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Empowering teachers to ignite students’ interests
Personalised learning is fundamental to engaging students in education, but not every schoolteacher feels confident in tailoring learning to students’ interests, strengths, and identities. The complexity of personalised learning leads to low teacher buy-in. UC is usings its research to enhance ACT teaching practice by equipping teachers with skills and enhancing their capacity to offer personalised learning.
“What personalised learning has done is given us an opportunity and a realisation that we can be more flexible in the classroom with our learning and with our students. It's not about being rigid and making sure they all follow the same process, learn the same content, but that they have it, they have an understanding and they're making connections for themselves for learning, which, you know, beyond the school, beyond what we're doing now that they can take into their workplace.”
Dr Tamsyn Terry, Associate Principal at Gold Creek School
“I think personalised learning’s really changed the conversations I’ve been having with my students because I really have been more open to the ideas that they’re bringing to their learning. The ideas that they have about what will most engage their interests and also help them to show that they are good learners […] if we just approach it in a slightly different way with their input, we’re going to have success.”
Steven Sengstock, secondary teacher at Gold Creek School
What is personalised learning?
We often hear kids complaining about school, but studies also show a significant proportion of Australian students are disengaged with their education – a 2017 Grattan Institute report found as many as 40% of students are unproductive in a given year because they are disengaged, and COVID-19 pandemic years and school closures have increased the risks of student disengagement. This is a concern because lack of engagement can have negative impacts on kids’ learning, learning outcomes, behaviour and attendance, and increase drop-out rates.
Engaging students in the classroom is one of the main challenges, and personalised learning is seen as the educational approach best equipped to increase engagement and learning outcomes by focussing on the strengths, needs and interests of each student. The 2012 Gonski report talked about the importance of “personalised learning strategies” to improve school outcomes and ACT Government policy now explicitly states: “the ACT education system of the future will be personalised to each child”.
Personalised learning involves the designing of learning in response to students’ needs, strengths, interests and identities. Teachers gather data on these points about their students, seek their input on curriculum topics and create learning plans with the kids. For some classes, teachers formulate “I can” statements with students to give them confidence and empower their learning, such as, “I can formulate algebraic expressions using constants, variables, options and brackets”.
However, personalised learning can be seen as complex and challenging, so there is low teacher buy-in and some risk aversion. There is a lot of diversity within and across classrooms throughout the ACT. While we know that not everyone learns the same way or has the same interests, whole class teaching approaches are most often used because it’s simpler and easier for teachers. UC researchers have been working with teachers at local schools to understand their apprehensions towards personalised learning and explore the particularities and possibilities within every student’s story to ignite their learner interest. The ACT Education Directorate is funding the projects between 2021 and 2026, as it aligns with the ACT Government’s Future of Education Strategy (2018) and strategic priorities).
Phase 1: 2021 – 2023
The first study was conducted between 2021 and 2023 and investigated what teachers currently do in two ACT schools: Gold Creek School (Preschool to Year 10) and Margaret Hendry School (Preschool to Year 6). It also investigated teacher professional learning through an ‘Action Learning’ cycle: an approach for teachers to enact personalised learning.
The study at Gold Creek School (GCS) included three distinct stages:
- Gathering baseline data;
- Professional learning using Action Learning; and
- Developing a model for wider application.
At Margaret Henry School (MHS) research was conducted to gain a better understanding of the challenges faced by teachers when designing and implementing personalised learning. The study was conducted to address these gaps and to identify strategies for teachers to enact personalised learning.
Findings from the study suggested that teachers’ understanding of personalised learning was varied, and they found personalised learning to be complex. Teachers had different perspectives on personalised learning and acknowledged its potential benefits but also highlighted challenges such as standardised evaluation, time constraints, diverse student needs, and the mindset of teachers. They therefore need assistance from experts to enact it. Action learning iterations at Gold Creek suggested that expert intervention is necessary to increase teachers’ understanding of and confidence with personalised learning.
The study generated four vital outcomes or key impacts:
- Established a long-term collaboration with the participating schools. Our researchers have run several professional development workshops for teachers and two of our researchers are in the Action Plan for Gold Creek School.
- Initiated dialogue and discussion with the public about personalised learning, which included an article in The Conversation and interviews with UC researchers on ABC Radio Canberra about the topic (linked below).
- UC hosted a conference on personalised learning at University of Canberra in June 2023 to share research findings and facilitate discussion between industry and academia. The event was attended by teachers in the ACT, NSW and Victoria, professionals from the ACT Education Directorate, and university academics from Australia and overseas.
- The project created an opportunity for international collaboration in research and practice: an international expert in research on personalised learning joined the research team and is working with UC on future research and professional development.
“As our students move into, you know, their futures, we’re hoping that this approach will really help them to not only maximise their educational outcomes but also gain an understanding as to how they best learn.”
Daniel Breen, School Principal at Gold Creek School
Phase 2: 2024 – 2026
Based on the above outcomes, Phase 2 aims to enhance teacher professional development and teacher empowerment and support the enactment of personalised learning in Gold Creek Primary School. Marget Hendry School is relatively new and designed to trial personalised learning in open school design settings, whereas GCS is traditionally designed. The project is called ‘Experimentation on Culturally Adaptive, Cohesive, and Sustainable Teacher Empowerment Program (CAC-STEP): Personalised Learning Intervention’.
Gold Creek School wants to upskill their teachers and provide them with opportunities for gradual and meaningful transformation. The research found six roles teachers can play to enact personalised learning: data collector and analyst; partner and collaborator; negotiator and guide; empowerer; assessor/advisor; co-regulator. The roles do not change the structure of schools too much and can lead to gradual change in students’ attitudes to learning.
In this new project, our research team will work with a small group of teachers in different disciplines, such as maths, science English and humanities in primary and early childhood classes, and help them enacting personalised learning using four steps:
- First, teachers will get to know their students by collecting data that explores their learner identity.
- Teachers will then co-design their students’ learning with the children and supported by our research team, who will provide guidance and resources.
- Teachers and students will then assess their achievements and tailor learning as needed.
- Throughout the entire process, teachers will monitor students’ self-regulation – how they manage their emotions and tasks independently, which is a goal of personalised learning.
This research aims to upskill and empower teachers so they can embrace personalised learning so every child is engaged in our classrooms and can explore their curiosity, learn what excites them, and foster a lifelong love of learning.
Research team
This research is conducted by the Faculty of Education and is part of the Affiliated Schools Program, a collaborative partnership between UC and the ACT Government. Team members include:
- Maya Gunawardena
- Emily Hills
- Sitti Patahuddin
- Deborah Pino Pasternak
- Kithmini Aviruppola
- Tamsyn Terry
- With support from Penny Bishop from the University of Maine, USA
Learn more about this project
Affiliated Schools Research Program Final Report (2023)
‘UC researchers dispel myths about personalised learning to inspire our educators’ (2022)
Video: What is personalised learning? UC research transforming classrooms