Mixed Feelings about Choice: Exploring Variation in Middle School Student Experiences with Making Choices in a Personalized Learning Project

Abstract

While providing choice can be a powerful way to personalize learning for young adolescents, there is also evidence that choice can be challenging for learners. This study investigated middle school students' (N = 72) feelings about making choices in how they learn during a personalized project. Findings include students' self-reported enjoyment and stress associated with choice within the project as well as five student vignettes illustrating some of the variations across student experiences. Informed by this variation, we offer several implications for research and practice related to supporting students in making choices in their own learning.

Integrating instructional designs of personalized learning through the lens of universal design for learning

“…2.5 Provide multimedia information access (Arroyo et al, 2014); Student chose media (e.g., video, web resources, books) to gain information, explore, or research (Basham et al, 2016; DeMink‐Carthew & Netcoh, 2019)…”

“…(Looi et al, 2009) or reading annotation/notes supported through mobile devices (Hsu et al, 2013) or to achieve goals using multimedia tools (Kaminskienė & Khetsuriani, 2019); Provide access to various webbased technologies for collaboration with among students (Phan, 2020); Integrate cooperative learning tasks into students' PL plans (Schmid & Petko, 2019) ALS/ITS/Robotics: Use virtual companions to promote students' sense of collaboration (Arroyo et al, 2014;Chen, 2009b;Katsionis & Virvou, 2008); Robot act as learning companions to enhance social interaction with learners (Baxter et al, 2017) et al, 2020) or affective supports such as encouragement message and hint (Arroyo et al, 2014;Chen, 2009b;Katsionis & Virvou, 2008); Provide immediate feedback with detailed messages conveying the reasons behind mistake and asking to reattempt (Siddique et al, 2018) or intelligent feedback including elaborated explanations (Wang et al, 2020) Virtual reality: Generate positive feedback leading students towards attaining the overall class objective (Bhattacharjee et al, 2017) G9: Provide options for self-regulation 9.1 ALS: Helping learners understand the difference between current and target self-regulation indexes, thereby encouraging self-learning motivation (Chen, 2009b) Human-mediated: Establish high expectations to promote autonomy and motivation by creating PL goals and support goal attainment (Abawi, 2015); Promote expectation and belief through 'I Can' statements (Basham et al, 2016); Utilized strengths-based PL model to involve students in identifying strengths, setting goals, etc. (McCarthy, Liu, & Schauer, 2020) 9.2 NA 9.3 ALS/ITS: Provide timely feedback reports on students' learning process to involve students in developing self-evaluation and self-efficacy (Arroyo et al, 2014;Chen, 2009b;Phillips et al, 2020;You et al, 2019) Mobile learning: Support self-reflection (via Worksheets on mobile devices; Song et al, 2012); Human-mediated a : Provide formative assessment, feedback, and/or self-assessment strategies, tools (e.g., progress trackers) in student-teacher conferences to support monitoring progress (Basham et al, 2016;…”

“…For example, Basham et al (2016) described a variety of design characteristics of a district-wide PL environment, seven of which aligned to UDL design considerations with an emphasis on providing multiple means of expression and engagement. DeMink-Carthew and Netcoh (2019) explored students' experiences within a PL environment; eight instructional designs emerged that aligned to UDL, especially to G6 that focuses on promoting student executive function skills through increased autonomy in choice making.…”

“…For example, many systems progressively release information to allow students to progress based on demonstrated mastery of academic content (e.g.,Baxter et al, 2017;Cornelisz & van Klaveren, 2018), and concept maps as a teacher-mediated practice in a PL environment(Abawi, 2015).In addition, the intelligent tutoring system examined inArroyo et al (2014) provided a 'help fading' technique that could simultaneously assign learners a new problem of similar difficulty after they learned one maths problem. This function was designed to encourage learners to T A B L E 2 self-efficacy development(Arroyo et al, 2014;Chen, 2009b;Phillips et al, 2020;You et al, 2019) Mobile learning: Support self-reflection via Worksheets on mobile devices;Song et al, 2012; Human-mediated a : Provide formative assessment, feedback, and/or self-assessment strategies, tools (e.g., progress trackers) to support monitoring progress(Basham et al, 2016;DeMink-Carthew & Netcoh, 2019;DeMink-Carthew & Olofson, 2020;McCarthy, Liu, & Schauer, 2020) or post questions in LMS to invite student self-reflection(Edmunds & Hartnett, 2014) Abbreviations: ALS, adaptive learning system; G, guideline; ITS, intelligent tutoring system; LMS, learning management system; NA, not applicable; UDL, universal design for learning.a Human-mediated instructional strategies and/or learning activities could be carried out by both teachers and students.T A B L E 3…”

Hands-Joined Learning as a Framework for Personalizing Project-Based Learning in a Middle Grades Classroom: An Exploratory Study

“…Due to the considerable conceptual alignment between project-based learning and personalized learning, some have argued that project-based learning is a promising pedagogy through which learning can be personalized (Bishop, Downes, & Farber, 2019). With this in mind, DeMink-Carthew and DeMink (2016), a middle level education researcher and middle school classroom teacher respectively, developed the framework for handsjoined learning projects as a means to illustrate how project-based learning can be personalized. The term "hands-joined" was inspired by the following excerpt from This We Believe in Action: Implementing Successful Middle Schools (Association for Middle Level Education, 2012):…”