Reclaiming Personalized Learning: A Pedagogy for Restoring Equity and Humanity in Our Classrooms

by Paul Emerich France

Overview

Put the person back in personalization with a touch of humanity.

It’s a paradox: technology to individualize curriculum has made classrooms less personal. In the second edition of this groundbreaking book, Paul France presents a vision of humanized personalization that rejects the corporate mindset and instead holds equity and inclusion at its center. Features include:

• Practical guidance on designing inclusive learning environments for diverse groups
• Sustainable applications for humanized personalization in curriculum design, assessment, and instruction
• Real-life stories from the author’s experience on both sides of the personalization debate
• A multitude of classroom tools, adaptable to a variety of instructional contexts

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781071875919
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	03/22/2022
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	442,349
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Paul Emerich France is a National Board Certified Teacher, adjunct professor, and education consultant, dedicated to helping all learners feel seen, heard, and valued in the classroom. Paul has authored over 20 pieces, including articles in prominent publications like Educational Leadership, The Learning Professional, and the International Association’s Literacy Today, and blogs in Edutopia, Ed Surge, and Education Week. He is also the author of Humanizing Distance Learning: Centering Equity and Humanity in Times of Crisis and an upcoming book with ASCD on #Sustainable Teaching.

Paul has taught in both public and independent schools, ranging from transitional kindergarten to fifth grade. He spent three years working in Silicon Valley, working for an education technology company, founding three microschools and building personalized learning software for the classroom. It was this experience that secured Paul’s understanding of human-centered pedagogy that prioritizes humanity over technology.

Now, Paul is a sought-after writer and speaker. He serves as a keynote speaker, featured presenter, and workshop facilitator. He has also recently begun partnering with schools in various parts of the country, offering workshop facilitation, team-based and individualized coaching, and consulting with administration teams on vision and implementation of personalized learning. His teaching and thought leadership has been featured in the Atlantic, WIRED, SXSW EDU, and the New Yorker. Above all else, he enjoys connecting with his students and fellow teachers, encouraging all to have courageous conversations about identity to make learning personal for adults and children alike.

Table of Contents

Section One: Foundations
Chapter 1: Personalization Myths
Chapter 2: Teaching in Three Dimensions
Section Two: Pedagogy
Chapter 3 Centering Humanity Through Learner Agency
Chapter 4: Curriculum and Assessment as a Flexible Frame
Chapter 5: Humanizing Teaching to Personalize Learning
Section Three: Equity
Chapter 6: A Sense of Belonging
Chapter 7: Justice

Editorial Reviews

If you want to truly understand what personalized learning is and isn’t, and how to implement it in your classroom, Reclaiming Personalized Learning: A Pedagogy for Restoring Equity and Humanity in Our Classrooms is the book for you! The focus on the whole child and the importance of their social, emotional, and academic development, is helped by the quality of students’ relationships and the context in which they live and learn. As I know well as an NBCT, relationships cannot be disentangled from how learning occurs.

Peggy Brookings

"A compelling and critically important book for our time. Many schools are rushing to offer “personalized learning”, usually assuming that means individualized learning,with limited evidence for its impact. In this wise book Paul Emerich France considers the nature of powerful personalization. With rich stories of teaching and learning he considers ways to create the most positive learning experiences possible. "

Jo Boaler

Reading this book has been a game changer for me and the staff at Portland Elementary. It continues to challenge our thinking and pushes us closer to our vision that all learners will receive experiences that are tailored to their specific academic, social, and cultural needs. This book is always close by, and I reference it often for inspiration and strategy. This is a must read for anyone looking to deepen rigor and engage EVERY student.

Michelle Perkins

"In these troubled times, this book is more than a breath of fresh air, it is a call to action. Paul gives us an accessible and sophisticated book that explains how and why we should celebrate the humanity of every single student. "

Jim Knight

"Reclaiming Personalized Learning: A Pedagogy for Restoring Equity and Humanity in our Classrooms is both wise and smart, both visionary and sane. It is both poetic and approachable, both challenging and affirming. Its author is deeply knowledgeable about technology and deeply skeptical of the likelihood that technology-centered pedagogy will better teaching and learning in today’s schools. He is wary of adopting “personalization” as the next new thing, and yet offers a vision of personalization that is restorative.

"It has been a long, long time since I have read a book that has challenged me as often or energized me as deeply as this book has. I wish that same experience for legions of other educators who care to create schools and classrooms that make us all more fully human. "

Carol Ann Tomlinson

Beginning 20 years ago, many of us began advocating for personalized learning only to be disappointed by the digital dullness of online worksheets that replaced the printed version. Video playlists were only slightly better. The backlash of interest-based learning created the opposite problem of unstructured unchallenging play.

In his new book, Reclaiming Personalized Learning, Paul France shows us how to create agency and autonomy in the middle ground between authoritarianism and anarchy, both of which act in opposition to personalizing learning. His advice is conceptually sound and practical for all of us still searching for the promise of personalized learning.

Tom Vander Ark

"Personalized learning does not mean simply assigning students piles of independent work. Reclaiming Personalized Learning provides the path for authentic and relevant personalized learning that delivers on the promise of equity. Simply said, students in classrooms where these are implemented will thrive. "

Douglas Fisher

In this brilliant book by a dedicated practitioner, Paul France makes a powerful case for humanizing the process of personalized learning and shows us how to do it. He describes how real personalization requires a carefully constructed classroom culture, regular dialogue and social interaction, and individual reflection. This book is a major contribution to the reimagination of learning and teaching for the 21st century and should be essential reading for new and experienced teachers alike. "

Tony Wagner

“Drawing from years of experiences and insights about teaching, Paul France has produced a timely and necessary book that will help educators humanize distance learning. By co-constructing with students and families norms of trust, collective problem solving and advocacy, educators are challenged to reflect on the best of their established toolkit while simultaneously co-creating new ways to build communities of learning. Recognizing incredible dimensions of complexity, this book will surely help educators traverse times of uncertainty in distance learning.”

H. Richard Milner IV

Reclaiming Personalized Learning opens our eyes to the five myths of personalized learning so we know what we can do to personalize learning in a humanizing way. There are many books on personalized learning including my own, but I have to applaud France for addressing why schools need to step back and rethink what personalized learning means by focusing on the whole child. Throughout his book, France weaves in stories, pedagogy, learning theories, equity, and the idea of humanizing learning that has the potential to change the way students actualize their agency and autonomy within the personalized classroom. I highly recommend Reclaiming Personalized Learning to all educators who want strategies, resources, ideas, and the rationale to personalize learning.

Barbara Bray