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.
—Student
—Educator
—Community Member
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.
Explore the tiles below to learn more about projects and resources that aim to strengthen personalized learning and individualized instruction.
This paper examines the Portrait of a Graduate, particularly how to redesign skills-based learning trajectories.
The Learner Variability Project seeks to build on learning sciences research to better understand and address the needs of the whole learner, from PreK to adulthood, to personalize instruction.
This P-16 community initiative aims to advance community-driven and flexible approaches to STEM pathways that position more than 100,000 historically and systematically excluded learners in San Diego on the trajectory toward high-impact STEM careers.
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.
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.