Personalised Learning – The Four Deeps

Personalising learning has gone from contentious double-speak first spewed forth by central government in 2004 to something that is at the heart of curriculum development.

” John White, emeritus professor of philosophy of education at the Institute of Education, one of the most consistently original and free-spirited thinkers in British education, has called into question one of the mantras at the heart of government policy: personalised learning. What does it mean?

According to White, it is a sloppily defined term that means so many things at the same time as to mean nothing at all. It made its entrance in Blair’s speech to the Labour party conference last year: “Personalised learning for every child in new specialist schools and city academies” (those in the remaining bog-standards will have to satisfy themselves with their learning experience remaining impersonal). At this point, it was merely a seductive slogan in search of meaning.”

The Guardian, Oct 3rd 2006

Although its definition has taken time to evolve, the concept of personalising learning is now a familiar concept to curriculum managers and indeed many of the other staff in schools.

There are a massive range of papers, resources and studies that cover the agenda – enough to populate a blog in and of themselves, however this document written by David Hargreaves and published by SSAT and iNet, uses a model based around “the four deeps’ – Deep Learning, Deep Experience, Deep Support, Deep Leadership which I have found to be particularly useful in the past. There are a range of supporting pamphlets that I will post in due course.

Community Cohesion – Updated 25th February

Hot off the presses, ‘Guidance on the Duty to Promote Community Cohesion’ has been released to assist schools to reflect on their role and contribution to community cohesion. This may be of limited use to anyone operating outside of the senior leadership team but I think it is important to keep in mind that as we develop curriculums that are suited to 21st century students we are not just designing activities around a certain number of lessons held between 9am and 4pm, 5 days a week. With the extended schools agenda, schools now have an obligation and opportunity to act as an integral part of the wider local community. As a school develops its curriculum provision via its subjects it is important to keep in mind elements of personalisation that embrace a common sense of identity whilst supporting individual and group diversity. This publication will help schools to reflect on enrichment and life outside school by nurturing close relationships with local communities, and other schools at local, regional and indeed national level.

**UPDATE 25th February 2008**

The following report, related to this publication and the wider implications it represents, appeared on BBC News website just now. C lick here: