EDUCATION, MARKETS AND THE PEDAGOGY OF PERSONALISATION

ABSTRACT:  The marketisation of education in England began in the 1980s. It was facilitated by national testing (which gave objective and comparable information to parents), and by the New Public Management (which introduced a posteriori funding and competition among providers). Now a new complementary phase of marketisation is being introduced: personalisation, whose intellectual provenance is in marketing theory. Conceptually, personalisation is imprecise; practically, at this stage, its intended effects within schools may amount to no more than a new legitimatory rhetoric which leaves pedagogy and the curriculum little changed.     

The logic of data-sense: thinking through Learning Personalisation

Big Data and Learning Analytics’ promise to revolutionise educational institutions, endeavours, and actions through more and better data is now compelling. Multiple, and continually updating, data sets produce a new sense of ‘personalised learning’. A crucial attribute of the datafication, and subsequent profiling, of learner behaviour and engagement is the continual modification of the learning environment to induce greater levels of investment on the parts of each learner. The assumption is that more and better data, gathered faster and fed into ever-updating algorithms, provide more complete tools to understand, and therefore improve, learning experiences through adaptive personalisation. The argument in this paper is that Learning Personalisation names a new logistics of investment as the common ‘sense’ of the school, in which disciplinary education is ‘both disappearing and giving way to frightful continual training, to continual monitoring'.     

Coping,confidence and alienation: the early experience of trainee teachers in English further education

Summer 2009 saw the introduction in England of the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL). Funded in full by the Training and Development Agency for Schools, the MTL aims to improve the quality of teaching and to raise standards in schools. In this paper we discuss what the MTL might mean both for in‐service teacher education and initial teacher training. We explore issues relating to the structure and delivery of MTL including the tension between standardisation and personalisation of its content as well as the lack of focus on research and the costs of this to its reputation and appeal of the qualification. Furthermore, we question the extent to which newly qualified teachers are ready to benefit from undertaking the MTL and consider how availability criteria may give rise to equity issues. With these concerns in mind we discuss the future of the MTL and whether this Labour initiative will have a chance to prove itself under a Conservative‐led coalition government at a time of severe austerity.     

A means of personalising learning: incorporating old and new literacies in the curriculum with mobile phones

This article explores a notion of ‘personalising learning’ which puts the learner at the centre, supported by mobile technology and teacher mediation. It reports a small study in the Northern Territory of Australia, with indigenous students who were given mobile camera phones to capture aspects of their everyday lives and bring them into school. It found that they created a range of narratives that linked their traditional literacies with ‘new literacies’. The article argues that, using tools like these, students can contribute to their curriculum. However, it raises issues of cultural differences between teachers and students, and the importance of developing critical literacy in conjunction with new communication forms and other new literacies. Finally it points to the important role of teachers in leading change in school cultures, and particularly assessment, that will allow these personal contributions to learners' curricula.     

Intelligent and adaptive tutoring for active learning and training environments

Active learning facilitated through interactive and adaptive learning environments differs substantially from traditional instructor-oriented, classroom-based teaching. We present a web-based e-learning environment that integrates knowledge learning and skills training. How these tools are used most effectively is still an open question. We propose knowledge-level interaction and adaptive feedback and guidance as central features. We discuss these features and evaluate the effectiveness of this web-based environment, focusing on different aspects of learning behaviour and tool usage. Motivation, acceptance of the approach, learning organisation and actual tool usage are aspects of behaviour that require different evaluation techniques to be used.     

The activities and impact of personalisation in a UK business school

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to consider the activities and impact of personalisation in a UK higher education setting. It considered how personalisation has affected outputs in terms of progression, achievement, internship, enterprise project and international placement uptake within the Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with members of the personalisation team and those delivering personalisation. The quantitative data pertains to outputs in terms of success rates, particularly with regard to when the personalisation project began, in 2015/16. The findings suggest that the personalisation process involved engagement, interaction and reflection to meet the needs and requirements of the learner; it also provided them with options. This contributes to improving success rates, particularly when the Personalisation project began.     

From numerical to comprehensive inclusion: utilizing experiences in the USA and South Africa to conceptualize a multicultural environment

This paper offers a critique of approaches to racial inclusion in the USA, and recommends that institutions of higher education adopt a more comprehensive approach. In particular, it argues that most approaches to racial inclusion in the USA focus on increasing the numbers of racially diverse students, or numerical inclusion. Despite the relative success of this approach, inequalities experienced by African American and other minority-group students attending predominantly white universities suggest that a more comprehensive approach to inclusion should be pursued. A comprehensive approach to inclusion would involve an examination of institutional characteristics to determine how policies, practices and programmes challenge African American and other minority-group students' success. For example, such an approach would involve a reconceptualization of the measures used to determine access, the nature and structure of curricula and teaching pedagogy.     

The Form of Content Personalisation at Mainstream,Transatlantic News Outlets: 2010–2016

ABSTRACT

In October 2016 the New York Times announced new content personalisation features for its websites and mobile apps, with the promise of “much more to come”. This article examines such developments via a quantitative content analysis of personalisation features at 15 major news outlets in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany and via interviews with senior editorial staff at some of those outlets. Both websites and mobile apps were studied, allowing comparisons to be made across platforms as well as geographically. Longitudinal comparisons were also made against an equivalent survey conducted in 2010. The results reveal significant changes over the last six years with, for example, rises in personalisation on mobile platforms, falls in the use of recommendations by friends, and convergence and commodification in content recommendation platforms. This study provides evidence to support continued debates on classical concerns such as selective exposure, but also raises new concerns about the effects of personalisation, including data protection and security issues.     

Inquiry-based learning: personalisation or the rehabilitation of human value

In this article I argue that the concept of personalisation is simply rhetorical unless it facilitates theory and practice which takes seriously and engages with the value of the human person. The idea of human value is a fundamental theme in social and cultural life and the motor behind many psychological and social processes. Traditionally, knowledge presented as abstract and top down, and education systems which are driven by targets and economic imperatives, can unwittingly contribute to human devaluation by marginalising the personal, the idiosyncratic and the particular. The model of inquiry-based learning discussed here offers pedagogical strategies which attend to the self who is learning, as well as facilitating learners in engaging with the moral questions of human value embedded in processes of knowledge construction.