Infrastructure to Support Personalized Learning and Individualized Instruction – Digital Promise

Infrastructure to Support Personalized Learning and Individualized Instruction

A graphic of three individuals of varying ages, demographics, and backgrounds. Above their head are three arrows that begin together and diverge to illustrate different pathways.

About the Priority Challenge

Educators grapple with the best ways to personalize learning and involve students in exercising choice and agency over their own learning journey so that what they learn is specific to their interests and passions. While many districts across the country have been working to implement personalized learning practices, educators report a lack of coherent training, models, and tools to support each student, leaving some districts unsure what personalization should look like in their schools and classrooms and how to accomplish this goal.

Educators also have to adapt instruction to meet students’ spectrum of strengths and backgrounds. Given this learner variability, educators need to develop sophisticated skills to differentiate lessons—adapting teaching methods and tailoring learning content to meet the learning pace and needs of each student—while simultaneously maintaining high expectations and rigor in classrooms.

Challenge Statistics

Teachers check if the whole class understands but never individually, lessons should be specific to the individual to help with the areas they don’t understand.

—Student

We need smaller class sizes, we need more adults in the classroom, and we need to move toward project-based learning instead of cramming standards in student’s brains and moving on, even though they [don’t] understand it.

—Educator

The curriculum should engage and prepare students for life after high school. Personalized learning refers to teachers using more than one teaching method to explain concepts, allowing the student to truly learn the subjects.

—Community Member

What School Communities Say They Need

Below we highlight shared perspectives from students, educators, and family members regarding the school- and district-wide infrastructure and systems that need to be in place to better support personalized learning and individualized instruction.

Support for personalized or alternative learning pathways

Data to determine individual needs

Staffing to support individualized instruction

Individualized assessments to measure skills and growth

Access to supplementary educational resources, tools, and curriculum

Digital Promise Projects and Resources

Explore the tiles below to learn more about projects and resources that aim to strengthen personalized learning and individualized instruction.

Resource
Description

This paper defines learner variability and explains how a holistic understanding of a learner is needed to personalize instruction.

The Learner Variability Navigator helps educators find research-based strategies to personalize learning experiences in order to understand and address the whole learner.

Learn about Digital Promise’s IEP Project and access additional resources to write and implement individualized education plans (IEPs) grounded in whole-child, strength-based approaches.

This teacher co-designed guidebook provides teachers with reflective questions, a sample response bank, strategies from the research-based Learner Variability Navigator, and other resources to write strength-based whole-child IEPs.

This guide includes tips for teaching students about their own learner variability through the lens of the whole child. It includes sample lesson plans, strategies, and other resources to help students understand themselves as learners.

The project is designing open-access curricular supports to deepen discussions in world history. Curricular materials will be available summer 2026.

Responding to a need for personalized learning in argumentative writing, Project Topeka brought together cutting edge tools and high quality instructional resources from industry leaders to support educators teaching argumentative writing.

Research-based perspectives offer lessons for writing instruction and teacher professional learning.

Educators and community stakeholders from SISD examined context-specific challenges in secondary writing and developed and designed student-led prototype solutions.

Educators and community stakeholders from SUSD examined context-specific challenges in secondary writing and developed and designed student-led prototype solutions.

Description

This paper defines learner variability and explains how a holistic understanding of a learner is needed to personalize instruction.

Description

The Learner Variability Navigator helps educators find research-based strategies to personalize learning experiences in order to understand and address the whole learner.

Resource
Description

Learn about Digital Promise’s IEP Project and access additional resources to write and implement individualized education plans (IEPs) grounded in whole-child, strength-based approaches.

Description

This teacher co-designed guidebook provides teachers with reflective questions, a sample response bank, strategies from the research-based Learner Variability Navigator, and other resources to write strength-based whole-child IEPs.

Description

This guide includes tips for teaching students about their own learner variability through the lens of the whole child. It includes sample lesson plans, strategies, and other resources to help students understand themselves as learners.

Description

The project is designing open-access curricular supports to deepen discussions in world history. Curricular materials will be available summer 2026.

Description

Responding to a need for personalized learning in argumentative writing, Project Topeka brought together cutting edge tools and high quality instructional resources from industry leaders to support educators teaching argumentative writing.

Description

Research-based perspectives offer lessons for writing instruction and teacher professional learning.

Description

Educators and community stakeholders from SISD examined context-specific challenges in secondary writing and developed and designed student-led prototype solutions.

Description

Educators and community stakeholders from SUSD examined context-specific challenges in secondary writing and developed and designed student-led prototype solutions.

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