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Personalized learning (PL) has been internationally promoted as a future direction of educational reform efforts. While there is growing evidence of PL enhancing learning outcomes, teachers reported having difficulty envisioning PL in practice. This national survey study investigated how PL is practiced in K-12 learner-centered schools in the U.S. to inform educators of learner-centered teachers' PL practice and identify gaps between their practice and research. Five essential components were identified: PL plans, competency-based student progress, criterion-referenced assessment, project- or problem-based learning, and multi-year mentoring. Based on the five components, we identified 308 learner-centered schools and received 272 teacher responses from 41 schools. The five components were implemented with different levels of implementation fidelity. We uncovered several areas in need of improvement. Career goals were not often considered when creating PL plans. A misalignment between student progress and assessment practice was found. There was a lack of community involvement during the PBL process. Teachers were not able to build a close relationship with all students. These findings from learner-centered schools revealed that paradigm change demands continuous effort to transform all aspects of the educational system. Suggestions are made for practice and future research.

Educators are being encouraged to shift their instructional paradigm from teacher-centered to learner-centered through the use of technology. For online courses, legacy learning management products originally designed to support and deliver teacher-centered instruction may represent a constraint to implementing the learner-centered paradigm. Yet, replacement of these systems presents a formidable hurdle to educators wishing to initiate learner-centered online courses. This hurdle could be lowered significantly by a transitional approach that allows learner-centered strategies to be delivered within the framework of existing learning management systems. This paper describes our efforts to prototype such a transitional approach for an online statistics course. Pedagogical and technological objectives were successfully achieved by combining the technologies of the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), a legacy learning management system, and a stand-alone course authoring tool to deliver an example course demonstrating adaptive, competency-based student progress instruction that personalizes one's learning path with topic-contingent assessment feedback.

The Every Student Succeeds Act supports personalized learning (PL) to close achievement gaps of diverse K-12 learners in the United States. Implementing PL into a classroom entails a paradigm change of the educational system. However, it is demanding to transform traditional practice into a personalized one under the pressure of the annual standardized testing while it is unclear which PL approaches are more likely to result in better academic outcomes than others. Using national survey data of ELA teachers in identified learner-centered schools, this study compared high and low-performing learner-centered schools (determined by their standardized test results) in terms of their use of five PL features (personalized learning plan, competency-based student progress, criterion-referenced assessment, project- or problem-based learning, and multi-year mentoring) and their use of technology for the four functions of planning, learning, assessment, and recordkeeping. Generally, teachers in high-performing schools implemented PL more thoroughly and utilized technology for more functions than those in low-performing schools. Teachers in high-performing schools more frequently considered career goals when creating personal learning plans, shared the project outcomes with the community, and assessed non-academic outcomes. They stayed longer with the same students and developed close relationships with more students. Also, they more frequently used technology for sharing resources and reported having a more powerful technology system than those in low-performing schools. This study informs educators, administrators, and researchers of which PL approaches and technology uses are more likely to result in better academic outcomes measured by standardized assessments.

As heavy emphasis is placed on evidence-informed teaching to improve educational practice, developing educators' statistical literacy to facilitate data-driven decision-making becomes critical. However, there are few practical examples of how statistics can be taught to develop statistical literacy, especially in online courses. This article showcases an online statistics course designed for educators. To enhance conceptual understanding, instructional videos and embedded quizzes were utilised. To increase knowledge transfer, students were engaged in weekly discussions and data analysis exercises, in which statistical concepts were situated in professional and daily life contexts.

Based on Bandura's work, the four sources of efficacy shaping were examined in regard to frequency and students' perception of importance in a computer-mediated, project-based high school classroom. In a context of group work where there was no designated leader, groups' collective efficacy was examined if it has any relationship with individual's leadership traits. In addition, the relationship between the existence of group-identified leader and the groups' collective efficacy as well as the relationship between the collective efficacy and the groups' performance outcome were examined. The results from survey and interview showed that mastery experience was the most frequent and powerful source of efficacy shaping among the four sources. Moreover, the groups with identified leader showed higher collective efficacy than the groups without leaders, and the groups' collective efficacy level showed positive correlation with the groups' performance outcome.

Effort to determine teachers' effects on students has been continuously made with national data. However, paucity of research has been conducted on how teachers' instructional strategies impact on student learning with national data, although instructional theories suggest a direct relationship between instructional strategies and learning outcomes. Therefore, the relationship between teachers' use of instructional strategies and learning outcomes should be examined with national data. This study investigates how much teacher's instructional strategies explain student learning in mathematics and what instructional strategies are positively related to student learning outcomes. Revised Bloom's taxonomy was used to define instructional strategies that support different levels of cognitive processes. The U.S. 8th grade mathematics data from the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study was analyzed using multilevel modeling. As results, teachers' instructional strategies explained approximately 12% at the individual level and 17% at the teacher level of the learning outcome. Also, asking students to write equations and functions to represent relationships and to decide on their own procedures for solving complex problems were positively and significantly related to student learning outcomes.

Personalized Learning (PL) has been widely promoted. Despite the increasing interest in PL, it is difficult to be implemented, because it can be complicated, costly, and even impossible without the help of powerful and advanced technology. This national survey study aimed at systematically investigating technology usage and needs of teachers in learner-centered schools in the U.S based on the conceptual framework of the Personalized Integrated Education System (PIES). PIES specifies four major functions: recordkeeping, planning, instruction, and assessment. A total of 308 learner-centered schools were identified that met at least three of the five criteria of PL: (1) personalized learning plans, (2) competency-based student progress, (3) criterion-referenced assessment, (4) problem- or project-based learning, and (5) multi-year mentoring. Survey responses of 245 teachers from 41 schools were analyzed. Results indicate that only 12% of teachers responded that they had a technology system that integrated the four major functions. Among the rest, 21% reported that they had no such systems. Technology was most widely used for planning and instruction but not for recordkeeping and assessment.

To promote student learning and bolster student success, higher education institutions are increasingly creating large active learning classrooms to replace traditional lecture halls. Although there have been many efforts to examine the effects of those classrooms on learning outcomes, there is paucity of research that can inform the design and implementation process. This study investigates how spatial and technological features of a large collaborative classroom support active learning based on the Pedagogy-Space-Technology framework. The findings from our study suggest short lecture and class-wide discussion are essential in framing learning content before group activities, and connecting group outputs to the learning content after group activities. Through interviews, surveys, and focus groups, we found that--while small group activities are generally well-supported in large active learning classrooms--facilitating short lecture and class-wide discussion is key to the success of active learning in large classrooms. Technology should be carefully laid out in the space to accommodate those activities. Specific design and implementation suggestions and implications are provided.

The use of video surveillance footage presents a new possibility in educational research as a reliable and valid source of learning and teaching activities in classrooms. However, the unique nature of surveillance footage requires different approaches and poses distinctive challenges in utilizing it in research, yet no methodological guides are currently available in educational research. The purpose of this reflective methodological review is to share our lessons learned from a mixed-methods study that utilized video surveillance footage for triangulating self-reported classroom data. We discuss (1) the importance of triangulation of self-reported data to reduce biases of it, (2) the unique benefits and limitations of using video surveillance data, (3) a methodological framework for video surveillance data analysis, and (4) our process of data analysis with technical, ethical, and other issues in mind when using such data. Software programs to aid video data analysis are briefly introduced as well.

This case study was conducted in two high school classrooms that utilized collaborative project-based learning (PBL). Collaboration is an important instructional strategy, especially used in conjunction with PBL, and is an essential learning outcome for the twenty-first century. This study examined how collaboration can be achieved as a learning outcome and used effectively as an instructional method by understanding what causes task-, process-, and relationship-related intragroup conflict and how social skills are related to intragroup conflict and collaboration at both the individual and group levels. Literature suggests that, while task-related conflict serves as a catalyst for collaboration, process- and relationship-related conflicts are detrimental to collaboration and impede learning. Social interdependence theory suggests that social skills play an important role in enhancing collaboration and resolving conflicts. Data were collected through online questionnaires and follow-up interviews. Interview data were analyzed using a qualitative data analysis approach. The survey data were analyzed using multi-level structural equation modeling, which allowed us to reveal an interesting relationship between group-level social skills and collaboration. Results suggest that different individual difference factors triggered each type of conflict, and most of the groups experienced more than one type of conflict simultaneously. Task and process conflicts were often transformed into relationship conflict, when social skills were lacking. Interestingly, group-level social skills were more influential than individual members' social skills in reducing intragroup conflict and enhancing collaboration.

Personalized learning (PL) is spotlighted as a way to transform K-12 educational systems. PL customizes learning pace, instructional methods, and learning content to individual students. As much as PL sounds promising and complex, little guidance is available to educators and policymakers about how to effectively design PL. Five essential features are identified through a literature review: (1) personalized learning plan, (2) project-or problem-based learning, (3) competency-based student progress, (4) criterion-referenced assessment for ensuring student learning, and (5) multi-year mentoring of students by a teacher. This article discusses the educational benefits and design principles of each feature.