chapter from AERA, AECT, and International Society for Performance Improvement. His books include Reinventing Schools: It’s Time to Break the Mold (2013) and Instructional-Design Theories and Models, Volume IV: The Learner-Centered Paradigm of Education (2017). He has given keynote addresses to a variety of organizations around the world, including the National School Boards Association and the International Conference on Media in Education in Japan.
Charles received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard University and a doctorate in instructional psychology from Brigham Young University.
Visit www.reigeluth.net or www.reinventingschools.net to learn more about Reigeluth’s work.
Jennifer Karnopp is completing a PhD in education leadership and policy studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her dissertation examines the implementation of a districtwide change initiative in a rural context. Her experience as founding principal of a small, independent charter school in New Hampshire, which provided a personalized, competency-based learning experience to students in grades K–8, inspired Jennifer to earn her doctorate to better support other communities as well as policymakers in their efforts to engage in student-centered change. Igniting the curiosity of children through quality learning experiences has been the driving force behind Jennifer’s varied career in education. For over twenty years she has worked in a variety of traditional and nontraditional learning environments, from developing and providing educational programing through children’s museums, to being a classroom teacher in traditional public and charter school classrooms, to working as a special educator. She also developed curriculum and training experiences for early childhood educators across the country through a curriculum development and training company that she founded.
Jennifer is the coauthor of Reinventing Schools: It’s Time to Break the Mold (2013). She is also the author of three books designed to help early childhood educators create child-centered learning environments: Focus on Babies, Focus on Toddlers, and Family Child Care Basics.
Jennifer received a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and a master’s degree in special education from Indiana University.
To book Charles M. Reigeluth or Jennifer Karnopp for professional development, contact [email protected].
INTRODUCTION
Educators are well aware of several serious problems related to the United States educational systems.
1. Equity: The quality of education differs greatly, based largely on the socioeconomic status of the school community. The resulting lack of opportunity for poorer citizens is not only a grave social injustice, but it also deprives society of their immense talents, limits perspectives among people in positions of power, and exacerbates the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, which, if unchecked, is likely to cause serious social unrest.
2. Survival: The very existence of a public education system is under threat. Some people are so frustrated at the inability to improve their public education system that they believe the only solution is to privatize education through vouchers. This would have grave consequences for equity and would aggravate the growing problem of tribalism in the United States.
3. Ethics: Schools currently are at best neutral regarding ethical development of our youth, given the persistent bullying and cheating that occur in schools. Unethical practices of housing lenders were instrumental in causing the Great Recession that began in 2007, causing widespread suffering throughout the U.S. and the world. Unethical practices of drug manufacturers, distributors, and even doctors caused an opioid crisis that has killed more U.S. citizens than died in the Vietnam War and has had devastating effects on the lives of millions more people.
4. New needs: We are living in an increasingly complex and interconnected world, and that is bringing huge changes to all aspects of our lives. Hence, the kind of education that was needed in the industrial age—including the hidden curriculum of “sit down, be quiet, and do what you are told to do”—is no longer what’s needed. This not only results in student disengagement and under-preparedness for success in life, but it also places our whole society in peril.
5. A devaluing of teaching: Teaching has become a much less attractive job, resulting in shortages of teachers and high turnover rates, with inevitable consequences for the quality of education.
These problems cannot be addressed with piecemeal reforms in our education systems—they require fundamental changes. Business as usual doesn’t cut it anymore (New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, 2007). Teachers, administrators, and parents have the intuitive sense that the traditional approach to teaching isn’t meeting the needs of today’s students. But what will meet their needs and dramatically improve their schools, and how can you make it happen? The purpose of this book is to help teams of educators (teachers, administrators, staff, coaches, facilitators, and even board members), parents, and students to answer these questions. Personalized competency-based education and other aspects of the new paradigm of education that we call Education 3.0 are the most promising ways of effectively addressing the serious problems with U.S. education systems today. We offer proven ideas and methods both for a vision of personalized competency-based education (PCBE) and for the action (or process) for transforming your school or district to that vision.
This book is an extension of our previous book, Reinventing Schools: It’s Time to Break the Mold (Reigeluth & Karnopp, 2013), which introduced six core ideas essential to personalized competency-based education. Although you need not be familiar with that resource, it contains valuable insight into why PCBE is so badly needed, and provides guidance for state and federal governments to support the local transformation of school systems. This book elaborates on those six core ideas and provides detailed guidance for how to incorporate them into your own vision and change process. This book is also a companion to A Handbook for Personalized Competency-Based Education by Robert J. Marzano, Jennifer S. Norford, Michelle Finn, and Douglas Finn III (2017). It builds on what has been learned at the Lindsay Unified School District in California (see Beyond Reform: Systemic Shifts Toward Personalized Learning) and several other pioneering schools and districts around the United States.
Why Transform to Personalized Competency-Based Education?
There are many reasons why you should transform to personalized competency-based education. There are many ways PCBE can be done, some of which are not very effective. If done well, PCBE will:
• Improve student learning, retention, transfer, and motivation (Guskey & Gates, 1986; Haynes et al., 2016; Haystead, 2010; Means, Yoyama, Murphy, Bakia, & Jones, 2009; Pane, Steiner, Baird, Hamilton, & Pane, 2017)
• Improve what students learn, with a greater focus on what they need to be successful in life and what their families and communities need to be healthier (Collins, 2017; Lash & Belfiore, 2017; Pane et al., 2017; Reigeluth & Vogt, 2018)
• Provide more flexibility and options for both what and how students learn (Reigeluth & Karnopp, 2013; Thomas, Enloe, & Newell, 2005)
• Empower students to be more self-directed and intrinsically motivated in their learning (Thomas et al., 2005)
• Improve equity, not by closing achievement gaps in a one-size-fits-all
