This morning, I found a fascinating blog post by writer Christina Yu entitled, "Why Students don't like school--and what Adaptive Learning can do about it (part I)." In it, she discusses and extrapolates upon some ideas from a recent work by cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham on modern research into how people learn. In broad strokes, the basic premise of both (though I have yet to read the book, but this is what I gather) is that the learning process is improvable through the use of adaptive learning.
Yet what is adaptive learning? At first glance, it would seem a nebulous topic with many manifestations (see an earlier post on a similar subject here). At its base, however, adaptive learning's central idea argues that learning is optimally achieved when it conforms to the particular needs of the learner. That is to say, the teaching process should, ideally, continuously "adapt" to the evolving abilities of the student, addressing particular needs with particular interventions.
A core assumption of this system is that every "learner," while sharing several general characteristics, is in other ways highly unique in their abilities, needs, personality, and circumstances. To the extent that it's possible then, "adaptive learning" seeks to make the teaching process congruent with the unique learning-characteristics of each individual.
In this regard, adaptive learning has methodological affinities with the coaching philosophy of exercise-physiologist Jack Daniels (you can view that post here). Both approaches seek first to ascertain basic abilities, strengths, weaknesses, motivation, and overall goals, and second to apply general physiological or pedagogical principles to individual cases, noting how the athlete or student responds. Over time, experimentation, experience, and a growing understanding between teacher/coach and student/athlete may reveal the specific ways in which the strengths and weaknesses of one's charges may be optimally improved. Following this process, each student/athlete should have a program that suits their particular needs for challenge, engagement, feed-back, and recovery.
Jack Daniels has often said that "Runners should understand exactly what each day's training is designed to accomplish" (Daniels' Running Formula, Second Edition, 8). Perhaps students would benefit from a similar approach, particularly with regard to how the day's "training" is designed to help them personally. Such an approach might be difficult for modern teachers to implement on a mass scale in classrooms, given the way school is currently conceived as a sphere of activity divorced from the rest of life. It is perhaps one reason why adaptive learning advocates have been pushing for greater use of technology in the classroom, giving teachers the space they need to address individual learning-snags while keeping everyone else engaged.
Yet technology has yet to reach a point where the ideal of adaptive learning can be fully realized. This is not necessarily a bad thing, just something worth remembering. As a society, we put a lot of pressure on teachers (and ourselves, when we leave school and become our own teachers) to produce results in a world where education is becoming a sort of arms-race. Adaptive learning may prove an exceedingly fruitful approach to pedagogy in the coming years, but that doesn't mean it will turn everyone into mathematicians, engineers, and other professionals that contemporary American society deems (in the abstract anyway) valuable.
If anything, adaptive learning's real promise may lie in the way it helps individuals understand the particular characteristics of their own cognitive machinery. Such self-knowledge may help people understand why some abilities come to them easily, and others do not. On another level, it may also help them empathize with the unique mental characteristics of others, particularly those who see the world differently. At its root then, adaptive learning may not only help us learn new things, but it may also help us learn to teach ourselves, and that is as worthy a goal of formal education as I can imagine. Something to consider, anyway.
Happy Tuesday, friends :)
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