Opinion
Ed-Tech Policy Opinion

Is Silicon Valley Standardizing ‘Personalized’ Learning?

Tech-driven personalization is still a hazy concept
By Natalia Kucirkova — May 29, 2018 4 min read
BRIC ARCHIVE
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

With more than 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, Facebook has an effective monopoly on digital news and information distribution. Any troubling behavior on the site has the power to affect many lives. The recent case of Cambridge Analytica’s mining of Facebook data for political means is an invasion of personal privacy on a whole new level. But Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s seemingly helpful support of technology-driven personalized education represents a different kind of monopolizing threat that we shouldn’t overlook.

Personalized learning, or tailoring curricula and instruction to students’ academic needs and personal interests, seems to mean a lot to Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan—at least according to their investment moves. More than two years ago, they announced plans to invest hundreds of millions annually in whole-child personalized learning through their limited-liability company, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Just this month, they gave $14 million to support schools in Chicago, both public and private. And they recently teamed up with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund and develop a host of education initiatives, including personalizing math instruction.

They are doing so despite criticism from academic circles that technology-driven personalization undermines teachers’ professionalism and promotes specialist over general education. Not to mention, personalized learning is still a hazy concept that means different things to different educators. Though many school leaders see its promise, it’s not cheap or easy to implement.

In fact, Silicon Valley’s keen interest in shaping the personalized-learning agenda could create a one-sided model that undermines the diverse nature of education.

When done well, personalized learning can empower students to create their own projects and learning paths and provide tailored academic support. In my own work with personalized reading instruction, I have seen its potential for motivating children to read.

Personalization’s code will not be cracked by its current business- and technology-driven approach."

But sticking commercial technology’s heavy hand into the mix concerns me. Tech-based platforms have the potential to standardize learning through a commercialization of knowledge and a product-centric approach to children’s education, with no agency or reciprocity for the learner. Schools that are too quick to adopt platforms may hurt their capacity to provide learning experiences that are not technology-mediated, such as outdoor education, physical libraries, or music classes. It’s a move away from human-centered teaching and a failure to acknowledge that learning is more than absorbing facts in nice packaging.

Take Chan Zuckerberg’s 2016 $50 million backing of BYJU’s—an India-based math and science-learning platform. BYJU’s learning app offers more than 1,000 hours of videos with practice questions and content, but focuses on motivation through preferred learning styles at the expense of classroom debates and face-to-face teaching. And when AltSchool, a private education startup funded by Silicon Valley investors (including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative), beta-tested personalized education, parents complained their children were treated like guinea pigs.

The current technology-based education models also rely heavily on algorithmic business-minded personalization: the idea that users will buy (or engage with) items that they, or those they know, have engaged with before. However, applying the same logic to education goes against the idea of discovery learning. As the late mathematician Seymour Papert theorized, children learn through mistakes, experimentation, and testing hypotheses. True, our current education system does not always offer children what Papert envisioned. But serving prepackaged content doesn’t help students who need open-ended learning spaces where they can explore.

Chan Zuckerberg’s approach is not going to solve the long-term ills plaguing public education. Just like personalized marketing narrows the choice of products to buy, so, too, could personalized education narrow children’s perspectives to learn. For optimal learning outcomes, the deployment of any technology in schools needs to be guided by personalized pluralization. This approach acknowledges that children’s learning needs should not only be tailored to individuals’ aspirations, but must also consider multiple perspectives.

If schools are to continue raising caring, creative, confident, and critical thinkers, the personalization algorithms also need to be more transparent, so that educators and families who know students best can edit and adapt their content and delivery. Any collaboration between technology companies and schools should be based on the authentic involvement of family, education, and research communities.

Personalization’s code will not be cracked by its current business- and technology-driven approach. Investments—by Chan Zuckerberg or any other funders—need to help optimize the balance between learning for personal interests and the collective good. In its current implementation, the initiative’s personalized approach swings the education pendulum toward a faceless extreme.

A version of this article appeared in the May 30, 2018 edition of Education Week as Is Silicon Valley Standardizing Learning?

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Reading & Literacy Webinar
The Future of the Science of Reading
Join us for a discussion on the future of the Science of Reading and how to support every student’s path to literacy.
Content provided by HMH
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
College & Workforce Readiness Webinar
From Classrooms to Careers: How Schools and Districts Can Prepare Students for a Changing Workforce
Real careers start in school. Learn how Alton High built student-centered, job-aligned pathways.
Content provided by TNTP
Student Well-Being Live Online Discussion A Seat at the Table: The Power of Emotion Regulation to Drive K-12 Academic Performance and Wellbeing
Wish you could handle emotions better? Learn practical strategies with researcher Marc Brackett and host Peter DeWitt.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Ed-Tech Policy How One Principal Got Kids to Pay Attention in Class
Utah principal Shauna Haney brought about one of the first classroom cellphone bans in the state.
2 min read
Cellphone wearing a sleep mask. Cellphone policy.
Irina Shatilova/iStock
Ed-Tech Policy Could a Digital Driver’s License Help Students Manage Their Cellphone Use?
Experts say that schools need to teach students healthy cellphone habits, even if their devices are banned at school.
5 min read
Telephone, Mobile Phone, Hand, Smart Phone, Social media, Engagement, Social Issues, Technology, The Media, Scrolling
iStock/Getty Images
Ed-Tech Policy Q&A A Researcher Studied a High School's Cellphone Ban. Here's What She Found
A professor spent the past year surveying teachers on the use of a phone-free policy in their high school.
3 min read
Illustration of a young woman turning off her mobile phone which is even bigger than she is.
iStock/Getty
Ed-Tech Policy Q&A To Ban or Not to Ban? Two Experts Sound Off on School Cellphone Restrictions
States and school districts are rushing to restrict student smartphone use. But is it the right move?
6 min read
Image with a check mark and an x to show support for cellphones or not.
Nadia Bormotova/iStock/Getty