Distributed leadership for personalized learning

Abstract

Personalized learning refers to a collection of practices designed to place student interests and needs at the heart of schooling. Schools that implement personalized learning need leaders that support educators and students in redesigning the core practices of teaching and learning in K-12 schools. To answer the question of how leaders support this redesign, we use distributed leadership theory to focus on the macrotasks and microtasks that leaders enact to create the conditions for personalized learning practices. Drawing on a five-year, qualitative study of 11 personalized learning programs in the Midwest, we identify three macrotasks supporting personalized learning: reorganizing learning environments to support student voice and choice, assembling idiosyncratic technology ecosystems to distribute teaching and learning tasks, and redesigning instructional time to prioritize student’s interests, agency, and learning relationships. After we describe a number of microtasks associated with each macrotask, we discuss how a consideration of these kinds of leadership tasks can open the contemporary discussion of personalized learning from a narrow focus on learning technologies to an expansive vision of student-centered school reform.

Keywords:

• Personalized learning
• distributed leadership
• technology
• student-centered pedagogy

Additional information

Funding

The research reported here was supported by the Joyce Foundation, The University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education (R372A150031). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of our supporters.

Notes on contributors

Julie M. Kallio

Julie Kallio is a doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin - Madison studying innovation and improvement in K-12 schools. Her research interests include research-practice partnerships, participatory design, social networks, and physical learning spaces.

Richard Halverson

Rich Halverson is a Professor in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis and the Associate Dean for Innovation, Outreach and Partnerships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research aims to bring the methods and practices of the Learning Sciences to educational leadership and interactive media. He is a former high school teacher and administrator, and earned an MA in Philosophy and a PhD in the Learning Sciences from Northwestern University.