In quoting the idea of the second part of the famous American film "Back to the Future", which was produced in 1989 - directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd - the Qatar Exhibition and Convention Center hosted on the sidelines of the WISE Summit for Education and Innovation currently taking place in the Qatari capital. Doha: A symposium entitled "Back to the Future... Personalized Learning after the Epidemic".
Corona pandemic and back to the future
But what does the movie have to do with education and Corona?
The Truth, as the panelists say: Mehdi Benchaaban (Executive Director of Innovation and Learning, Qatar Foundation), Elias Falfoul (Director of Partnerships and Development at WISE), Jonathon Bardawil (Regional Head of Policy and Insights, The Economist Impact), and Isabel Howe (Impact Foundation), and an introduction The symposium, Anna C. Rowland (publisher and CEO, Diplomatic Courier magazine), the Corona crisis had the credit for putting the world in a state of anticipation for the future, as it forced them to deal with the pandemic and closures in a different way, and to use technology in new areas, including education.
This pandemic has put the field of education in front of the future, which gives great importance to one of the most important concepts of education in the future, which is "special education".
Meaning of "custom education"
What is "personalized education" then?
The term "personalized education", which emerged in the early 1960s, refers to a group of concepts, including: self-learning, individualized instruction, personal learning environment, and direct orientation of efforts to design instruction and meet the different requirements of students.
Education UK defines personalized education as “a range of learning experiences and teaching strategies designed to meet the different learning needs, interests and diverse backgrounds of learners”.
Similarly, LEAP, an American network dedicated to learning, has 3 guidelines for defining the term personalized learning;
she:
Pay attention to what learners bring to education and not what they need from it.
That everyone succeeds with customizing education to his needs.
That each student brings strength to specialized education.
Parents and teachers still carry old ideas and concepts about the educational process that are not suitable for the era of the digital industrial revolution (Pixabe)
Technology is not the problem
Adopting personalized education in school learning systems is not easy. In addition to the need to invest in technology, research reviewed by Jonathon Bardawil indicates that the biggest obstacle in the transition towards personalized education is culture, as there will be a great need for educational and procedural change to achieve the desired result.
The idea of personalizing learning is very important and popular among teachers, but there is some uncertainty about the meaning of the phrase.
Teachers attribute it only to lesson designs and technology choice, not to learner leadership.
Here another problem appears, which is the understanding of parents and students of the idea that the learner leads the lesson and not the teacher, and their lack of conviction of the efficacy of this process, which appears as a burden on the student and parents.
Although the Corona pandemic imposed this concept on the world, as many students were forced to use technology in the educational process, and rely on it, the concept of “allocation of education” is still absent, due to the culture of users, not to a lack or defect in technology.
Mahdi Bouchaaban attributed the reason for the misunderstanding of parents and children of the process of shifting towards a personalized education to the size of the change that we are talking about. Try it before the pandemic.
Elias Falful says that parents and teachers still carry old ideas and concepts about the educational process;
The current educational system dates back to the last century and is certainly not suitable for the current era, the era of the digital industrial revolution. Therefore, these concepts must be changed, especially with the strong entry of technology into the educational system.
In this context, the interviewer, Mahdi Bouchaaban, asked about the relationship between technology and “specific education,” and he explained that to know the relationship, the goal of “specific education” must be specified, especially since “this concept carries many meanings as we knew previously, and based on our identification of the goal, it will be achieved through appropriate tools. That includes technology, and it may be the most important in some fields.”
To know the relationship between personalized education and technology, the goal of the personalized education process must be determined first (Al Jazeera)
How do we solve this dilemma?
One of the attendees asked what should be done to encourage students, teachers and parents to adopt this type of education. Jonathon replied that their research suggests 4 steps that can help schools provide awareness to parents and students.
The first step: Finding different and better ways to measure and demonstrate the effectiveness of personalized education.
Without evidence to support findings that support the importance of personalizing learning, especially among older school systems, teachers will be reluctant to move forward with this major change, according to James Recabo of the Institute for Personalization Learning.
The second step: Perhaps the most important step, which is the extent to which the customized learning fits with the learner’s personality compared to the current education system, as the current education standards depend on traditional methods.
James Recabo says that personalized learning does not depend on test scores as in the current education system, but rather on developing 21st century skills, such as critical thinking and problem solving.
Therefore, experimenting with measurement and evaluation systems that place more value on these skills could be key to facilitating the adoption of personalized learning.
The third step relates to the need for technologists and educators to work more closely together. This can help improve the types of products and technologies available to educators, and in turn may help reformulate and develop better measures of success.
Fourth Step: It is necessary to encourage parents and students to adopt this curriculum and help develop it.
While teachers did indeed show very high levels of support for personalized learning, there was a lack of enthusiasm among students and parents.
Many parents see this as a significant change from the way they have been taught, and for some students this is an extra demand for self-reliance, and it can be hard work.
The Corona pandemic has gone and left us with personalized education
The compound pandemic may have taken us towards the future to develop our old concepts of education, and perhaps it is a forward-looking vision, but it will certainly inspire humanity to move towards changing the old convictions of education methods and new concepts, and it is certain that education after the pandemic will not be the same as it was before it.