ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we will turn to the learners themselves. There has been a concern learning should be ‘personalised’ to a much greater extent. In the UK, the then department for education (DfES, 2004) stated: “Personalisation is . . . about putting citizens at the heart of public services and enabling them to have a say in the design and improvement of the organisations that serve them” (p. 4). The description went on to say personalised learning should accommodate a learner’s individual needs, their interests and aptitudes, so they can gain to the greatest possible level. In terms of personalised learning practices, Robinson and Sebba (2010) found limited evidence in schools they studied, confi rmed by Beauchamp and Kennewell (2010) who argued from their review of interactivity involving ICT resources in classrooms with group and individual work that learners need to have more opportunities to decide when and how to use ICT resources in classrooms. Some studies have explored aspects of personalisation with learner uses of digital technologies, including Cakir and Simsek (2010), who conducted a controlled study with 90 grade 7 learners, but identifi ed no signifi cant difference in scores achieved for learners using personalised materials or nonpersonalised materials, either in a computer-based medium or paper-based medium, and Alcoholado et al. (2012), who studied the use of single display groupware with learners in a grade 3 class in Chile, enabling them to solve mathematics problems individually but through a shared display, with benefi ts reported being greatest for those with lowest initial scores.
