LEC Articles on School Design and Personalized Instruction

PERSONALIZED EDUCATION AND INSTRUCTION

Personalized Instruction:

This KAPPAN journal article by LEC Forum authors defines personalization as the effort on the part of a school to organize the learning environment to take into account individual student characteristics and needs, and to make use of flexible instructional practices. The authors outline and discuss the basic elements of personalized instruction.

Advisement

This original LEC Forum article summarizes the history and current status of teacher-adviser plans, the typical dimensions of effective advisement programs, and suggestions about organizing for advisement.

Constructivism

This original LEC Forum article defines constructivism and discusses constructivist views on learning. Learning under constructivism is an individual matter. Learners construct reality in terms of prior experiences, their conceptual knowledge, their procedural schemata, their values, their attitudes, and their preferred ways of knowing.

Strategies for Personalizing Instruction: A Typology for Improving Teaching and Learning:

This NASSP BULLETIN article by LEC Forum authors presents a typology of instructional strategies classified in terms of their levels of interaction and thoughtfulness. The authors treat nine of these tactics in greater detail as representative of differing levels of responsiveness to the demands of personalization

Two Schools: Two Approaches to Personalized Learning:

This KAPPAN journal article by LEC Forum authors gives accounts of two schools, one in the United States and one in Canada, that exemplify the best of current initiatives to personalize schooling and instruction. The authors believe that the kind of personalization represented here must become the cornerstone of school renewal, not state testing or rigid standardization.

Personalized Schools:

This original LEC Forum article explains the elements of systems designed to personalize education. It cites two school exemplars which have implemented the DPIE model of Personalized Education that was incorporated as a basic element of the NASSP Model Schools Project and later was refined by the Learning Environments Consortium International.

Personalized Learning Environments:

This original LEC Forum article lists the major beliefs of LEC International about personalized school learning environments. It compares teacher roles/responsibilities and program structures under traditional and personalized models of schooling, and enlarges upon student and teacher roles in personalized environments.

SCHOOL DESIGN/CHANGE PROCESS

Approaches to Change:

This book chapter by LEC Forum authors from Redesigning Schools for the New Century: A Systems Approach (Keefe & Howard, 1997, NASSP) contrasts traditional and comprehensive approaches to the school change process and explains the components of the School Improvement Process and School Design Statement advocated by LEC International for systemic school renewal.

Information Management and CASE-IMS (pdf)

This book chapter by LEC Forum authors from Redesigning Schools for the New Century: A Systems Approach (Keefe & Howard, 1997, NASSP) stresses the importance of systematic data collection and interpretation for school renewal with illustrations from the NASSP Comprehensive Assessment of School Environments information Management System (CASE-IMS).

Implementing and Living with Change

This original LEC Forum article discusses the historical background, successful program characteristics, implementation barriers and some special features of change process in American schools.

The Basic Design Components

This book chapter by LEC Forum authors from Redesigning Schools for the New Century: A Systems Approach (Keefe & Howard, 1997, NASSP) discusses the basic components of the School Design Statement and cites sample design descriptors and specifications.

The Systemic Design Components

This book chapter by LEC Forum authors from Redesigning Schools for the New Century: A Systems Approach (Keefe & Howard, 1997, NASSP) discusses the systemic components of the School Design Statement and presents excerpts of sample design descriptors and pecifications that are provided in greater detail in the original.

School Redesign References
This section contains selected references on school design and redesign from the NASSP publication, Redesigning Schools for the New Century: A Systems Approach, (Keefe & Howard, 1997, NASSP).

SCHOOL ORGANIZATION AND STRUCTURE

The Rigging of American Schools

This figure, excerpted from a Changing Schools article by a LEC Forum author, summarizes nine ways that American schools are rigged for some students and against others. Most schools are organized to produce a certain percentage of losers. Not all students can be winners because the system demands failure.

SCHOOLS AS LEARNING ORGANIZATIONS

The School as a Learning Organization:

This NASSP BULLETIN article by LEC Forum authors describes the school in terms of Peter Senge's Five Disciplines and the interplay of school cultural values, norms and expectations. The characteristics of successful learning organizations are discussed as well as strategies that school leaders can embrace to become a learning team.

The New Leader

This book chapter by LEC Forum authors from Redesigning Schools for the New Century: A Systems Approach (Keefe & Howard, 1997, NASSP) contrasts transactional and transformational leadership approaches and explains the three critical roles of leaders --as designers, stewards and teachers -- described by Peter Senge.

Reader’s Report -- Communities of Commitment: The Heart of Learning Organizations

This Book review by a LEC Forum member of the first chapter of a Kofman/Senge book outlines the authors’ proposals for developing learning organizations. The authors describe the basic dysfunctions of our larger culture, cite their fundamental theses and operating principles, and identify a three-stage “architecture of engagement” for creating a learning organization.

OTHER ISSUES

Social Promotion and Student Retention

This original article by a LEC Forum author argues that neither grade
retention nor social promotion of students offers a solution to a
longstanding problem facing our schools: how to provide effective support
to students with failing study habits or different learning styles? Five
prevention strategies are discussed.