Personalized Learning - A Conversation with Allison Zmuda

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

Personalized learning is a mindset. It's a way of stepping back and saying, what are we here to do as a system of educators? And how can we continue to recalibrate our thinking in service to the desired outcomes we're hoping to accomplish and where our learners are right now?

Hi and welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast. My name is Tim Logan. In this week's episode, I'm speaking with Allison Zamuda, who is an author, education consultant, and specialist in the area of personalized learning with two decades of expertise in curriculum, assessment, and instruction. She's also the curator of learningpersonalized.com, an online community for teacher leaders, administrators, and students. Allison co-founded Habits Personalized with her longtime friend and colleague Ben O'Callaghan, which is emerging of personalized learning with Habits of Mind. She has also recently become a co-director of the Institute for Habits of Mind, which was founded by Art Costa and Bena Kallick. Allison has also been working with another longtime friend and colleague, Heidi Hayes Jacobs, on learning sets, which are collections of content with targeted actions to engage, examine, and demonstrate with corresponding tools, tasks, and resources. Allison has authored and co-authored many books, her most recent being How to Leverage Personalized Learning in the Classroom, which she co-authored with Jill Thompson. Others include Students at the Center: Personalized Learning and Habits of Mind, Mind with Venna Kallick in 2017 and Learning Personalised: The Evolution of the Contemporary Classroom with Diane Ulman and Greg Curtis.

Hi Alison.

Hi, how are you?

I'm good, I'm good.

How are you?

Fantastic.

So to start off with, could you just give us an overview of what we mean by personalised learning?

Absolutely. So the first aspect of personalised learning to me is it's a progressively learner-driven experience. So we're trying to honor the idea of the most timeless pedagogy of them right now is gradual release of responsibility. We're trying to grow students' capacity to not only move through a series of learning targets or topics, but at the same time do that with increased independence and increased skill and sophistication. Yeah. The, the second part is that We're trying to have students engage in authentic, meaningful, and rigorous work. So every opportunity we can to present them with something, and again, something can be a driving question, a prompt, an assignment, but they have to start getting their bearings around where am I right now? Is this compelling? Is this worthy enough? And am I willing to commit my time and energy and attention? And the last part of personalized learning is that it has to demonstrate desired outcomes. And the desired outcomes are very much in alignment with the curricular expectations that we have as a local school or a state or a national or province curriculum. But at the same time, there has to be room or space for the learners to be able to set outcomes for themselves. So their aspiration, what it is that they're trying to go after or accomplish, has to be part of the puzzle in order to engage in a meaningful experience.

Yeah, so connecting in with the idea of the individualizing and how that's different, I think that's also helpful because that's sometimes a misconception that personalizing is therefore individualizing everything, so suddenly it's like 25 different things going on in the room because the 25 different individuals you've got in the room.

So the— I think the easiest way to describe it is personalizing requires the learner to engage with the teacher leader to co-create. A learner is sharing their point of view their evidence, their experience, and they're building information, ideas, and skills together. Whereas individualization, the easiest way to describe it is who's pulling the puppet strings, whether a teacher is pulling the puppet strings or a software platform is. I think the intention is that individualization is a very powerful way to have students move through an existing curriculum, but it doesn't shift the pedagogy.

No.

Yeah, what individualization does so well is that it actually has students be able to control the pace of their learning. So when is it that I'm ready for an assessment? Am I ready for the assessment on the second day of a 3-week enterprise, or I might need more than the 3 weeks allotted to me? I can rewind and replay. I can continue to get immediate feedback if it's on a software platform based on answers that are correct or incorrect. So the opportunity of individualization is again an incredibly important role, especially if we're trying to develop fluency, whether it's declarative fluency or natural fluency. But at the same time, you know, You're still following the recipe, right? Right. Yeah. And so it doesn't understand who this learner is in front of me. And again, software platforms are a very important step in the puzzle around learning, but you're doing that not to replace what the role of the teacher is. You're doing that in coordination with what the aspiration is, both of the school, the program, and the learner themselves. I think one of the major challenges right now due to coronavirus is starting to think hard about how do we move from a physical space to an online or a virtual space without meaningfully shifting the pedagogy. And that's the one drumbeat that I want to continue to focus on in terms of what personalized learning really does require, and it's not shifting from a physical direct instruction worksheet mode to something that is in, on a software platform or a virtual space. This has got to be grounded in growing the thinking of our students rather than moving them through a series of content steps.

Absolutely, and I think one of the things that I come across frequently with teachers, and I'm sure you do too, is the sense that they don't feel they have the space to, you know, move into this kind of working, the coaching and the support role, because they're on this intense treadmill towards meeting the standards. It's like, I can't stop doing what I'm doing because 'What if the students don't hit the benchmarks that I need to get them to meet in order to then be fulfilling my role?' Absolutely.

So first, I just want to quietly sort of mirror back the fear and anxiety that so many teachers are facing right now, regardless of what school you're in all across the globe. And I think the interesting dynamic of that is that level of fear and anxiety seeps into the classroom ecosystem, and trying to step back and say, how do we work as teacher leaders to clarify the aspirations so that the content may continue to move, but the overall capacities that we're trying to grow stay more the same than anything else. For example, if I want to help students learn how to ask a good question and pursue it through investigation or exploration, if that is one of the, the dispositions or skills that I am committing to as a history teacher, then I can actually trace that over time. I can actually clarify that in a rubric and in the descriptors of a rubric on what does it mean to engage in powerful inquiry. And at the same time, the content potentially can continue to shift, but the student's responsibility to do a deep dive into building my capacity as an inquirer doesn't change. Yeah. And then you can start thinking about aspects like Habits of Mind and the idea of questioning and posing problems. We model that as classroom teachers. We actually coach students on their capacity to do that by asking our own probing questions instead of rushing them through a topic or an experience. And at the same time, we're also using the opportunity to do meaningful personalizing in that regard as well. Because just because I find a question as a teacher to be absolutely fascinating doesn't mean that my kiddos do. And even if half of my class finds it fascinating, I still have to worry about where did the other ones go?

Of course. How do they find their connection in what's going on?

That's right. And so the idea of using pedagogical moves like essential questions to launch an exploration, but at the same time, continue to insist that students continue to generate a line of questioning.

Yeah.

And take those questions out for a test ride. That potentially is the way not only of going after deep thoughtful engagement in our learners, but also continues to create a level of curiosity and wonderment. And finally, the aspect of inquiry is really a driver for critical thinking and problem solving and creative ideas and communication. So that's an example of how I continue to work with teachers to start to see what is it that they truly care about, and how do I treat the content as a means to a desired end, and how do I get kids to now pay attention to those broader aspirations using my rubrics well, as opposed to having, um, scoring tools be based on one project at a time that doesn't have a legacy if I'm looking at growth or sophistication of a particular skill set.

And I mean, that's maybe a nice way to connect then with your work with Bina Kellogg in terms of the Habits of Mind, because obviously Habits of Mind have been around for a long time and it's incredible work. How did you two make the connection between the, you know, you coming from the personalized learning perspective and her from the Habits of Mind? Where did that meeting happen?

Well, it was a funny story. So I asked Bena, and I didn't know her very well at the time, to write an endorsement for Learning Personalized, the book that was about to come out in 2015. And so I— and she said, I'm happy to do that, but why don't you come over for dinner the next time you're in town? So I came over to her house for dinner and she said, you know, you know, I'm more than happy to write it, but the next book you should be writing is how to make this happen. Because she said, you know, I love the ideas that you presented, but it was, it was pretty theoretical, pretty abstract. How do you make it come alive at a classroom level? And she said, and I think the Habits of Mind would be a powerful intersection. And I looked at her, I was like, so I was like, I'm familiar with Habits of Mind, but in no way, shape, or form am I an expert at all. I would never do that without one of the authors. And she goes, done. When do we start?

Amazing.

Wow. There you go. The next book was born. That's good.

That's right. So again, um, Bena over the past, uh, 7 years had become such a dear friend and mentor. But one of the challenges that we had right out of the gate was But I said to Ben, I was like, 16 is a lot.

Yeah, it is a lot.

Can you narrow it down somehow? Because I was like, we have 16 habits of mind, and at that time we had, I think, 9 personalized learning elements, which we reduced down to 7, but so what? So it's worrisome when teachers feel like they have to manage many different things.

Yes, of course.

So it felt like a partridge in a pear tree. That's what we kept saying to each other. Of how do we make it so they're not focusing on identifying or classifying, but thinking through the meaningful intersection. The heartbeat of our work in terms of that intersection is the identification of the 4 attributes. So the 4 attributes are voice, co-creation, social construction, and self-discovery. One of the things that was fascinating in the early 2010s was when personalized learning started to become like a buzz. In its early phase, it kept— the people kept saying things like, "It's voice and choice," right? So the good news is that it rhymed. The bad news is that it didn't really clarify what that actually meant. Voice and choice, it was synonymous with differentiation. And differentiation, just like individualization, is still the property of the classroom teacher.

Yeah.

So to me, one of the things that Greg and Diane and I, as co-authors of Learning Personalized, actually try to pay attention to is co-creation. Co-creation means that the student has a seat at the design table, at the evaluation table, to clarify their thinking, to suggest ideas, within the space that the teachers are providing in terms of parameters or constraints. So the intention here is that when I start being engaged as a learner in co-creation, I'm not only elevating my voice, right, my opinion, my thoughts using data, evidence, ideas, not just an opinion or an I feel point of view. But now I can actually meaningfully engage with my teacher, with my peers, to continue to clarify ideas, investigations, problems, and challenges. So social construction is really grounded in my capacity to learn from my networks. So learning from my networks means that I'm actually seeing the value of thinking interdependently. I'm benefiting from information ideas that I am experiencing, exploring, whether the teacher sets up that opportunity for me or I'm pursuing it on my own. But it's not just that the seeking out and, and bringing information in, it's the responsibility as a social constructor to actually share what I'm learning for my network as well. And so in that way, we're bound together based on good, robust, interesting, valid, reliable information and are really continuing to prototype for other ideas, next steps, other questions that are valid and valuable. And finally, self-discovery, which is everything. It's how am I doing as a learner, not just based on what the evidence is showing me about my work, It's what am I discovering about myself and how do I do that in a way where I'm accepting what is as opposed to being resigned about what I can and can't do.

Or what you're being told by somebody else that you can and can't do.

That is correct.

Because often, often that's the way is they're internalizing the feedback that is coming from teachers as young people. And then rather than owning that journey of self-discovery or self-leadership.

Absolutely.

But also one of the things I really like about those four elements is that you could really look at them from a more organizational or professional perspective, that actually the future of work is looking much more like those four things, you know, humanizing workplaces and going to more agility at work. And there's this idea that interdisciplinary teams are co-creating and socially constructing the the value in the organization, and everybody's on their own developmental path of self-discovery to learn and grow as professionals. So it's a really interesting mirror of what I think is also transforming in the workplace in many places, as well as hopefully the way that schools are moving.

That's right. And one of the things that I'm super excited about as well as my partnership with Heidi Hayes Jacobs to start to clarify, um, what phenomenon-based learning is and how we're trying to treat that from a learner-centered or human-centered experience. And so especially when you're starting to think about the launch into a PBL pedagogical move, it does mean that most teachers do one project or two projects a year to get started. And then they go back to their regularly scheduled programming. And how can learners start to manage the difference between what, what one pedagogical structure looks like and another? And the anchor goes back to what are the broader aims that we deeply care about? We deeply care about agile and effective problem solvers. That's cool. And that could actually help you through the transition. As you're moving from one pedagogical structure to another.

Yeah. And how about if we care about agile and effective problem solvers at work from the point of view of the leadership of the school to then encourage that in this team, in the, in the staff. And that's also one of the challenges that we're working with in terms of how to run these amazing organizations to make them really enriching workplaces for the staff within them. To kind of mirror, like we were saying, the same types of things that there's voice and co-creation and social construction going on at the level of the organization for the teachers within it.

That's right, Tim. And so you basically captured the last chapter that Ben and I wrote in Students at the Center. When people bring one or both of us in to work on personalized learning with staff, for their students, we talk immediately about the idea that the 4 attributes are as relevant in the microcosm of the classroom as it is in the hierarchy of what the director is asking adults to do in the first place. I think that we are becoming more and more hardwired to increasing students' capacity to think, to struggle, to problem solve, and to create. And if that is our sort of broad aspirations, it has to be as true for the adult learner as it is true for the child. And, and to try to create that from an organizational point of view, it means that what if we didn't have seat time in terms of professional development? What if it was based on what you're capable of doing. And so now I'm starting to think about the zone of proximal development for educators, not just for kiddos.

Yeah, absolutely. But it also, I mean, again, it comes back to this idea of trust at a very deep level within the organization. I've been using the cognitive coaching model from Art and Robert Garston, you know, the way that they frame it really, that the sun that's, that's allowing the rest of the thing to grow in their diagram is trust. Within, within the classroom of the students, but within the organization of the teachers.

Yeah, so it's interesting. I mean, I love what you're mentioning about Art Costa and Bob Garmston's work on cognitive coaching, and it's really the same spirit, and it's not brand new pedagogy from a professional point of view, but you're starting to see the synergy of ideas sort of gelling together. The power of cognitive coaching is really grounded in how can we create a more flexible, agile learning organization so that we care deeply about the learners or learners that are in our space in a way that we can grow their capacity. But we can't do a one-size-fits-all model of professional development or supervisory development. We have to start thinking hard about in what ways is the learner, whether it's a teacher of a couple of dozen years or it is a 12-year-old, what has the learner experienced so far? What are evidence or snapshots that are relevant to examine together based on our our overall performance target or broader vision we have as an organization? And how can I meaningfully work with them to grow their capacity as opposed to making sure that this particular initiative is accomplished? So I think that's— One of the things that I always get very concerned about, especially in this space, is that if personalized learning is an initiative, we've already lost. Personalized learning is a mindset. It's a way of stepping back and saying, what are we here to do as a system of educators? Yeah. And how can we continue to step back and re— calibrate our thinking in service to the desired outcomes we're hoping to accomplish and where our learners are right now.

Yeah, yeah. So here's a question that came from a conversation I had with Diane, actually, Diane Ullman, but about how you shift. So if you're talking about mindsets, if you want to really address people's mindsets, and that, you know, it's everywhere in terms of growth mindset, agile mindset, you know, this idea of a way of thinking in order to kind of really get into the heart of what's going on is such a powerful idea. But one of Diane's kind of nuggets of wisdom that I took from working with her was you shift mindsets by changing practice.

That's right.

And is that— would you agree with that in terms of—

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. And you shift mindsets by changing practice in small ways. So it's not, I'm going to design this massive project and then I'm going to be doing something. I think oftentimes we get so far into our own design mode that we don't take things out for a test drive until we still feel like it's closer to being pretty polished and perfect. And so the interesting part is How do I start shifting practices that are continuing to get my students involved in the 4 attributes? So to what extent can I take any assignment and start to think about how can I use this as an opportunity to grow a little more voice, a little more social construction? So I can take something as simple as any traditional worksheet and step back and try to think through what does this all have in common instead of having kids move through the experience one problem or one question at a time. What if teachers actually asked the learners to analyze assignments with them? So what's the value of a particular assignment after they finished it as opposed to making this as an assumption that It's an excuse for not to do anything at all, but to try to say, what did I learn from this experience? In what ways did it actually push my thinking? In what ways was it just basically a flatline where I was basically working as more of a low-level bureaucrat as opposed to somebody that was pushed to think deeply? And the interesting thing is that out of 22 kids, there may be very different explanations of what pushed my thinking and where did I sort of stay at a superficial level. To me, that is an immediate practice that any grade-level teacher, and it's subject area neutral, that can actually be done, but it also is honoring the work place that kids are walking into right now, where we care more about what their capacity is to make sense of a problem, challenge, or idea, rather than the hierarchy.

So to wrap up kind of where we started, what I observe is there's a huge amount of conversation going on about all of these topics. So there's a, there's a large awareness of the fact that these things need to happen, but there are also a lot of challenges and barriers built into the current way the system is structured that tend to push back in the other direction. So how are you feeling in terms of optimism about the future?

That's a lovely and also wildly complicated question. Yeah, really. So I think that the easy answer is that in this profession, you have to be hardwired for optimism because otherwise you probably You probably need to move on. But I think the reality is that there are a handful of timeless challenges that we still have to sort of sort our way through. Thinking about the learning through an equity lens, thinking about learning through an opportunity gap lens, because no longer are we focusing it just thinking about an achievement gap, but we want to graduate learners after their high school experience being capable of engaging in any kind of post-secondary opportunity. So that is an increasingly big deal to me. And I think the third part is the difference between what powerful learning looks like. And to what extent has it become dismantled by this, by the learners themselves. My daughter, when she was learning to play the ukulele, she basically asked me to buy a ukulele for her, and I said, so how are you going to learn how to play? She goes, on YouTube. So I think the interesting part is like They're doing things like that that are self-generated, self-started. That doesn't mean that we need to turn it back into a traditional way of instructing, because that was my initial thing. I was like, should I find somebody that teaches ukulele? I got that.

I got it.

But I think the interesting part is how do we coach our learners through a powerful experience, whether it's the ukulele or the periodic table. You know, we can continue to make progress over time, not only because of our persistence and commitment to the work, but at the same time stepping back and thinking flexibly, looking at it from another angle, continuing to better understand, like you and I are doing right now to better understand the commonality of the learning challenges that teachers face all around the world, but at the same time benefiting from the community of learners as we all are as adults to think through and do better. I think that's the heartbeat of education.

Absolutely.

It's doing better.

Super exciting, definitely. So awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Yeah, brilliant. Thanks, Alison.

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