PEAPEDA
Approach of personalization
Peapeda - Personalizzare l’apprendimento in ambito EDA (To personalize Adult Learning Pathways) - is a pilot project developed within the ESF OB. 3/C4, concluded in 2005, which carried out a research about the development of the meaning of personalization in the Adult Education in Italy, highlighting, just in the 2005, the lack of models and of practices for adult training.
The personalization approach has been designed by a group of researchers and experts of educational processes and adult education, led by prof. Marco Guspini. Until now the model has been experienced at different educational levels (university, post-graduate education specialization courses, High secondary school, elementary school).
The approach is based on:
- a historical analysis of the development of the concept of personalization in education in Italy and in Europe;
- the explication and definition of the meaning of term “personalization” chosen and adopted in the PEAPEDA approach;
- an exam of the theoretical approach about adult learning and personalization approach in education;
- the design of the map of competences of the innovative figure of learning personalization trainer;
- the description of a practical process to implement the personalization approach, named “@ of self evaluation”;
- a prototype of a web based system of self evaluation based on competences analysis.
The meaning of personalization
The term personalization is reach of meanings, and also experts doesn’t share the same definition, often using the term Individualization as a synonymous. PEAPEDA has explicated and choose the following meaning of Personalization, distinguishing it from the term individualization. Training customizing in Italian can be translated with two different terms, each one corresponding to a distinguished meaning: Individualization of learning and personalization of learning.
According to the PEAPEDA approach
Individualization means the set of didactic strategies aiming to guarantee all students the achievement of the same learning objectives, by different rhythms, times, ways. Individualization is defined as the whole of didactic strategies aimed to allow to each student, with different cognitive styles and learning strategies, to reach the same result, predefined in a training plan, thanks to the use of differentiated didactic tools, differentiated duration and didactic conditions.
Personalization
means an approach aiming to guarantee each student to reach an excellent learning level, by developing his potentialities and his faculties, each one achieving his own objectives. Personalization is intended as the valorization of the potential that each person can express. The valorization process is the result of a full sharing, collaborative and not competitive interaction, of an empathic participation to all the development processes. It requires the acquisition of strategic competences such as self evaluation, self orientation, managing of negative emotions, collaborative attitude, and the whole competences that express a full self awareness and self responsibility.
This definition allows to clarify the specificity of the personalization concept and to overpass the linguistic ambiguity that tends to identify, in the pedagogic reflection, this term as a synonymous of individualization. Personalization is the whole group of strategies that allow to valorize the biography, the intelligences, the sensibilities and competences (also emotional ones) that characterizes each people as a person, in order to reach a form of cognitive excellence, developing capabilities and talents.
The outcomes of the learning process, even if finalized to the acquisition of professional competences, will be different for each person, and they will cannot be foreseen at all from the beginning of the learning process. Not the kind of competences will influence the outcomes, but the different degree of ability in the use of competences themselves. This second perspective is relatively recent in Educational Sciences and it is used with this meaning only in the last years.
