*2.4.2 Math and reading improvement through personalization*

The achievement was examined in 62 US public charter and district schools pursuing a variety of personalized learning practices, and details of implementation were examined for 32 of those schools. The results were described in a report entitled "Continued Progress - Promising Evidence on Personalized Learning" [35]. Researchers obtained achievement data for personalized learning students and a matched comparison group of students attending other schools serving similar populations. It was found that students' achievement growth in mathematics and reading over 2 years exceeded that of the comparison group, overall, and compared to a majority of schools. A large proportion of students with lower starting achievements, experienced greater growth rates than their peers, particularly in mathematics. Growth continued to accrue in schools over 3 years of implementation.

A study conducted by Bloom and Unterman [33] provides solid evidence that going small – when the schools are startups, nonselective, and entered by choice – has substantial effects on academic achievement. The researchers found that enrolling in a small school of one's choice rather than in a comprehensive high school, significantly improves graduation rates for a large population of low-income, disadvantaged students of color. Personalization also improves students' attitudes toward the subject matter. The teachers' attitudes toward personalization, which evolves in positive student-teacher relationships, also help students struggling in specific subject areas. For instance, Midgley, Feldlaufer, and Eccles [36] discovered that, after controlling for students' initial mathematics performance and interest, students in classrooms with high levels of personalization showed more excitement for mathematics, and their willingness to engage with the material remained high when compared to students with low levels of personalization. Moreover, students who move from low- to

### *Personalization in Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113380*

high-support classrooms improve their self-efficacy and enjoyment with respect to mathematics [37].

Studies regarding personalization and emotional growth validate the psychological theory of self-determination. The important concept of self-determination refers to each person's ability to make choices about and control their own life. This ability plays an important role in psychological strength and well-being. Self-determination allows people to feel that they have power over their choices and lives. It also impacts motivation – people are motivated to take action when they feel that what they do will affect the outcome. The concept of self-determination has been applied to a wide variety of areas including education, work, parenting, exercise, and health. Research suggests that having high self-determination can foster success in many different domains of life [38, 39].

Moreover, an overwhelming majority of students accept responsibility and ownership over their learning when it is personalized [40].

It has been found that the students exhibit effort and work harder to solve complex and challenging problems, give up less often in the face of difficulties, and learn more profoundly, both in comparison to students in a control group who studied in a traditional education setting, and to their own prior functioning in a former traditional education framework [41].

### *2.4.3 Personalization and the role of teachers*

The process of the personalization of learning has significantly changed the role of teachers. The teacher is no longer the main source of knowledge but rather a moderator and learning navigator [42]. Teachers' attitudes toward this kind of change and their readiness to become active partners is considered a factor critical to success [43]. Similarly, resistance to change is considered one of the main reasons for the failure of change processes in organizations in general and in education systems, in particular [44]. In the case of innovative technology implementation in schools, which is most often a crucial element in personalization, teachers' resistance is reported by some studies to be the most dominant contributing factor to the project's failure [45].

### *2.4.4 Teachers as the main axis of personalization*

School improvement and school turnaround efforts rest largely on the shoulders of the teachers since these are the individuals who can most immediately bring about change in their students and hence, affect both the climate and culture of their school. There are five types of power in teachers' educational environment. The first is the legal power granted to teachers due to their appointment and permission to make decisions affecting their students. The second is the power of expertise since only teachers who are experts in their field are permitted to teach and provide students with professional knowledge. The third is the power of charisma; that is to say, their authority stems from their personality and their investment in their job. The fourth is the power of reward, based on teachers' ability to reward good behavior, excellence, and appreciation. The fifth is the punitive authority, i.e., teachers' authority to punish students according to school rules [46]. The teacher's role in personalized learning sometimes needs the "courage to forget" those convenient and conventional origins of power and turn to the power of "relational persuasion" [47]. In personalized learning, the teacher organizes an infinite mass of potential content into an orderly and discernible curriculum, explicitly teaches new concepts and skills unique to

the audience, enlarges the student's scope of individual interests, and fosters logical thinking through questioning and particular dialogs [48].

### *2.4.5 The multifaced role of teachers*

Bishop et al. [49] examined the roles of teachers in personalized learning environments regarding statewide legislation of personalized learning plans, flexible educational pathways, and proficiency-based assessment. The study used data from interviews with a purposefully selected group of 20 elementary and middle school teachers. Findings revealed that teachers' perceptions of their role included four components: (*a*) empowerment, (*b*) scouting, (*c*) supporting, and (*d*) assessing. Even though all those components lead to the personalization of learning, there is potential for intra-role conflict and role tension between and among these sub-role components.

One way to overcome this conflict of sub-roles may be following the ethos of Dweck [49], who argues that connecting the performance of learning tasks to personal aspirations rather than to past performance or group stereotypes frees the teacher to engage in personalized learning. This appreciation for what Dweck calls "incremental intelligence," the notion that the ability to achieve is not fixed but is incrementally improved, contributes not only to a student's motivation to learn but also to a teacher's more effective response to the student's learning needs.

### **3. Conclusion**

In response to individual needs, personalization in education facilitates not only students to learn better by using different strategies but also provides teacher's instructional needs in designing varied teaching platforms. Overall, personalization in education and cognition are closely intertwined. By adapting educational experiences to align with individual learners' needs, preferences, and cognitive processes, personalized education optimizes engagement, motivation, learning styles, cognitive load management, self-regulated learning, mastery-based learning, and feedback – all of which significantly influence cognitive development and academic achievement. Moreover, personalized learning using computers and mobile devices is one of the latest trends making a global impact, promising to deliver new methods that enhance and promote learning. Nevertheless, using the technologies without considering pedagogical theories and models often may lead to malfunction.

This review offers both the opportunities and necessities of personalized education as well as the essential criticism of its function for future research papers about this important topic.

*Personalization in Education DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113380*
