Food for Thought: Personalized learning in international contexts

Some THOUGHT about “Food for Thought”

Teachers in Externato de Penafirme (Portugal) reflect on their experience

with personalized learning in an ERASMUS+ Project

1. Introduction

After over a decade of participating in a variety of European school exchange projects, we are convinced of two things: a) the importance of projects which permit students to learn from and with each other in European exchanges and b) the need to reflect about this learning experience in a more structured way.

As the Dutch and Bulgarian partner schools expressed the same need and intention, this present project has been created. Based on their experience, the Dutch colleagues suggested centring it on “Personalized Learning”. We agreed, hoping to learn from their experience in this area as well as from the experiences which we would make in the context of the project.

After 2 years of project work, we can now conclude that this project really has been a worthwhile, fascinating and extremely inspiring experience and we are happy to share our reflection about it with you.

Our Thought is structured as follows:

a) After all, what is personalized learning all about? The learning question(s) of the teachers in Externato de Penafirme

b) Personalized learning in a European school partnership: how did we make it work? (a description)

c) Reflection about our experience d) Conclusions. Some answers and (several) new questions

2. After all, what is personalized learning all about? The learning question(s) of the teachers in Externato de Penafirme

Even a quick and superficial research in the Internet makes it clear: the term “personalized learning” refers to an extremely diverse variety of educational programs, learning experiences, instructional approaches, and academic support strategies. All of them are intended to address the distinct learning needs, interests, aspirations, or cultural backgrounds of individual students. i

Normally, personalized learning is contrasted to so called “one-size-fits-all” approaches, to “traditional schooling”, to “teacher-led instruction”, to closed curricula which prescribe the same results for all students. Some other authors make clear that personalized learning is not the same as individualized learningii; neither does it mean unlimited choice for the students nor passivity of the teacher. Personalization is also about starting from and using “a student’s individual abilities, sensibilities, and competencies (…) – to develop his aptitudes, capabilities, and talents.”iii Personalized learning is not the opposite of social learning; in fact, many authors stress the importance of learning in the group.iv In short: It starts with the learner!

It has been this expression which kindled our curiosity, due to a surprising (or maybe not so surprising?) coincidence: The document which describes the fundamental orientation and characteristics of Externato de Penafirme (Projeto Educativo) states explicitly that the person of each student stands at the centre of education in our school!v

Thus it became easy to formulate our teachers’ learning question:

In which way can approaches and strategies of personalized learning be helpful and inspiring when it comes to implementing this priority stated in the basic document of our school? What are the lessons we can draw from our experience in this project?

More precisely:

- In which way did elements of personalized learning shape the activities of the project? - How did the students react to them? - What difficulties did we experience? - What “convinced” us? What would we like to keep for further European projects? - What would we like to transfer to our classroom activity? How could that be done?

3. Personalized Learning in a European school partnership: how did we make it work?

In the Food for Thought project, students’ learning occurred in two distinct, yet not totally separated fields: - learning in intercultural encounter - learning by doing thematic research

3.1 Learning in intercultural encounter

It is this first field which, by the students, is clearly referred to as the most important one for them. They sign up as participants because they want to make an experience of intercultural encounter and learn from it. It is the positive experience in this area (or the difficulties a student experiences) which students describe clearly as their most relevant learning.

This learning occurs mostly in informal ways: in the contact of the student with his/her partner, in the contact with the hosting family, in the mixed group of students from all 3 schools. Here, basically anything in any place can stimulate curiosity and questioning and,

thus, trigger learning experiences (for example: eating habits in the Netherlands or bathrooms in Bulgarian apartments).

Some cultural activities organized by the schools as part of the official programme of the exchange amplify even further this basket of learning opportunities: for example, baking traditional Bulgarian bread, folk-dancing, visits to Amsterdam or to a traditional village in Bulgaria, participating in a traditional holiday, a karaoke night, planning and cooking together for the “Food Market” on the last day.

How did we try to “guide” and monitor students in this cultural learning experience? The following instruments proved to be quite useful:

a) Personal Logbook/Diary: each student registers, daily and in written form, his/her significant experiences and reflects about them. The logbooks helped us to detect early difficulties of students and intervene, when necessary.

b) Diary integrated in the blog: in the 1st year of the project, students were encouraged to elaborate a reflection text about their cultural learning and integrate it into the blog (kind of a summary of the diary). Due to the lack of time, only a reduced number of students managed to do so. Neither seemed it to be a very attractive activity for the students. In the 2nd year, we suggested to the students to include in their blog a common diary about their (common) learning experience in the project. This suggestion turned out to stimulate the exchange of impressions and learning experiences between the partners and had some interesting results. (for example: https://f4tbgnl17.wordpress.com/2016/01/31/day-1/ https://f4tbgpt18.wordpress.com/diary/ https://f4tbgpt07.wordpress.com/diary-2/ )

c) Dialogue teacher-students (informally as well as during one or two formal meetings in the national group)

d) Evaluation forms at the end of each exchange.

Furthermore, before the first moment of exchange, students received some “hints” as to the cultural differences they might encounter in Bulgaria and The Netherlands (for example: use of bicycles and mealtimes in The Netherlands).

In the first year of the project, we also suggested to the students to formulate a “personal /cultural learning question”. This turned out to be a difficult task for most of them as for the large majority of our students the participation in an exchange project is the first experience with a different culture so that it is almost impossible for them to formulate a valid and answerable “cultural /personal learning question”.

In general, for most of our students, the experience of immersion into a different culture has been so overwhelming that it has not been easy for them to describe precisely the impact of this learning experience on their lives. This year, at the end of the first exchange, each student had 1 minute to express his/her most important learning experience and share it with the entire group. This turned out to be one more opportunity for students to learn also from each others’ experience. The results were surprising and interesting!

For example: “In sharing with a colleague from the other end of Europe and his/her family, I learned…

- That it is important to be organized and to arrive on time - To work in a team and to live with a person of a different culture - That the Bulgarians eat a lot of yoghurt - To open my mind towards different cultures - That an exchange implies new experiences, also for the hosting student - That the culture of adolescents does not differ that much, young people have a lot in

common - Not to be timid and share my ideas - That it is important to be persistent in order to build friendships and in order to

achieve our goals - Not to base my opinion only on first impressions - That the differences make our encounter interesting - I will look at things different when I get back home.”

3.2 Learning in common thematic research

Compared to the field of intercultural learning described so far, the 2nd field of learning in our project has been more structured and thus it turns out to be probably even more interesting and relevant for our reflection about personalized learning in international projects.

Yet, once more, the learning occurs and can be observed simultaneously in various fields and related to different skills:

- Linguistic skills (using the English language in order to cooperate in research as well as document and present the results)

- Digital skills (create a blog and use creative digital tools to present the results of the research)

- Communication skills (cooperate with a Bulgarian or Dutch partner and carry out a common research

- Acquisition of knowledge related to the theme “Food” and to the sprecific subtopic chosen by the students.

In which way has this learning experience be informed by the concept of “personalized learning”?

First, let’s look at what has NOT been personalized, that is, the framework established as obligatory for all students. It included the following elements:

- The overall theme “Food for Thought” - The work in pairs (together with a partner from a different country) - The task to formulate a research question which fits under this umbrella theme - The condition that the research topic chosen by the students must be one that cannot

simply be answered by surfing on the Internet, but does imply necessarily local research in two different countries (home and hosting country)

- The obligation to document the results on a wordpress blog, linkable to the overall project blog (this does not exclude other creative expressions such as artwork or theatre as they can be filmed and introduced into the blog)

- The task to transform the results of the research into an Open Educational Resource - The task to present the blog orally at the end of the project. - The limited time for work (the blog had to be finished by the end of the 2nd meeting

with the partner).

After this long list, what can be considered personalized learning in the context of the project work? What was the space for each pair of students to plan and structure their own learning process?

Students could freely choose

- Which aspect related to food they wanted to investigate - How to formulate their research question (and possible sub-questions)

- The way in which they carried out their research: - where (students were free to work in the computer-room or go to the city in order to make interviews, films, pictures….) - what research tools they used (interviews, films, graphics…) - when: students had time reserved for research in their schedule/programme, but could equally use their free time in order, for example, to visit a bread factory late in the evening, filming the grandfather planting potatoes on the weekend, etc. - the form in which they present the results on the blog.

So students clearly made the experience, characteristic of personalized learning, that they themselves can and need to define what exactly they want to learn/find out and that they can use school, family, shops or market in the city, the health centre, online information, etc., in order to find their answers. In no way have they been limited to schoolbooks, classrooms, teachers or the Internet. If “anywhere, anytime, anyplace” describes three characteristic features of personalized learning, then our project certainly fulfilled these criteria.

However, it has become clear already that personalized learning does not mean to leave the student without any support or guidance. Thus the students received guidance in the following areas:

- Support in specific technical questions related to ICT: how to create a wordpress blog - Support related to the formulation of a research question: students participated in a

workshop “How to create a relevant and valid research question”; each pair of students presented their common research question(s) to one of the teachers and received the teacher’s comments

- Introduction to the topic “sustainable food production and consumption” (short presentation by a teacher; simulation game about world hunger and the millennium goals; a lesson about healthy food taught by Bulgarian fellow students)

- Study visits organized by the schools, for example to a dairy farm, a cheese factory, a fish auction

- A short introduction as to “what is an OER”, a list of possible digital tools and the encouragement “Try to be creative!”

But not only the guidance from teachers supported the learning process of students; they also clearly learned from each others’ expertise. We observed a lot of mutual support with regard to the practical questions related to wordpress blogs (digital skills through peer

learning!). But students also looked frequently at each others blogs exchanging ideas and making suggestions with regard to the research itself.

Peer learning was also encouraged in a more formal and structured way: For example, at the beginning of the 2nd exchange, when half of the group had already worked on their blogs while the other 50% were newcomers, some (or all, in the 1st year) pairs presented their blogs and received constructive feedback from the group. At the same time, good performance inspired and challenged not only the newcomers, but also less successful pairs which, as a consequence, began to improve their projects. In the 2nd year of the project, students frequently consulted the blogs created by their colleagues a year before and learnt from them.

In the evaluation forms at the end of the last exchange, 23 out of 39 students say that “feedback and support from teachers while working on the blogs was useful, it was good to ask them sometimes, but it was also good that we could decide on our own”; 13 students state that “feedback and support from the teachers was very useful. They helped us to improve the quality of our blog”. Only 3 students did not find this support useful “as they could not solve our problems” (they refer to problems related to the difficult and slow connection to Wifi in the school).

4. Reflecting about our experience

Chris Watkinsvi outlines three different approaches to personalized learning in the classroom. Each approach is characterized by a specific view of the student and of how learning occurs. His systematization might be helpful for our reflection:

a) The Individualized Teaching Classroom In this approach, learning continues to be defined as teaching, adapted to each student, mostly by making use of computer programmes. The methodology is mostly self-instruction, based on materials and tasks designed by the teacher. In this approach, learning continues to be seen above all as transmission of knowledge; the teacher decides, the student receives and carries out.

b) The Personalized Inquiry Classroom In this perspective, the student is seen as active interpreter of the world, learning is seen as a process of actively building / constructing understanding. Depending on the starting point of each student, results may vary considerably. The questions of the students are the starting point. Students can influence what they learn, how they learn, why they learn.

c) The Personalized Community Classroom This approach is similar to the one described before, however, it pays more attention to the group of learners: the person develops in interaction with others! The teacher, instead of a “sage on the stage” becomes a “guide on the side”.

Looking again at our project, it seems to us that it contains multiple elements of Watkins’ second and third approach. In fact, our experience as teachers in this project is definitely described better by “guide on the side”; we certainly did not feel like “sages on the stage”.

Let’s look at another concrete example, based on the evaluation forms of the students: In the programme of the exchange (Learning-Teaching-Training activity) in Portugal in April 2016, students had a free morning for research which they could carry out wherever they wanted and in the way they considered most interesting. Students of our school are not used to this kind of liberty and we were quite curious as to what might be the result. Would most of them just sleep in? Or go to the beach? At the same time, we were optimistic, as a similar option had resulted quite well during the exchange in Bulgaria, the year before. 32 out of 37 students evaluate this opportunity as positive: 19 students affirm that “having a free morning to do our research was a good idea, because we could organize our time and could research outside the school”. 13 even consider it “an excellent idea, this morning really helped us advance in our project research”. Only 4 students admit that it was “a good idea, but for us it did not work”, while one student considers this free morning “a total waste of time, we did not research anything”.

This result seems to confirm those studies about personalized learning which underline the significant rise in motivation of students. In fact, most students invested a lot of energy in their research and the documentation of it on the blog. Many invested also a considerable amount of their free time to improve their research outside of the moments reserved for project work in the programme. A typical example of this are not only interviews carried out, for example, on the local market or in a health centre (making use of their smartphones in order to document the answers), but also the films produced by the students, for example about planting potatoes in Bulgaria and in Portugal. This particular research involved the entire family, both of the Bulgarian and of the Portuguese student. Based on many examples like this we can affirm that, overall, students’ reaction to this approach of learning has been highly encouraging and positive. However, it became also clear that not all students are right away able to make good use of this liberty and that some might need more help and guidance than others. Or perhaps even control?

This leads us to an interesting debate which arouse between the Dutch and Portuguese teachers: when our monitoring shows us that a pair of students is clearly pursuing a research strategy condemned to failure (for example due to a much too high (or too low) number of questionnaires or an unanswerable research question), should the teacher intervene? Or

should he/she let a pair of students continue on their path until they realize their problem on their own? Even if that might imply that, when the students “awake”, it might be late to still improve their research (due to the limited time of the exchange as privileged time for cooperation)? On the other hand, if the teachers intervene, how can the student learn from his/her errors? This issue was debated passionately! Which is the better option? That is: Which option helps the student to learn more? Which learning experience will have longer and more profound impact? What does it mean, in this situation, to be “guide on the side”? Even if we did not reach consensus on this matter, this debate shows how also we teachers have been learning from each other and with each other in this project and how we were challenged to always go further and to inquire more deeply. Peer learning, also among teachers!

Looking back at the intensive time we spent with the students while working together on their research, during the exchanges (Learning-Teaching-Training activities), we can in fact affirm the importance and intensity of the learning process of ALL students involved in the project. ALL of them made significant progress related to the fundamental skills to be achieved, be it communication skills in a different and intercultural context, be it communication skills in a foreign language, be it digital skills, be it research skills, be it presentation skills.

This does not imply that all blogs and Open Educational Resources (the tangible results) have achieved the same level of quality. Not all students did the final correction of the English language on the blog, for example. Not all pairs managed to make their films and other resources really openly accessible. On the positive side, some research projects clearly stand out through their creativity. While many research projects limit themselves to a comparison of a certain aspect of food in two countries (ex.: cheese in the Netherlands and in Portugal; fish in Portugal and Bulgaria…), others impress by the originality and the broad horizon already of their research question, like - “What is customers’ attitude towards bio-fruit and vegetables in Bulgaria and Portugal?”; - “How does the focus on specific nutrients in traditional food encourage a healthier lifestyle?” - “How much food that is produced in the Netherlands and in Bulgaria is ethical?” - “Wasting food is like stealing from the poor”…

This observation may serve as a proof that personalized learning can be interesting and a good way of learning for students of different levels of abilities, in no way is it limited to “the good students”.

In a study published by the OECD, Sanna Järvelä points to 5 main arguments for personalizing learning, from the point of view of learning theoryvii: - Personalizing learning can improve conditions for the development of expertise in the knowledge society - Personalizing learning increases student interest and engagement in learning activities; curiosity and creativity can be inspired by personalised learning - Personalizing learning can contribute to better learning results if students learn with the aim of developing: develop better learning strategies, learning to learn skills, technological capacities for individual and social learning activities … - personalizing learning can take contextual conditions into account - personalizing learning can potentially improve the use of technology in education.

All five arguments we find supported by our experience in the Food for Thought Erasmus+ project!

Finally, however, we need to reflect about a difficulty related not to the acquisition of skills, but to the acquisition of content. Clearly, all involved students improved their skills, there is no doubt about that. All of them learnt a lot about how to deal with cultural difference. All of them managed – for the first time in their lives – to cooperate with a partner from a different European country, all of them widened their horizon and European awareness. Yet, does this also mean that all of them learnt something relevant about Food, its production, distribution and consumption, on a European or global level? Did they acquire a consistent reference frame which will help them to consider food related issues, in the future?

For many of the involved students, the answer to the last question is probably negative. Is personalized learning then more indicated for the acquisition of skills? Or does it mean that we still have to work further on developing strategies in order to help students acquire such a reference frame?

How could this be achieved, in a perspective of personalized learning?

At the end of our project, all students presented their research and its results to the whole group. This was a moment in which such a broader horizon was present – however, listening to the presentation of 20 blogs is clearly not an exciting experience, even when combined with a competition/peer evaluation.

Does this mean that personalized learning, as so many other pedagogical approaches, is good and useful in order to achieve some objectives, but, in the practice, it needs to be completed by others? And that it is the use of the full umbrella of strategies, applied to different moments of learning, which can provide the best and most complete results?

5. Conclusions. Some answers and (several) new questions

What convinced us? What would we like to keep for further European projects? What would we like to transfer to our classroom activity? How could that be done?

The following aspects we would definitely like to include also in future projects of European cooperation:

- Let students teach lessons to their visitors (eg: Students in Bulgaria prepared, with the support of their teacher, a lesson in Bulgarian and a Science Lesson an taught them)

- Work in pairs. Much more than in larger groups, this means that each student is actively involved and has clear responsibilities.

- Create activities which involve intellectual as well as practical and emotional aspects in the learning process (head-heart-hands)

- Make use of the students’ tools and digital competence (for example, they can use their smart-phones to make films, register interviews, etc.)

- Let students formulate their own research questions, but support them whenever necessary

- Include activities or lessons which help students acquire a framework in which their personalized learning project gains even more meaning

- Teachers can learn so much from teachers: encourage moments of peer learning among teachers!

More difficult is the question about the transfer to our classroom activity in our own school here in Portugal. We became aware that the personalization mentioned in the “Projeto Educativo” of our school must definitely go beyond the personal support during the breaks and after lessons. Also our lessons need to become more and more a space where the person of each student stands in the center! This is not easy when you work with a group of about 30 students and have to follow quite rigid and closed curricula. But we can say that we have become more aware of the challenge and that we will continue to look for solutions!

i The Glossary of Education Reform: edglossary.org/personalized-learning/ ii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personalized_learning iii Ibid. iv Watkins, C., Personalization in the classroom context. In: Mincu, M.E. (Ed) (2012), Personalisation of Education in Contexts. Policy Critique and Theories of Personal Improvement. Rotterdam/Boston/Taipeh, Sense Publishers v Projeto Educativo do Externato de Penafirme: “educação personalizada (no cuidado por cada aluno na sua especificade”. Being a Catholic school, this priority is based on a Christian anthropology. vi Watkins, C., Personalization in the classroom context. In: Mincu, M.E. (Ed) (2012), Personalistion of Education in Contexts. Policy Critique and Theories of Personal Improvement. Rotterdam/Boston/Taipeh, Sense Publishers, p. 10 ss. http://www.sensepublishers.com/media/1436-personalisation-of-education vii Järvelä, S. (2006), Personalised learning? New Insights into Fostering Learning Capacity. In: https//www.oecd.org/site/schoolingfortomorrowknowledgebase/themes/demand/41176687.pdf (page 43 of the paper version, published by the OECD)