Personalized education refers to providing learning experiences tailored to each student’s interests and learning styles. It also implies student-directed and self-managed learning. Teachers may individualize instruction in a classroom setting but admit that this is hard to accomplish given the competing need to cover subject matter material. Students are given choices within a larger topic or curriculum theme or as promoted by an approach known as problem-based learning.
Beyond this, non-subject based schools have allowed and encouraged students to select any topic that interests them. That is usually done is through a program of project-based learning promoted by EdVisions and the book, Passion For Learning. One example: a junior high student selected skateboarding. That led to wanting to establish a skateboarding park in the community. That involved discussions with city government, zoning laws and costs. The student examined other skateboard parks, drew up estimates, calculated costs, created drawings and in the process learned about construction, physics, graphics, writing, mathematics, civics and research. Motivation for school went from zero to 100 in weeks. Democratic schools, some homeschoolers and unschoolers are generally familiar with this approach.
The world’s leading center for personalized education is the Centre for Personalized Education located Bramcote, England. They publish a newsletter, Personalized Education Now and unremittingly support students in what they will study, how and when believing that greater motivation, broader learning, deeper learning, and lifelong learning will result. Provides links to numerous related organizations including the Educational Heretics Press with important radical education books.They also have a delightful, powerful 4 minute annimation of the key points and contrasts between personalized and conventional education.