Wednesday, 20th August 2008

Next Practice in Resourcing Personalisation - Co-constructing learning with students

How can we offer personalisation in education by co-constructing and designing learning with students?

Many schools in this country are currently working in ways that encourage and enable children and young people to play a much more active role in their own learning. A small number of schools have worked in this way for many years. Now there is a more general exploration of the traditional roles that imagined students as the passive recipients of knowledge and teachers as its expert transmitters - and technology is adding a new dimension to this "expert teacher" and "novice student" divide. New and different models are being explored; ones that endeavour to put the needs of students at the centre of the picture, and seek to support and empower them to direct and shape their own learning.

Innovative practitioners are currently finding ways to offer students greater levels of choice about what, where, how and with whom they learn, as well as when and how they might be assessed. They are creating the means (often harnessing the potential of ICT) to register the needs, preferences and aspirations of individual learners, and are focusing efforts on developing the skills students need to take control over their own learning. We are entering an era in which students are increasingly imagined as the 'co-designers' of their own education.