Page 43 - Looking_after_school

1. Today's discourse: why should the student be at the center of education?

Personalised learning is the way in which our best schools tailor educa-
tion to ensure that every pupil achieves the highest standard possible.”
(Miliband, 2004, pp. 23 - 24)

On the one hand, personalised learning is about achieving the high-
est possible objectives; but on the other hand, the focus is placed on
involving students from the onset in the organisation of their learn-
ing process and motivating them to realise as much as possible. The
starting point is that students must be addressed as unique persons
who participate in all the phases of the learning process, including in
processes of goal setting as well as determining where and when these
goals will be realised and evaluated. Thus, the entire learning process
is personalised. There is a double intention here: raising motivation
and wellbeing, but also ensuring that every person achieves the high-
est possible goals. Taking the unique traits of the person as a starting
point encourages an orientation towards achievement.
A specific perspective which is closely related to personal learning
and personalised education, at least in terms of its problematisa-
tion, is that of ‘accelerated learning’ (Rose, 1985). The starting point
here is that everybody has a proper learning style, and that learning
is natural when you use techniques and methods that fit that learn-
ing style. This natural progress of learning runs an easy course and
is then, consequently, also faster. This perspective, like many others
which focus primarily on the individual learner, gives a neurological
underpinning to its vision on learning and education. Inspiration is
frequently found through insights from neuropsychology and educa-
tional neuroscience into brain functions, but also in the well-known
theory of Gardner (1995) about multiple intelligences (even though he
has relatively different views himself; Gardner, 1995, 2011). In accelerated
learning it is assumed that there are differences in intelligence between
students and that everybody also has different sensory preferences.
This determines the personal learning style, which should direct the
choice of teaching methods and techniques. This perspective prob-
lematises maladjusted techniques because they are discouraging and
non-efficient.

To summarise, the perspective of differentiation problematises every
form of education that does not take individual needs, or even every

43