Personalized learning bridges spaces between three camps of pedaogs: traditionalists, customizers, and liberators.

Those interested in pedagogy fall into one of at least three categories:

• Traditionalist – The teacher is the authority. Truth is empirically derived. Knowledge must be carefully transferred from experts. Schooling mostly serves society’s needs for cohesion and for an informed, productive, citizenry.
• Customizer – Experts select what students need to know, but learners are not uniform so learning goals and means must be differentiated or customized for each learner. Learning is a social act, so attention must be paid to constructing and facilitating the learning community. Schooling serves both the needs of the society and the interests of individuals.
• Liberator – Schooling is often oppressive and designed to serve and perpetuate the values of the ruling class. Knowledge is to be able to combine theory with practice to foresee and realize one’s own future. Teachers and students share authority. Teachers pose questions and help students identify and follow avenues of independent inquiry. Teachers facilitate student development of rational thought and critical analysis of social structures to empower them to direct their own learning and engagement with society. Schooling should prepare students to create their own future.

From the traditionalists, we have iterations of empirically derived and increasingly effective means of instruction – of transferring discrete knowledge and skills to populations of learners in controlled environments. From the customizers, we have increasingly deep knowledge of the ways people interact, and of how differentiated approaches towards instruction can be customized to how unique individuals acquire knowledge and skills. From the liberators, we have a realization of a common social imperative – that schooling should advance individuals ability to envision and reify their own future.

As practiced, personalized learning has the potential balance and achieve the ends to each of these three pedagogical approaches. Situated within US public schools, designs for personalized learning are built around the demonstrated competency over learning standards. All students will leave personalized learning schools with competency over learning standards we deemed important for youth to have. However, by leaving open the question of how each student will achieve competency over standards, personalized learning is flexible and can meet the needs of individual learner’s needs and preferences as a learner. Finally, by including students in making decisions about their own learning and by providing time during the day for students to pursue their own interest-based activities, personalized learning is approaching the aims of the liberators.