potential futures. The task as we see it can be pictured in terms of lifelong travel through an educational landscape of learning journeys and episodes. We envision a Personalised Educational Landscape (PEL) that includes all the learning resources, human and physical, institutional and virtual in current educational sectors, in homes, libraries, workplaces, community arts and adult learning programmes, our science and art museums, television and public services and individual learners. It is an abundant, e-enabled, learning landscape of which our current institutions become just one transformed part.

A PEL traveller would be in more control, learning independently or with groups, taking up packaged or bespoke learning journeys. Learners investigate a range of learning pathways, co-constructing and researching their own learning with the assistance of travel agents and guides. They would assist in co-creating Personal Learning Plans and signposting learning programmes from the curriculum catalogue. They could broker groups of learners and help with research and advice where learning skills are required.

Travel agents and intelligent ICT agents (cies) would offer information, reflection, and challenge and a 24/7 network of invitational support as the basis for deep, engaged learning. More personalisation means that more learning is learner-led and educational experiences are invitational and based on choice. For the vast majority this would be a process of co-constructed learning travel with families, communities, networks and educational professionals.

Digital technologies connect, energise and facilitate the landscape, shaping new learning environments, pedagogies, tools and media for learning. In a PEL digital technologies create access, networks and routes for exploration throughout the global learning environment. They support navigation and signpost the way with guidance and just in time learning. Intelligent agents can support and sustain the guidebooks, the common route maps, the supplementary information, brokering, matching and booking of learning plans. They can assemble a resource-rich landscape complete with freely accessible learner essentials - toolkits for basic skills, knowledge, change management, active and accelerated learning. They enable learners to learn at their preferred time and pace, anytime, anywhere and support e-assessment and continuous feedback. Digital technologies become a part of the learner's toolkit and media, the learner's communication and evidence base and have a major role in accessing the PEL and in balancing the dominance of transactional models.

Undoubtedly, institutions would remain but would recycle along PEL principles. Current work, life and care patterns would probably mean that at the outset the majority of young people would still learn in transformed institutions (such as all-age, invitational community-based learning centres), but over time they could reassess the potential for exploring other learning and life journeys and episodes, and move increasingly from dependency to independence and interdependency. Such experiences could be undertaken for any agreed periods of time, at any age and in any combination. Pressure to meet age-stage norms, study particular age-related material or to enter different sectors is removed. Readiness to travel (that is, learn) is the driver.

A PEL would recognise and validate a whole range of assessment and evaluation tools as credible possibilities. A PEL would take a more holistic and flexible view of ascertaining what a learner can do or has achieved.

A PEL would accumulate societal learning capital having a profound positive generational impact. It would advance social cohesion and inclusion, active democracy and other qualitative aspects of our lives and communities.

Attitudinal and cultural shifts are essential to promote 'edversity'. A Personalised Education Landscape is entirely feasible, providing us with continuous adaptation and evolution necessary for maintaining a learning and learned society.

System transformation requires evolutionary development occurring, with commitment and capacity to build and sustain it - a co-construction with learners, an adaptive landscape funded and established on need and success. Reason suggests we legitimise, learn from and include others who already have or would welcome deeper personalised choice. At present these operate at the margins with little or no funding and under a great deal of suspicion and misunderstanding. Our approach is inclusive, valuing their learning and principles. Scratch below the surface and it is probable that they hold many of the answers as to the development of a mature, 21st century learning landscape. They already do a great job with degrees of satisfaction, happiness and proven lifelong success that would be the envy of those in the mainstream. They need to be the subject of our support and research and, in terms of digital technologies, could offer a most profitable resource for developing the capacity of learners and transforming learning.

Further reading and links

Personalised Education Now: c.person.ed.gn.apc.org
Educational Heretics Press: edheretics.gn.apc.org
Futurelab's 'Learner's Charter for a Personalised Learning Environment'
Futurelab's Learning networks seminar series
Wondertree Foundation's 'Declaration of Learner's Rights and Responsibilities': www.wondertree.org
Prof Roland Meighan (2005). Comparing Learning Systems: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Counter-productive. Educational Heretics Press ISBN 1-900219-28-X