Dr. Ling Zhang visited the show on episode 108 Personalize or Differentiate and Inquiry Classrooms to discuss how instructional customization – termed personalization, individualization, or differentiation – gets discussed in legal documents and policy guidance. What the terms have in common and where do they differ, and how should an educator navigate the landscape to best serve their students?
Michael Ralph 02:21
For our first segment, we read personalization, individualization and differentiation. What do they mean and how do they differ for students with disabilities?
Laurence Woodruff 03:04
This was written by Ling Zhang, Richard Allen Carter Jr, Matthew l Bernacki and Jeffrey Green.
Michael Ralph 03:11
This was published in exceptionality in 2024. The paper analyzes how personalization, individualization and differentiation are defined and referenced in US education, law and policy. They identified how more robust and consistent supports, like assessment and training can improve both compliance and efficacy in meeting the needs of students with disabilities. And we are fortunate to be joined by lead author, Dr Zhang. Welcome.
Ling Zhang
Thank you for having me.
Michael Ralph
Dr Ling Zhang is an assistant professor of special education at the University of Wyoming. Her research is focused on investigating the design and implementation of educational technology solutions to support students with diverse learning needs. And she’s an avid crossfitter. And I know you from from KU we spent some time. We spent some time in Lawrence earlier in your career.How are you?
Ling Zhang
I know it’s been a while, so I’m doing great. How about yourself?
Michael Ralph 04:06
I am excited to be here talking about your newest paper.
Ling Zhang
Same here, same here. Tell us about how did you, how did you get started on this project?
Ling Zhang 04:13
Yes, thank you for Yeah. So for the introduction. So I actually was very excited when you reached out, because I really love this topic, because I’ve been studying and researching personalization for a long time, but the more I read those research articles about personalization or personalized learning, right? So I think the more frustrated I became. So the reason is so we don’t have this agreed upon definition around personalization, or PL personalized learning in the literature. So that’s why I feel like, okay, so why we still don’t have this agreed upon definition? We’re very operation, operationalized framework for implementation. So. Since everybody, it seems like everybody has been talking about some practitioners and researchers, policymakers have been talking about this phenomenon for a long time. So I think that’s when I feel a bit frustrated because I didn’t find the answer. And then so my colleagues and I myself have began talking about, okay, so what do we know about the educational policy and how those terms, first, how personalization was defined in those policy? Maybe we can find some answers. I think that’s the beginning of our conversation around personalization divination. And of course, when we talk about personalization. So we started thinking about, okay, so we have so many other terms, differentiation, individualization, individualization. So that’s when we started thinking about whether we can find those definition and how those definition differ in those documents, educational policy documents. So that’s how we started the conversation.
Michael Ralph 05:59
That was one of the things that jumped out to me. Also, I know that I use the term differentiation a lot, and sadly, I learned in your paper that that’s not true of most of the other parts of our of our policy and legal structure, but I feel like we should start first. We got to plant a flag in the sand here. We need definitions. What is your definition for personalization, individualization and differentiation.
Ling Zhang 06:23
Okay, so let me think about this. Okay, so personalization, according to our analysis of educational policy documents, refers to the technology based instructional approaches that can support students with diverse learning needs, interest preferences and other individualized learning characteristics in the inclusive setting. So it’s very it’s a very broad
Michael Ralph 06:49
in my own notes, because, because I did this exercise also and in my own notes, I felt like the important piece for personalization was that it was the most extensive. So it included customization of the individual goal, like learning goals, the desired outcomes. And so personalization is the most
Ling Zhang 07:06
Yes, yes, because they target the whole population, right? Anybody with a diverse learning needs and preferences can be supported by this instruction approach.
Michael Ralph 07:16
So for the second for the definition of individualization, what jumped out to me was instruction paced for individuals, and so pacing was emphasized. And so in my mind, the personalization was really extensive customization, including the goals of the learning versus individualization. It seemed to imply to me, you have consistent goals for the learning for most students, but you have different amounts of time being spent to get there. Is that a fair summary?
Ling Zhang 07:43
I think so. I think we have some definition, more conversation around like different different pacing for students, or different goals for students, the learning goals for students, whether the students are are on IEP or not, right? But interestingly, so according to the literature, not only the law texts. So we do have different definition that sometimes include different educational learning goal educate learning goals for students with disabilities, but other definition also highlight, okay, we need to have the same educational goals for all students. So that’s where the confusion still comes from those literature, right? Is okay? So even though we have this general conversation to moving towards personalization, have same goals for all students. Individualization. Students with disability may have different learning goals, but not that’s not the case, at least based on our analysis of the literature.
Michael Ralph 08:42
Well, let’s make it Messier, because we got one more term to throw in tell us about differentiation.
Ling Zhang 08:47
But I think what’s interesting about those three terms, actually, even though we didn’t find lots of references from those policy texts about differentiation. But again, according to our literature, literature review about that parts, so actually differentiation, we have narrow definition about differentiation. If I remember correctly, differentiation will tailor the content, the product and learning environment for students with a diverse learning needs, again, so you can tell the similarity of the differentiation between a way that personalization and an individualization, right? So all those terms aim to support students with a diverse learning needs,
Laurence Woodruff 09:40
you kind of ended there, which was a good segue to what my question is, is that, you know, so this paper is really like a linguistically heavy technical, let’s define our terms. And you know, we’re kind of saying, Okay, how are our federal organizations, our our politicians, our. Lawmakers, how are these official documents at a very high level, using these terms? And I want to ask, Why should I a teacher in a classroom care how they’re using these terms? Because I’m going to, you know my goals to help support my students learning. I’m going to figure out what works, I’m going to respond to their needs, and I’m going to change what I need to change in order to to give them what they need. And I don’t actually care what I’m calling it, so why do I need to care? Why? Why? Why? Why does this where does this work turn into teacher behaviors?
Ling Zhang 10:40
In terms of the high level policy as well, is something what we have been thinking about since we still have these policy documents. So for IDEA, we have these requirements, mandates for educators to think about, okay, I do need to individualize instruction for my students with the disabilities in my classroom, no matter whether us general education teacher or special education teacher, because that’s required by the law. So that’s the 100% no argument there. On the other hand, personalization, right, as we discussed, is so broad and everybody may feel overwhelmed or dis encouraged. If I say, Okay, I’m giving you these terms, just have fun with it, because we discuss about this is a huge term. I think educator couldn’t do that because, first, it’s not mandated by Essa. It is recommended, and is one of the suggestions. As we have more emerging technology and we have more support in our classrooms, what can we do to support individual learners, including students with and without disabilities?
Michael Ralph 11:52
I think there’s a stronger answer. That is, I found some scope across these three terms, because in your literature review, they did not all have the same degree of impact for student learning. I think that one of the things that you pointed out in the review was that personalization is so much it’s such a broad scope of work for for teachers to do, especially when they try to scale that up across their entire teaching responsibility. But individualization had the strongest level of impact for students and is the most aligned with what our legal requirements are from the IDEA and other structures. And so if I’m trying to decide where is my time best spent, and I’m trying to figure out, do I need to, like, customize everything in my entire curriculum, or should I focus on my job as the teacher is to define our goals? And I do think that I thought that before I sat down this morning, I think my job at designing a class is to choose what’s our big ideas that we’re going to pursue. I don’t need to try to come up with 36 big ideas, and I can focus on then helping students tailor their pacing and their pathway through the curriculum to be appropriate for them, because that’s where the research has shown is the greatest degree of impact for their learning, and it’s in compliance with what we’re getting in our IEPs and five oh fours. And I think that those two things together say you got to do more than differentiation if you’re going to get the greatest degree of impact for student learning.
Ling Zhang 13:14
Yeah, even with that within that areas, I think the level and extent of personalization. So I think lots of still, we have so many researchers who are trying to figure this simple, the one single component out, because so complex, right, considering how many different individual, wise or individual learner characteristics we need to consider for us to be able to implement personalization, because, based on our analysis of personalization definition in the law or in other lit review review studies is so broad can include any single aspect of learner differences or characteristics. So that’s why. So this is a huge need in the field right now, and we are trying to figure out, okay, what level we want to differentiate based on what kind of characteristics of students in your classroom that we need to think about to be able to generate these greatest impact on student learning.
Laurence Woodruff 14:18
And so we’re going to achieve personalization with AI. We’re going to achieve personalization with more screen time. We’re going to achieve personalization with more interactions with computers. Really sits uncomfortably with me, like I makes me very, very uncomfortable. And that’s not really what this paper is about, yeah, and so, like, I wasn’t going to bring it up, you know? So we’re in, we’re in in End of discussion time. So I’m talking about now, but I, you know, I’ve got, you know, I think that, you know, we’re trying to tap into this idea that, you know, once we get excited about a topic, we’ll go online, we’ll go on Wikipedia, we’ll find an article that’ll give us to a source that’ll go to another thing. We’ll look it up on Google. We’ll see a bunch of videos. We will, like, consume a lot of information, and we’ll make connections. We’ll build on it. We’ll go down quote, we’ll go down the rabbit hole, and if we give that, you know, and then we walk away saying, Hey, I know all of this stuff about this cool life of this author that inspired how they wrote this book and and I was making connections. And I, you know, and I know a lot of things, I definitely endorse that that experience is real, and being able to offer that experience to our students is also is is good, but that’s, you know, and it is personal, because I cared about that topic to do that work. So then when we have these curricula where it’s like it, whether they care about it or not, this is the thing they’re going to do, the eagerness with which they go down that rabbit hole on their own is going to be reduced. And so we can still have, you know, responsive questioning, and we can still prompt and encourage certain things and respond to how they do that. That’s all good, but it’s going to be reduced. And I have no doubt that implementing these kinds of AI driven responsive instruction question prompting interfaces is going to allow students to complete curricular tasks more efficiently, because that’s what AI does, that’s what automation does, that’s what computer interfacing does. It allows us to complete tasks more efficiently,
Michael Ralph 16:08
faster,
Laurence Woodruff
fair, fair.
Michael Ralph
I disagree, efficiently, faster.
Laurence Woodruff 16:13
So they’ll complete more tasks. And I guess this is to my point, that critique there is to the point that I’m not sure it’s going to help them develop a greater, you know, synaptic connection of leading to resilient retention of these materials. Whereas, if I have a para in the room who’s really good at their job and really good at conversing with students and really good at offering examples and asking counter questions and asking them to rephrase them and like, because I have one of these paras now, I have him in two of my classrooms, and my my students, they have, like, assigned seats with their group, so they also have the freedom to just get up and walk over to the Para;s table. And they do, they just get up and go, and they go back and forth and like, hey, I need to go over here and talk to this guy. And he’ll just sit down and have a conversation with him, and he’ll ask them, you know, supporting questions. And he he’s, like, a he’s being responsive to them as they seek him out. And so that is a is a interpersonal exchange which is going to increase the resiliency and the importance of that conversation amongst these students. So, you know, we’ve got definition. We’ve got definitions for individualizations. It’s required, it’s legal. We should all be doing it great, but the implicit like we’re going in the direction where personalization is going to be important. So how can we make that as good, as good as or as as effective as this individualization term has become just, I don’t like it, because it suggests a future that I don’t want to live in.
Michael Ralph 17:47
And I think that actually comes to a should, the should that I took from this paper, that you wrote about in this paper that was related to growing capacity for teachers around Special Education moves and collaboration with special education experts and Paras. All of that is in your document, and I think that that really resonated with me also, and that’s in a space where we are not going that direction, at least not in Kansas. I there’s there’s news right now that we are underfunding special education, and so that is your paper, and these definitions and the laws that you read are in direct conflict with the direction that the system is going. And so we don’t solve this tool with a robot. We solve this tool with a human. Pay the humans to do the job Laurence just described.
Ling Zhang 18:36
I think I love your both of your points because, gosh, yes, I think I even forgot to highlight, okay, so the definition of personalization shouldn’t be only technology focused, because I think, according to this paper and other papers that I’ve written, about personalization, okay, it’s not only about technology implementation. No, I don’t like the idea of having all students sit, sit in front of computer all day long without interaction with instructors, educators, other peers. No, it’s terrible. It’s horrible. I wouldn’t want living in that society either. No. So that’s why. So in this paper, we said, okay, so personalization is a huge term, broad term, right? So it is this, maybe a very broad set of instructional tech, instructional design tailor, or approaches tailored to individual students, learning needs, preferences and other characteristics. So it can include using technology to support some of teachers work, right? Otherwise, I don’t think educators want to do that. It’s too much thinking about how many students in the general education setting, right? So usually we have one teacher versus 20, 15 students. So when we think about all those needs within one classroom, there is no way that I can. Implement personalization without the support of maybe technology. Again, not only technology, but if we have those tools, we can combine human resources, resources technology support. And there is a one paper, actually, so a group of researcher personalization researchers did a study invested in examining the impact of hybrid approach to personalization, where students get to use technology for part of their time but at the same time. So we do have human educators in the classroom to support students, especially students on IEP. So it turns out, especially the learning outcomes for students with IEP, because they get more human interactions, human support from their studies, actually they show the better learning outcome compared to their peers. So I think that’s what we want to see, right? So technology is great, but it won’t be the only solution where it can solve all those the problems we have. So I think that’s also what I want to see technology well designed and will implement. Technology can support teachers, but cannot replace everything we do with the students.
Michael Ralph 21:14
Really appreciate you joining us and chatting about chatting about your work, reviewing these policies if we have listeners who want to learn more about the tools you’ve just described, or want to read more of your work where they where can they find more of your thinking?
Ling Zhang 21:26
I don’t want to do any commercial, but I have been working on this AI supported system that can support IEP team to develop and support evaluation of individualized education programs for students with this with a disability. So our hope is to since we have so much complex component and the procedure of one document, so why don’t we use where use the Gen AI to support the team, at least to figure out what components is required. So I think what we do discuss those ideas were tools in our paper, in this paper that we have been talking about, and also another paper, which is a book chapter included in the handbook of personalization, so the I can share the link of the book chapter to you, so you can probably share with audience, or if any audience is interested in the tool that I mentioned. Since we are not, we haven’t been able to launch the officially launched the product system, so probably audience won’t be able to find the tool. So we call the tool co IEP. So just to stand, stand for collaborative approach to IEP development, but it’s not there yet on the internet, but if anybody is interested, I can share the link.