This is the tenth in a series of posts explaining the Acton Academy Principles of Education.

Education Principle #10: Students learn at their own pace (Individualized, personal instruction is key)

Imagine you're in a 3rd grade math class. You are great at multiplication and division and can multiply and divide three and four digit numbers in seconds. You're ready to move on. Meanwhile your friend is struggling to understand division and another friend is struggling with multiplication.

What is a teacher to do? Should she slow down and help the struggling children while you wait? Should she move on because you've mastered the concept and forget the other kids? Should she survey the class to see who understands what? Can she do this with 10 kids? 20 kids? 30 kids?

There lies the conundrum for every teacher at every school. How do you collectively move students along with every child starts at a different place and learns at a different pace? The answer is you can't if you expect to teach everyone the same thing at the same time.

The beauty is that we don't have to do that now. We have all the tools we need to be able to provide personalized instruction to every child! Education software tools like Khan Academy, DreamBox, Rosetta Stone and countless others have created personalized, adaptive software to help students learn, track where they are and create plans for moving them forward. No teacher can do that.

Student benefits of blended Online / In-classroom education include:

• Education focused on individual needs

• Ownership of own learning

• Control over time, path, and pace

We have the tools to do this. Why don't we use them?

At Acton, we have guides, not teachers who help children in their journey to master topics regardless of where they start and how they learn. We also focus on acquiring the necessary software to ensure that there are no impediments to a child's learning growth. 

Further Recommended Reading: Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools by Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker