Partnering for Personalized Learning
Summit, Lindsay, & Transcend
Summit Public Schools, Lindsay Unified School District, and Transcend entered a partnership to deepen adult learning about personalized learning by building research-backed resources that draw upon our collective deep experience and focus on the student. We sought to create concrete resources that support adult learning in personalized environments, both in our own systems and for others who are on a similar journey.
What We Built
Over the course of two years, we developed three research-backed, adaptable resources to provide clarity and a common language around what it looks like to implement quality personalized learning and to enable collaboration and capacity-building toward that vision.
A detailed and research-based articulation of six key principles and corresponding student and educator experiences and actions that foster personalized learning.
Research summaries aligned to the Instructional Look Fors that share the theoretical research supporting each Look For, their relationships to student outcomes, and associated instructional practices.
An articulation of what must be true at the site level to enable educators and students to live into the principles of personalized learning, as articulated in the Instructional Look Fors.
An early inquiry into the key mindsets needed to effectively execute quality learning environments at both the educator and site leader levels.
Our Partnership
This partnership was started as a part of the California Consortium for Development and Dissemination of Personalized Learning, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed collaboration between Summit Public Schools and Lindsay Unified School District. The first year of the grant was dedicated to the leaders of each system exploring each other’s context, checking for compatibility of approaches, and finding a shared need based on a shared philosophy for teaching and learning.
The team recognized early on in our conversations that there was a significant need to better define the practice (knowledge, dispositions, skills) among the adults who support a personalized learning model. By collaboratively learning from one another, building, testing content, and then sharing key insights with field, the team hoped to make an impact on their own systems and beyond.
