Personalizing Curriculum: Curation and Creation

A personalized curriculum is one that has been crafted to provide students with individualized learning opportunities. As the use of personalization strategies has become more popular, the challenges of curating (i.e., selecting) and creating personalized curriculum resources have come to the fore. In particular, there is no systematic method by which educators learn to select and create curriculum resources that support personalized instruction. This has led to widespread confusion about what personalized instruction is and is not and has produced wide variety in what educators are applying in the name of personalized curriculum.

This chapter endeavors to provide a roadmap for educators who are selecting and creating resources for personalizing curriculum. The chapter is presented in two parts: first, descriptions of the best practices and discouraged practices for personalization are presented; second, the research base that determines whether a practice is recommended or discouraged are discussed.