Even pre-pandemic, customization was a huge part of our society—from milk preferences, cup sizes, types of sweeteners, and secret menu requests at Starbucks (which has more than 80,000 permutations on their menu) to stores in which we can design our own soft toys to apps that allow us to mix and match apparel from a variety of vendors. We live in a world in which we have tremendous control about the products we purchase, and we can almost always find solutions for something specific when we can’t find exactly what we’re looking for. At first glance, all this choice “feels empowering, as if we are in control,” according to Laurie Santos in the episode “Choice Overload” from The Happiness Lab podcast. But what if our fascination with choice is spurious? What if all this choice is making us less satisfied and less happy than we think? Maybe having so many choices undermines our autonomy and competence, resulting in poor decisions and even worse, misery.
When I first listened to this podcast episode, I immediately thought of my work as an educator, and I began to wonder how the societal eruption of choice and customization in consumerism––and just about everything in our lives––might affect education in independent schools. Most schools are familiar with personalized learning, a pedagogical approach wherein teachers design learning experiences with students’ specific needs, strengths, and interests in mind. Teachers tailor assignments to students’ learning styles and, in some cases preferences, based on student performance and feedback all while keeping the whole class in mind. But with more movement as a society that depends heavily on customization in all areas of life, I wonder how much we need to have conversations about a related form of personalized learning—customized learning, which begins with the needs of individual students rather than the needs of the class.
The Paradox of Choice
At my school, school leaders and teachers openly talk about how teachers embrace personalized learning, recognizing that each student is unique and creating assignments that allow for a variety of student learning styles while still maintaining the same curricular goals and outcomes for all students. In an English class that incorporates book clubs, for example, a teacher curates a list of texts to read, and each student chooses from the list and sets their own reading pace as long as they finish by a designated date. All students explore the same themes no matter which title they choose, check in with their teacher before moving on, and receive a grade on any assignments associated with the reading.A customized approach is related, but there are some key differences. Customized learning starts with the needs of only one student rather than the needs of all students in a class. Students or parents (or in some cases, a student’s private tutor) usually initiate a customized approach by volunteering information about themselves, such as their learning styles, the types of assignments they prefer, and how much work they think they can complete, and the teacher then adapts to the student. As a result, the student (and parent and/or tutor) expects information to be delivered in a way that is unique to them. For example, a parent or tutor might reach out to a teacher to advocate for a student to have different assignments, cover only certain parts of a syllabus, or have more choice from the rest of the class.
Over the past two years at my school, I have noticed an uptick in customized requests. As an educator thinking about these approaches, I wonder about the pros and cons. How does the student benefit from such a request? Does honoring this type of request result in improved well-being for the student? Or do more choices for the student cause cognitive overload––exactly the opposite of what the tutor is striving for? For the student, honoring the personal requests might seem beneficial, but it may result in more frequent interactions with the teacher––taking the teacher away from the other students. With a greater number of exchanges with the teacher, a student might grow increasingly dependent on the teacher to seek confirmation. This makes the student less able to make an informed, personal choice about their learning, leaving them ill-equipped to navigate any choice.
Managing Expectations
At my school, we generally do not use a customized approach to learning based on one student’s requests. (In certain cases, we work with students individually during a long-term hospitalization or a concussion, for example.) There are too many drawbacks. Just as having too many choices in any part of our lives can lead to unrealistic expectations or cause a person to take fewer positive risks, this may hold true for a customized approach to learning in school and thus lead to mental overload.If schools decide to allow students to take a customized approach to learning, they must clarify expectations and articulate them in multiple places and times throughout each school year. During course registration in the spring, we tell our new families what our school accommodates and what we do not. And outside of illness, if we receive a customized request that we cannot honor, such as a request to eliminate some assignments because the student reads slowly, we stand firm and remember that we are a strong community that sticks to what we do best: upholding our school mission for all students.
This is not easy work. We must continue to emphasize that a community mindset means keeping everyone connected, ensuring that no student is diminished by one student’s exclusive requests. Maybe the next time I order from DoorDash, I won’t make any adjustments to my order––and will trust that the restaurant knows which ingredients to put together to make an excellent meal. I’ll save my energy and cognitive efforts for a different, more difficult decision.
