Critical Reflections on Genius Hour as Personalized Learning at the Middle Level

Personalized learning is a student-centered approach to teaching in which curriculum and instruction are customized to students’ needs and interests. The author reconsiders prior research on the implementation of a personalized learning intervention in a Vermont middle level school and offers a critique of the culturally neutral way in which the intervention was conceptualized and implemented. The author contends both the movement to implement personalized learning and the movement to promote the middle school concept have lacked attention to sociocultural and critical perspectives. Instead, both movements should embrace critical and cultural perspectives and draw on the knowledge base and tools of culturally relevant researchers and practitioners.