TEACHER ROLES IN PERSONALIZED

LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

abstract
As school districts, major cities, and entire states in the Penny A. Bishop
United States adopt personalized learning as a reform John M. Downes
strategy focused on the co-construction of learning op- Steven Netcoh
portunities between teachers and students, educators face Katy Farber
shifting roles. This study examined the roles of teachers Jessica DeMink-Carthew
in personalized learning environments within a policy Tricia Brown
context of statewide legislation of personalized learning Rachel Mark
plans, flexible educational pathways, and proficiency-based university of
assessment. The study used data from interviews with vermont

a purposefully selected group of 20 elementary and mid-

dle school teachers from 11 schools. Findings revealed
teachers’ perceptions of their roles as (a) empowerers,
(b) scouts, (c) scaffolders, and (d) assessors, as well as
associated strategies within each role that participants
perceived to be constructive. The use of role theory illu-
minated the potential for intrarole conflict and role strain
between and among these roles along with the cultural
dimensions of the shift to personalized learning.

P
“ e r s o n a l i z e d learning” has garnered considerable attention in
recent years as a growing number of states, districts, and schools have
sought comprehensive responses to students’ diverse learning needs (Levin
et al., 2014; Netcoh, 2017). On a national scale, the US Department of Ed-
ucation stimulated interest in personalization with its Race to the Top-District com-
petition, which awarded more than $500 million in grant funding to support school
districts’ transitions to personalized learning environments (PLEs) (Sykes et al.,

t h e e l e m e n ta ry s c ho o l j o u r na l
Volume 121, Number 2. Published online October 14, 2020
© 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0013-5984/2020/12102-0006$10.00
000 • the e lementary s cho o l journal d e c e m b e r 2 02 0

2014). With passage in 2015 of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), state interest
in personalized learning expanded. According to one analysis, 39 states referenced
personalized learning in ESSA plans (KnowledgeWorks, 2018). Personalization also
has made its way into state policy with Vermont’s Flexible Pathways Initiative (2013);
Rhode Island’s RI Personalized Learning Initiative (2017); and Massachusetts’s Person-
alized Learning Network (French & Lebeaux, 2017). Philanthropies such as the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative have also adopted the
term “personalized learning” to describe reforms they have bolstered with millions of
dollars of funding (Herold, 2016; Pane et al., 2015).
With this growing attention, personalized learning has become a subject of debate
in many communities, often compounded by disagreements about its definition.
Some scholars and educators assert that personalized learning represents an effort to
replace teachers with computers and further privatize classroom learning (Boninger
et al., 2019). In some instances, families have protested the implementation of person-
alized learning and pressured their schools to abandon computer-intensive approaches
(National Education Policy Center, 2018). Most recently, The New York Times reported
on the backlash to Summit Learning’s version of personalization in Kansas, where
students and parents raised issues with the amount of time learners spent in front
of computers and lamented their limited access to teachers (Bowles, 2019).
An alternative conception of personalized learning, relevant to this study, invokes a
number of assessment and instructional principles and practices, generally emphasiz-
ing a shift from teacher direction to student direction of the learning process and ex-
panding learning opportunities to incorporate flexible pathways to graduation, in-
cluding real-world, out-of-school learning (Bray & McClaskey, 2015; Clarke, 2013).
Although varying widely in scope and stages of implementation, many states across
the United States have adopted policies aligned with this conception of personalized
learning (Gross et al., 2018). In the case of Vermont, the location of this study, the Ver-
mont Agency of Education (2016, p. 5) asserted that personalized learning involves
“plac[ing] students at the center of the construction and implementation of their
own learning experience” and that the role of educators is to work with students to de-
sign opportunities that “acknowledge individual goals, learning styles, and abilities.”
Although this vision of personalized learning is built on teachers partnering with
students to design responsive learning opportunities, little empirical research exists
to demonstrate how these applications of personalized learning play out in practice.
A series of studies commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Pane et al.,
2015, 2017a; RAND Corporation, 2014) found that students in PLEs demonstrated
greater gains in reading and math than a matched comparison group. However, the
researchers noted that there was “considerable diversity in the details of the schools’
instructional models” and that the schools in the study did not adopt “a single stan-
dardized model of personalized learning” (Pane et al., 2015, p. 3). Indeed, follow-up re-
search that focused on implementation found that “it was rare for students to choose
their own instructional materials or the topic of the class focus,” indicating relatively
little co-construction happened among teachers and students in these schools (Pane
et al., 2017b, p. 13). Zeiser et al. (2014) found on average positive effects on interpersonal
and intrapersonal outcomes, cognitive and complex problem-solving measures, and
postsecondary participation rates among students who attended a network of high
schools emphasizing personalized practices, yet they found wide variation in outcomes
across individual pairs of schools. Similarly, a study in which personalized practices
 t eac h er ro l e s i n pe rs o nal i zed l ear n i ng e nv i r o nm e nts • 000

were found to have a negative or ambiguous impact on student test scores left unex-
amined the degree of implementation of specific practices and struggled to reconcile
the personalized assessment principles under study with the design of established stan-
dardized assessments (Zimmerman & Kuhlmann, 2019). In short, studies to date on
the impact of personalized practices on student outcomes acknowledge a number of
common yet significant shortcomings: There remains considerable variation in the
definitions of personalized learning, prevalent measures of student outcomes are fre-
quently poorly aligned with the desired outcomes of personalized learning, significant
variation in implementation across study sites undermines confidence in findings, and
much remains to be learned about the implementation at the classroom and school
levels to increase the fidelity of taking these programs to scale. This last problem is par-
ticularly important for the study presented here.
Given the continued ambiguity and debate surrounding personalized learning, the
purpose of this study was to investigate the instructional roles and strategies of elemen-
tary and middle school educators teaching in PLEs that emphasize co-construction
between teachers and students. We define personalized learning as an approach
that encourages partnership between individual students and teachers in the design
of learning that emerges from students’ interests, questions, needs, and preferences
to foster self-directed learning (Bray & McClaskey, 2014). These learning opportunities
respond to the wide variance of students’ identities and needs (e.g., cultural, cognitive,
physical, social, emotional, and moral) and often prioritize the development of twenty-
first-century skills such as citizenship, problem solving, quantitative reasoning, and
oral and written communication (e.g., World Economic Forum, 2016). Relatedly, as-
sessment takes many different forms within a PLE, such as portfolios of student work,
authentic performance tasks, and exhibitions of learning that make space for dem-
onstrating proficiency in these skills (Bray & McClaskey, 2014). According to this
definition, personalized learning happens both within and beyond the school walls
and school day, as proficiency-based assessment affords opportunities for students to
develop and demonstrate proficiency through community-based learning experiences
(Clarke, 2013). Implementation of this multifaceted approach to personalized learning,
particularly for teachers responding to state and school system mandates to do so, en-
tails teachers making significant and simultaneous changes to core instructional, assess-
ment, and management strategies in conjunction with potentially dramatic shifts in
control and responsibility from teachers to students.
In this article, we introduce role theory as a framework for studying teachers’ ex-
perience with the implementation of PLEs and then outline our research design and
methods. Next, by grouping the educator-identified strategies into broader roles, we
illustrate how teachers navigated promoting students’ self-direction while supporting
their capacities to lead their own learning. We then consider how role theory contrib-
utes to our understanding of teachers’ potential role conflict in PLEs. Finally, we ex-
plore the implications of these findings for personalized learning implementation,
teacher preparation, and future research.

A Framework for Examining Teacher Roles in PLEs

Central to understanding the role of teachers in PLEs is first understanding the
wide array of practices and dispositions that characterize teaching in PLEs. These
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practices and dispositions help to shape a conceptualization of teacher roles in PLEs.

Below we review nationally recognized teacher competencies for personalized teach-
ing. We then provide a brief discussion of role theory (Merton, 1957b) and tradi-
tional teacher roles. We introduce what is currently known about teacher roles in
PLEs and connect it to the proposed educator competencies for personalized and
learner-centered teaching that explicate the theorized roles and responsibilities of
teachers in PLEs.

Educator Competencies for Personalized Learner-Centered Teaching

A number of organizations have articulated teaching practices and dispositions
aligned with the demands of PLEs. Drawing on standards for teacher quality, includ-
ing the Danielson Group’s Framework for Teaching, the Teacher Standards produced
by the Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC), as well as
the Blended Learning Teacher Competency Framework, offered by the International
Association for K–12 Online Learning (iNACOL), and the Educator Competencies for
Personalized, Learner-Centered Teaching (the Competencies; Jobs for the Future &
the Council of Chief State School Officers [JFF & CCSSO], 2015) outline the knowl-
edge, skills, and attributes across several domains that are deemed important for
educators in PLEs. The Competencies’ instructional domain proposes a set of “ped-
agogical techniques that educators use to sustain the personalized environment”
(JFF & CCSSO, 2015, p. 7). These include engaging “learners and other faculty in
co-designing projects that stretch and deepen the learning experience” (JFF & CCSSO,
2015, p. 18) and promoting “student agency and ownership with regard to learning,”
such as “providing opportunities for students to contribute to classroom or school-
based decision-making processes, including participatory action research, place-based
education, restorative circles, and class meetings” (JFF & CCSSO, 2015, p. 17). The
Competencies’ interpersonal domain is similarly relevant as it identifies the “social,
personal, and leadership skills educators need to relate with students, colleagues,
and the greater community” (JFF & CCSSO, 2015, p. 7), including the teacher’s ability
to create learning spaces that “build students’ ability to engage in self-directed learn-
ing and emphasize opportunities for student voice and choice, such as their ability to
co-design their own learning paths, self-assess and reflect, and provide constructive
peer feedback” (JFF & CCSSO, 2015, p. 13).
These emphases on self-direction, co-construction of learning opportunities, and
collaboration with community members on out-of-school learning present teachers
with challenges that extend beyond the uptake of discrete practices. Shifts in teacher
practices take place within a complex social and institutional milieu, one that may
vary significantly from school to school, and may reflect long-held norms and expec-
tations of traditional rather than PLEs. Role theory provides a framework for exam-
ining how teachers perceive and adapt their practices within a broader set of per-
ceived expectations and responsibilities.

Role Theory
Defined as a specific social position, a role is comprised of a set of expectations,
norms, and behaviors that a person fulfills (Banton, 1996). With roots in both sociology
 t eac h er ro l e s i n pe rs o nal i zed l ear n i ng e nv i r o nm e nts • 000

and social psychology, role theory posits that people behave in ascribed ways based on
socially defined categories (Biddle, 1986; Merton, 1957b). The theory is based on the ob-
servation that people behave in predictable ways, that those behaviors are context spe-
cific, and that behavior is driven by norms, as well as the internal and external expec-
tations for the role. When individuals consider a role to be valid, appropriate, and
productive, they are more likely to carry out that role with fidelity and even to incur
costs to conform to the role norms. When conditions change and render a role out-
dated or invalid, social pressures typically lead to role changes. When a person assumes
two or more roles that possess important differences in expectations, role conflict
may emerge. Role confusion can ensue when individuals have difficulty determining
which role to assume. Similarly, when individuals face incompatible expectations, be-
havior, or obligations associated with a single social role, role strain may result. Role
strain can also result when individuals do not concur with others’ assessments of their
performance or when they assume roles beyond their capacity (Biddle & Thomas,
1966; Merton, 1957a; Turner, 2001).

Traditional Teacher Roles

Lortie’s (1975, p. 24) seminal study of the teaching profession illuminated how
“the ways of teachers are deeply rooted in traditional patterns of thought and prac-
tice.” Although reforms have led to changes in some contexts and individual class-
rooms, the expectations, norms, and behaviors that teachers fulfill have remained
quite consistent over time (Cuban, 1993, 2007). Historically, teaching has been char-
acterized by authority and control. In describing the relatively stable role of teachers
over time, Cuban (1993, p. 17) asserted, “The teacher is expected to maintain control,
teach certain subject matter, motivate students to learn, vary levels of instruction ac-
cording to student differences, and display evidence that students have performed
satisfactorily.” In most classrooms, teachers are responsible for setting learning objec-
tives, planning activities that help students meet these objectives, monitoring student
progress, and managing group interactions, among other tasks (Pedersen & Liu, 2003).
These behaviors, norms, and expectations of teachers are shaped by many fac-
tors, including cultural beliefs and educational policy. At the root of most educational
decision making is a cultural belief about the nature of learning that assumes teachers
are authorities who “pass on required knowledge to students” (Cuban, 1993, p. 15).
This belief, in turn, shapes educational policies such as “value-added methods” of
teacher evaluation, which reward and punish teachers based on their contributions
to students’ learning as measured by standardized tests (Darling-Hammond, 2015).
These cultural beliefs and policies position teachers as authorities who are expected
to exert control over students to fulfill their roles. This role is reproduced over time
as future teachers’ beliefs about the behaviors, expectations, and norms of the profes-
sion are shaped by their own experiences and observations in classrooms as students
(Cuban, 1993, 2007; Lortie, 1975).

Teacher Roles in PLEs

In contrast to this more authoritarian view of the teacher role, teachers in PLEs
often find themselves adopting new roles and related strategies because personalized
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learning changes some fundamental conditions of the learning context (Bray &
McClaskey, 2015; Clarke, 2013). Whereas in traditional classroom settings the teacher
primarily determines learning objectives, teachers in PLEs base the learning objec-
tives on the questions, interests, and aspirations of individual students. Therefore,
teachers in PLEs are expected to serve as facilitators of “inquiry, problem solving,
and creative expression” by transferring “control over learning toward the students
themselves” (DiMartino & Clarke, 2008, p. 74). Similarly, rather than preparing re-
sources based on teacher-identified learning goals, teachers may become curators in
PLEs, helping students access appropriate resources that are suited to their unique
projects (Keefe & Jenkins, 2005). Finally, because personalized learning focuses on
tailoring instruction to individual students rather than an entire class, teachers in
PLEs may find themselves acting as coaches to individual or small groups on project
tasks, goals, and standards, as they forgo whole group instruction (Bray & McClaskey,
2015; Clarke, 2013; DiMartino & Clarke, 2008).
Because this study’s definition of personalized learning is rooted in students di-
recting their own learning, literature on student-directed learning (SDL) skills is also
helpful. Many scholars have identified teacher roles that support SDL skills, primarily
in the context of adult education. In a synthesis of the empirical and theoretical liter-
ature on SDL, Francom (2010, p. 33) identified four principles to be used within formal
teaching and learning situations: “(1) match the level of self-directed learning required
in learning activities to student readiness, (2) progress from teacher to student direc-
tion of learning over time, (3) support the acquisition of subject matter knowledge
and self-directed learning skills together, and (4) have students practice self-directed
learning in the context of learning tasks.”
Similarly, Hiemstra (2011, pp. 51–52) asserted that teachers have six instructional
roles in SDL, including “content resource, resource locator, interest stimulator, pos-
itive attitude generator, creativity and critical thinking stimulator, and evaluation stim-
ulator.” Despite the relative abundance of anecdotal evidence from the adult education
literature and although the examination of teachers’ perceptions of their role is not it-
self new (e.g., Gehrke, 1982; Gerald, 2014), little empirical work addresses teacher roles
in PLEs specifically.

Study Design
This study investigated three research questions: (1) How do teachers of elementary
and middle grades perceive their roles in PLEs? (2) What strategies do teachers of el-
ementary and middle grades identify as central in PLEs? (3) What potential conflicts
exist between and among roles? To examine these questions, we employed “pragmatic
research,” which “draws upon the most sensible and practical methods available in
order to answer a given research question” (Savin-Baden & Major, 2013, p. 171). Be-
cause our research was concerned with teacher perceptions of personalized learning,
interviewing teachers who were regularly involved in the enactment of personaliza-
tion guided our participant selection and subsequent data collection.

Site Selection
As one of the first states to pass legislation mandating personalized learning plans,
access to flexible educational pathways, and proficiency-based graduation requirements
 t eac h er ro l e s i n pe rs o nal i zed l ear n i ng e nv i r o nm e nts • 000

(Bishop et al., 2017), Vermont offered a rich policy context for the study of teacher
roles within PLEs. We purposively selected 11 Vermont schools implementing in-
tensive, school-wide personalization initiatives, as they represented illustrative cases
that allowed us “to understand a specific issue” (Creswell, 2013, p. 98). The schools in-
cluded a variety of grade configurations (e.g., K–6, K–8, 5–8) and were located in a
range of rural, suburban, and small city communities. The schools served predomi-
nantly White student populations that were socioeconomically diverse, with 15%–
60% of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. English-language learner
rates across the schools varied from 3% to 25% and special education rates ranged
from 15% to 35%.

Participant Selection
Across these 11 schools, we invited professional development coordinators who
were familiar with teachers’ practices to nominate educators to participate in this re-
search. To meet our selection criteria, a teacher needed to be implementing substan-
tial PLE initiatives, which were defined as partnering with students in the design of
learning, and basing learning opportunities on students’ individual interests, ques-
tions, and preferences. All 20 teachers who were nominated agreed to participate.
The participant group was comprised of 14 female and 6 male teachers, whose teach-
ing experience ranged from 4 to 20 years. Because this group was predominantly but
not exclusively White, we did not include race or ethnicity within the disclosed demo-
graphic data to protect confidentiality. The teachers were situated in a range of teach-
ing and teaming configurations, including self-contained classrooms; interdisciplinary
teams; single-grade, multi-age, and looping structures; and various combinations of
grades 3 through 9. These educators taught a variety of subject areas, including math,
science, humanities, sustainability, literacy, and art (see App. A). Approaches to per-
sonalized learning also varied across participants. Some created PLEs within the con-
text of their classrooms; others used team-wide strategies; and still others were in-
volved in advancing school-wide personalized learning initiatives. The PLEs offered
a variety of approaches, including negotiated curriculum, genius hour, personal inter-
est projects, service learning, and project-based learning. In all cases, access to tech-
nology was considerable with a majority of classrooms operating with one tablet or
laptop per student.

Data Collection
Our research team used a common semistructured protocol to interview all 20 teach-
ers individually to explore their conceptions of personalized learning and associated
roles (see App. B). Questions invited teachers to reflect on the nature of their roles
when teaching in PLEs. Because the approaches to personalization varied, some teach-
ers reflected on their own classroom practices whereas others reflected on school-wide
personalization initiatives. Common to all, however, participants grounded their re-
sponses in times when their teaching met this study’s basic definition of personalized
learning. Ten of the interviews were conducted in a private space at the teacher’s
school, typically within the teacher’s classroom. The other 10 interviews were held
in a private office on the college campus of a weeklong summer institute that teachers
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attended. Interviews ranged from approximately 30–90 minutes and were audio-
recorded and transcribed in full.

Data Analysis
Using Dedoose (2017), an online research platform, we applied inductive, open
coding to all interview transcripts, aiming to identify teachers’ roles and related strat-
egies in PLEs. A minimum of two researchers coded each transcript during the initial
phase of coding, asking of the data, “What is going on here?” (Glesne, 2016). Segments
of data were classified with a short term or “code” in response to that question, and those
codes were used to comprehend the situation under study (Charmaz, 2006). Follow-
ing first-round coding, we applied a form of interpretive convergence, by way of merg-
ing data, group discussion, and consensus, to increase the trustworthiness of our findings
(Harry et al., 2005). We compared and modified the codes based on this process. For
example, in some cases we combined codes that described finer-grained strategies
that were closely related. In others, we broke apart codes that indicated multiple strat-
egies. Next we conducted a second round of coding to apply and refine the codes,
eliminating any preliminary groupings that lacked evidence from a sufficient diversity
of participants (Charmaz, 2006). One researcher then conducted third-round coding
and subsequent analysis. This included eliminating codes that conveyed characteristics
of respondents that were common to many but not necessarily pertinent to how they en-
acted personalized learning in their settings. From these third-round codes, we identified
strategies and articulated four broad-based roles that the coded strategies comprised.
To assess the coherence of the coding schema and the roles framework, we con-
ducted a research consultation with eight qualitative researchers and professional de-
velopment providers, all of whom were familiar with the aims of personalized learn-
ing. At this consultation, we presented four preliminary roles, along with associated
strategies and representative excerpts from transcripts. This consultation revealed
considerable conceptual overlap between two roles and, therefore, we eliminated
one of the four proposed roles and identified another. We recoded the 60 excerpts as-
sociated with that role, identified 3 new codes, and tightened the framework overall
as a result.
As we analyzed the four roles in relation to one another, we noted the presence
of role conflict between some of the roles. External reviewer feedback encouraged
us to conduct a fourth round of coding to determine the extent to which participants’
responses conveyed a sense of role conflict. As a result, we added a third research ques-
tion to the study and returned to the interview transcripts with role conflict as an
a priori code (Glesne, 2016), resulting in the second set of findings reported within
this article.

Limitations
Like most research, this study has several limitations. First, because the exploratory
nature of the research question was an appropriate match for qualitative methods, the
findings cannot be generalized to other settings or actors. Further, given the study’s
location in a predominantly White state, the sample lacked racial and ethnic diver-
sity, raising questions about how greater diversity might have influenced the findings.
 t eac h er ro l e s i n pe rs o nal i zed l ear n i ng e nv i r o nm e nts • 000

Finally, unlike a scripted intervention, personalized learning is defined and enacted

differently across different contexts. Despite our defining terms before and during
the interviews, participants still may have reflected on circumstances that did not align
with our definitions.

Findings
As they reflected on their roles in PLEs, many teachers in this study distinguished be-
tween their earlier teaching roles and those they now assume in their PLEs. Natalie
(all names are pseudonyms), for example, explained: “[When] differentiation was
the big buzzword, it was typically trying to get everyone to arrive at the same spot
through different means. And the teacher would design all the different assignments
or projects or problems so that . . . students would be able to work in their strengths in
order to achieve the goal. But I think of [personalized learning] as learner differenti-
ation so that the students are bringing their interests, their readiness, their needs and
showing me their path really. And then my job is to support them along those lines.”
As Natalie and the other research participants described their work before and af-
ter introducing personalized learning, they identified strategies that our research team
grouped into four distinct but related roles: empowerer, scaffolder, scout, and assessor
(see Fig. 1).

Empowerer
As teachers pursued personalization, they sought to empower students by increas-
ing student independence and ownership of their learning. Leisl stated, “I have a stu-
dent teacher this semester and I love when I say to her, ‘Look, they don’t need us!

Figure 1. Teacher roles in personalized learning environments. Color version available as an online
enhancement.
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They just don’t need us.’” For these teachers, much of the purpose of personalization
was to promote student self-direction. Teachers described several strategies they used
regularly to empower students in this manner: letting students lead, offering student
choice, enabling students to work at their own pace and level, increasing student talk,
and learning with and from students.
Let students lead. Empowering students required that teachers allow and, in fact,
encourage students to lead. Natalie described, “I think of it kind of as a dance where
the student is leading and I’m following. I’m trying to go along their path.” Natalie
expressed concerns about the more traditional school system, stating, “I don’t think
we do a very good job teaching for that through school. Finding your own way and
your own purpose.” Jason explained, “I think [personalized learning] completely changes
the way you teach because you’re giving more of the power and more of the control
to the students.” And Maria described being intentional about teaching students to
find their own way. She at times adopted a hands-off approach to manage her ten-
dency to control the learning environment, offering, “I typically will walk around,
but I usually let them take the lead to come up and talk to me. I feel like if I do too much
checking in, I start to manage more.” Although letting students lead was important to
these teachers, it did not mean allowing students to choose their paths randomly. Many
teachers described approaching student choice with great deliberation.
Offer student choice. Student choice is a well-recognized attribute of personali-
zation efforts (Netcoh, 2017), and this study proved no exception. Part of empowering
students meant creating options in a variety of ways. Paul described his approach to
offering choice within a broader curricular framework, “Here’s the tent that we’re all
under right now, and there’s a lot of space to explore here. You’re going to choose an
area in this tent to become an expert on.” Teachers acknowledged that creating the
conditions for authentic student choice could be challenging at times. Paul identified
the tension involved in empowering students to make their own decisions: “When
you ask a kid to make choices and you would have a different choice, you have to
let them do that. You have to let them be who they are.” Stacey also felt this challenge
acutely. She explained trying to ensure that students could “have a lot of choice within
the day where they felt comfortable and where they wanted to explore, and then to
challenge them to add to and improve and expand on what we already do.” Part of
these teachers’ approaches to student choice was enabling the learners in their class-
rooms to select the pace and level at which they worked.
Enable students to work at their own pace and level. Many teachers emphasized
the importance of students working at their own level or pace as a strategy for empow-
ering learners. Although most teachers had experience employing individualization
or differentiation strategies in their classrooms, they were quick to contrast these with
the PLE. For example, Travis explained the difference between differentiation and
personalization in this way: “Differentiation in my classroom used to be just ‘Okay,
you can work on these math problems. You work on these math problems. You work
on these math problems. But at the end of today’s lesson, we’re moving on to tomor-
row’s lesson.’ Now, personalization can be self-paced and . . . kids should be working
in their challenge zone. Personalization allows all kids to do that instead of this bigger
range of grouping kids.”
The way Travis compared the flow of his math class before and after his adop-
tion of personalized learning strategies illuminated how he empowered students to
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work at their own pace. He contrasted, “Two years ago, we’d all start with the same
introductory activity. . . . Now there’s a chunk of my class period where kids are work-
ing on totally different things at their own pace.” Crystal described how she felt per-
sonalized level and pace could inform students’ sense of self-as-learner. She explained,
“It’s giving them the power to, one, learn at their own pace so they don’t feel like
they’re in a race; two, feel empowered to learn about themselves as math learners;
and three, feel like they’re making progress.” Under these conditions, Crystal added,
students learn “in the way that works best for them, and learn what that is so they can
advocate for themselves. . . . And that way, they’re not constantly feeling like, ‘Oh, I’m
falling behind. There must be something wrong with me.’” Relying on examples from
their own varied contexts, each of these teachers described enabling students to work
at a pace and level suitable for them. As they sought to further empower students,
many also described yielding to greater student talk in the classroom.
Increase student talk. Teachers in this study called attention to the prevalence of
student talk as an indicator of student empowerment. Leisl explained succinctly,
“The person doing the talking is the person doing the learning.” She reiterated what
she often tells her students: “If you could teach somebody else how to do it, you’re
learning it. So I need you to always be talking to somebody else.” Jason’s approach
to shifting talk from teacher to student was also a conscious act. He explained, “I
wanted my voice to be . . . less than 40% of the class. It was just one of those things
that I decided I wanted to work on.” Vanessa acknowledged her attempts to empower
students more in the classroom, reflecting, “One of the goals that I have, that I’m still
working on, is the amount of time that it’s my voice versus their voice, not that I’m
necessarily lecturing but because I get really excited.” The teachers in this study felt
that empowering students required enabling students to discuss, confer, and debate
in ways that might not have occurred previously, when their own teacher voices may
have tempered or overridden much of the student dialogue.
Learn with and from students. Finally, as they empowered learners, these teach-
ers learned alongside students. Often this emerged as a response to the wide range of
topics students chose to study. Many of the teachers were content specialists who
now found themselves acting as generalists. Keb pointed out, “As a generalist rarely
do I have the luxury of being an expert on whatever I need to be facilitating or in-
structing on.” He elaborated on the importance of “making very clear that I’m not
the expert” and described asking students to Google or conduct fact checks because
he was “not afraid to not be the content expert.” Margot appreciated “knowing that
you don’t have to be the person with all the answers, with all the structure, with all
the ideas, that we’re all in it together. You and the kids, it’s one classroom.”
In addition to learning with students, teachers learned from them. They positioned
students as educators in the room. Jim explained, “When the students are presenting
and sharing their learning, they’re the expert in the room, so there’s definitely a shift
in the student-teacher dynamic.” Vanessa provided an example, declaring, “I’m not
an expert on snowmobiles. I’ve never ridden one in my life! If that was what they
wanted to focus on for their procedural paper, [it’s] offering those opportunities to
teach me and others.” Teachers also encouraged students to learn from one another.
As Melanie explained, “It’s like they’re seeing each other as mini-experts on what
they’re doing, and then they can ask the other one for help.” Victoria felt that setting
up this role shift, to establish students as teachers, required great deliberation: “I’m
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going to be a lot more intentional in the beginning of the year, that we’re all teachers in
this classroom and we’re all learners in this classroom, even me. I’m going to learn just
as much from you as you’re going to learn from me. . . . These skills, they don’t just
need to get them from me. They can get them from each other, too.”
In sum, the teachers in this study described empowering students by letting them
lead their own learning, offering a range of choices, enabling them to work at their
own pace and level, shifting the classroom talk from teacher to student, and learning
with and from students. They spoke of enjoying this opportunity to be colearners,
as well as to shed their typical content area roles. As she adopted the empowerer
role, Natasha emphasized that the teachers on her team were “not just math teacher,
science teacher, humanities teacher, but [instead] mentors, helping kids learn how
to be self-directed and practice the mindsets that are needed to become motivated
learners.” And Amelia explained, “[I] like the idea of being more of a generalist . . .
I won’t always be seen as the science teacher. I want to be seen as somebody who
can talk to you about things and figure things out.” This need for students in a PLE
to “figure things out” also called on teachers to adopt a second role, which we have come
to call scout.

Scout
When letting students lead, teachers in PLEs often found themselves needing
to scout for resources and map out next steps. Given the broad range of knowledge
and skills students were pursuing in their PLEs, these teachers no longer fell back
on the familiar routine of preparing one set of resources or even leveled sets on one
topic. Instead, the necessary materials and other supports varied considerably from
student to student. They described four strategies they used to act as a scout—by
which we mean a person sent out ahead of a group to gather information and explore
options—on behalf of the students. They sought out students’ interests, aligned cur-
riculum accordingly, curated digital and material resources, and connected students
with human resources.
Seek out student interests. As scouts, teachers sought out students’ interests,
both existing and new. Michael offered, “My advice is really to find out specifically
what the kid is into, and let them tell you about it, let them show you . . . That’s [com-
ing] from them, so it’s not coming from the teacher.” Connie similarly emphasized the
role of student interest and enthusiasm as she reflected, “To me authentic learning
starts with an idea, something kids are really, really excited about.” Paul spoke about
student interests in terms of teacher and student goals: “What’s the difference between
personalization and differentiation as it comes to the teacher’s desired goals? For me,
that it’s a genuine goal that kids have, which means I’m loosening up my curriculum
to accommodate more of their personal interests.” With that distinction between per-
sonalization and differentiation, Paul came to appreciate the importance of student-
driven goal setting and the implications of those goals for the curriculum. In addition
to honoring students’ existing curiosities, these teachers viewed their role as assisting
students with finding new areas of interest, or, as Margot put it, helping them “look for
cool ideas they might be interested in.” As Margot’s comment suggested, not all stu-
dents arrive at school with clear passions; it was not unusual for students in these
classrooms to need support in identifying new topics or concepts. Maria tried to help
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students find new ideas to explore by asking, “How can we find something for you
that you’re really going to enjoy? This should be the best part of your day.” Once
students identified their individual interests, teachers leveraged those interests to
build curriculum.
Align curriculum with student interests. As teachers came to understand stu-
dents’ existing interests, as well as help them uncover others, they planned curriculum
accordingly. Teachers discussed scouting for possible pathways and learning oppor-
tunities while remaining flexible throughout a project. Michael described, “You really
need to be able to listen to what [students] are saying, and think about it, and make
connections to move them forward.” Natalie noted, “I’m always farming for emerging
curriculum, seeing what would interest students or what they need next or what they
bring to the classroom.” Natalie’s responsiveness to students’ evolving interests con-
trasted with the more rigid unit mapping teachers recalled from their earlier ap-
proaches to teaching. Michael, for example, offered that, “In the beginning, I’d say,
‘No, you have to draw. This is the time to draw. What’s wrong with you? If someone
gave me an hour to draw, I’d love it.’” He smiled as he elaborated, “By the end, I was
like, ‘Yeah, let’s take the screen apart and see how the window works,’ or something.”
Cassandra traced a similar shift in how she prepared for two units:

The perfect example was the difference between my first and second units, when
I had spent hours creating a website for the kids for their town history project,
outlining every single step that I wanted them to take, and I had an idea of what
I wanted the end product to be. As the kids started questioning things and stating
their own ideas, we started changing the website together. I realized it was a much
better way to do it. And so, with the second unit, we started with a blank website
with just the question, and they came up with what the project needs to have.

Drawing on her 4 years of experience with personalization, Stacey described the

flexibility inherent in being a curriculum scout in a PLE: “That’s how I’ve changed
as a teacher within these 4 years of running this program. Year 1 I had every day
planned start to finish. I don’t do that anymore.” As these teachers attested, respond-
ing to students’ interests—sometimes on the fly—challenged their skills as curricu-
lum designers. Moreover, it stretched their ability to curate resources to meet stu-
dents’ needs and interests.
Curate digital and material resources. Teachers in the study described scouting
for digital and material resources for their students’ varied learning needs. Stacey
talked about developing a resource base, “and for me a lot of that was just physical
materials.” Crystal saw her curation as a playlist, explaining that “each student has
their basic plan that they’re working on. They start with a pretest for the unit. I make
recommendations for them. It’s like a playlist of what they still need to work on within
that unit.” Connie leveraged technology to support personalization in the art class-
room, recognizing that students in a PLE need access to resources and instruction
at different times. She offered, “I’ve started creating little videos . . . I have a video
on Vimeo that tells you how to use watercolors.” Victoria compiled resources on a
digital tablet for students’ independent use, explaining, “I use a tablet a lot to put
up resources for them, and I just say ‘Go to the tablet. Find your topic. Find your re-
sources. And if that’s not helping, call me back.’ It’s a lot of fostering independence.”
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And Travis illustrated his role as scout in helping students access content for their
learning, as he described, “I am not the one that holds all the content anymore. I’m
the one that’s going to help them access it if they need help and then figuring out what
to do with it.” Melanie struck a similar note, as she explained: “One of the students is
really into, I would say, farming, I guess, so goats and chickens. And I’ve never had any
sort of livestock or poultry or anything. So she’s learning all about animal husbandry,
and she’s going to start breeding her goats and showing them. And I feel totally com-
fortable with her doing that because I don’t view my role at all to be the expert. It’s just
in guiding the students, making sure that they have the resources, connecting them.”
Melanie’s observation illustrated how aligning the curriculum with students’ inter-
ests often drew teachers far afield of their familiar content areas and stretched their
capacity to manage the logistical demands of self-directed learning. In these cases,
teachers also described the need to connect students with human resources.
Connect students with human resources. As students pursued learning that
was personally meaningful, teachers described identifying people to serve as resources
on students’ learning journeys. Keb described, “We can’t offer everything, but it’s not
our job to offer everything. It’s our job to explain how to navigate the world. You want
to learn jiu-jitsu? Great, here’s where the jiu-jitsu studio is. Here’s how to contact
them.” Natasha similarly described, “If I do have a kid who isn’t quite saying it, but
I think might be really into coding, well, I know a teacher who’s into that and I can
sort of send them in that direction.”
Sometimes teachers sought human resources as a means to juggle the various
groups of students that often emerge in a PLE. Victoria explained how she scouted
for support when one group needed to use the school’s maker space: “If we’re doing
a tech-based [project], I can’t bring all 21 fourth graders down to the maker space with
me to work on one group’s project. That’s not going to work. And we don’t always
have the staffing for someone to come in and take out that group, so it’s been a lot
of flexibility and a lot of, ‘Hey, does anyone want to take these kids to record? Can
someone help us out here?’”
In the role of scout, teachers described letting students lead while simultaneously
needing to scout the way ahead, curate resources, and look out for potential opportu-
nities, misunderstandings, and challenges. They also recognized when students would
benefit from greater support and scaffolding.

Scaffolder
Teachers in this study used the term “scaffold” to describe many of their strategies
to ensure students engaged productively in learning. When asked what advice he
would give to a teacher who was new to personalized learning, Jason offered, “You
have to really plan for a ton of different scaffolds along the way, because (students)
will need them. Any time you might think that there’s a little bit of possible confusion,
you should have a scaffold ready.” The scaffolds teachers described most fell into four
types: structuring, fading, modeling, and questioning.
Structuring. The creation of new structures to support students’ success in PLEs
was foremost among the scaffolding teachers identified. When describing his role
in a PLE, Paul first asked himself, “What are the routines and structures in place
that enable kids to personalize?” Natasha recounted the dramatic change students
experienced in the degree of structure, stating, “It was so teacher-directed before that
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it would be, ‘Day 1, we’re going to read this article. Day 2, we’re going to draw this
picture.’ And now it’s none of that.” Natasha noted that, because of this shift, “There
are more kids who are not sure where to start than there used to be.” And in Jason’s
initial efforts, he reported, “There wasn’t quite enough structure for them to grab on
to. So the results were varied.”
Teachers discovered that students often needed help with time management in
particular. Vanessa’s scaffolding of time management began in the critical first stages
of project development. She helped students develop realistic plans that matched a
project’s scope and scale with the time available to accomplish the work. She noted,
“Time management is really hard . . . there’s a lot of scaffolding around, ‘You want
to build an elephant out of tin cans in the next 2 weeks? Maybe we don’t have to make
it life-size.’” Maria recognized that time management skills could help students keep
their projects on track. “In trying to give students autonomy in creating their own
deadlines,” she recalled, “it just doesn’t always work.” She acknowledged that her ap-
proach to scaffolding time management was still evolving: “If you were to try to chunk
your project, these would be suggested sort of timelines. I think it’s about helping stu-
dents design a backwards, you know, timeline for their project.” In addition to trying
to offer structures for students, teachers also needed to know when to fade, or grad-
ually remove the structures, to support student independence.
Fading. The practice of supplying and then gradually removing supports was one
of the most widely utilized scaffolds to which teachers referred. Victoria described
how she integrated a fading strategy for her fourth-grade students as the school year
progressed, stating, “My goal is definitely to put the scaffolds in up front and by the
middle of the year have [students] in a good place to do it on their own.” She ex-
plained, “It did take a lot of scaffolding up front. We would spend a whole week on
what does a team leader look like, and everyone would have a chance to practice team
leader, and then go through all the roles.” Victoria compared this process to that of
their second project, explaining that, “I could just kind of step back and be like, ‘Okay,
you have your team leaders. You have your roles. You do it. Sign up on the board if
you need my help.’ I float around the room.”
Some teachers, especially those who worked on multigrade teams, aligned degrees
of fading with particular grade levels. Amelia, for example, explained that, “Our sixth
graders I tend to work with more in groups, and they’re doing the same topic or ques-
tion so I can monitor what they’re doing, and we move together as a group. And sev-
enth grade is a mix.” Natalie relied on a similar strategy as she worked to build student
independence in the art studio, stating that, “for fifth graders we begin with one center
at a time and gradually open the whole room until the whole studio is open.” Several
teachers expressed concern about knowing when to fade, however. Cassandra cau-
tioned that age or grade level may not always be a good predictor of students’ read-
iness for greater self-direction: “I had scaffolded [the project] pretty heavily, because
they were a group of fourth graders. And they really shocked me at how much they
were able to come up with.” This group of teachers shared many examples of struc-
turing and fading that they felt were essential scaffolding strategies; they also de-
scribed targeted modeling as a helpful approach.
Modeling. Modeling emerged as a strategy to scaffold student skills. Amelia re-
flected, “Really a lot of it is modeling, showing them how to do it because it’s not
innate.” Much of this modeling occurred in brief spurts of direct instruction. As Jason
explained, “The direct instruction in my classroom lasts for no more than 10 minutes
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every day.” Natalie similarly emphasized the role of brevity, saying, “Students come in
and typically they all hear a lesson, very brief, kind of writer’s workshop model, some-
thing that I would identify that I think everyone needs to know, but I try to keep it to
just 5 minutes.” Natalie elaborated by describing how she also models in small group
and individual instruction: “Sometimes after the whole group lesson we’ll break into a
small group. People interested in learning to do this will come meet me here. Or some-
times I’ll just keep an eye out for someone who needs individual work. I’ll either ob-
serve or work sort of side-by-side with them, modeling how I’ve worked as an artist.”
Victoria spoke of “just looking for where they might need mini-lessons” as oppor-
tunities for direct instruction or, as in this example, “Let’s say we have a group writing
a letter to a senator. They might need a grammar lesson on how to write a letter. So, it’s
that intentional looking for skills and making sure you’re modeling the best practice.”
Questioning. Teachers in this study also regularly scaffolded posed questions to
students: to check in, to lead students to a specific strategy or answer, to promote
problem solving, and to suggest new resources. Sometimes teachers’ questions served
as a simple status check while moving around the classroom. Amelia stated, “I love the
way that I can interact with them. I start out kind of circling [the classroom]. ‘What
are you doing? What are you doing?’ We kind of check in.” Teachers also posed ques-
tions to lead students toward a more productive strategy. Cassandra explained it this
way: “My role was to pose the question rather than being the person in charge who
was telling them what to do. If I saw them getting off-track, posing questions rather
than—that was hard—rather than telling them exactly what they should be doing.”
At other times, the questions invited students to consider new ideas as a means of
problem solving. Amelia often asked students, “What do you think you should do
next time?” as a way of “trying to put it on them to figure that out and not me having
to guide them all the way through it.” Crystal described a similar approach, saying, “A
lot of my role is about ‘What are you going to do to learn this? What are your re-
sources? What have you tried? What are your options for problem solving?’” At times,
teachers’ questions led students to new learning resources or pathways. Paul often
used questions in this way, saying to students, “Hey, I noticed you haven’t been over
there yet. Like, you’ve been messing around with chemicals over here for the last 3 days.
Have you gone to the research table? Have you looked at any of those?” Victoria sim-
ilarly recalled saying to students, “Oh wow, I really like how your group wanted to do
tornado safety. That’s really cool. Let’s think about now, where might tornadoes hap-
pen?” She summarized this strategy as “guiding them in that direction, but then letting
them make their own meaning from it, and finding their own answers to those ques-
tions.” As with structures, fading, and modeling, questioning was a central scaffolding
technique these teachers used to help students become more independent and self-
directed in a PLE. Thoughtful questions supported students in solving problems
and identifying new strategies throughout their personalized learning journeys.

Assessor
We have named the fourth role identified by teachers in PLEs “assessor.” Al-
though assessing student work clearly is not exclusive to PLEs, teachers described
employing three main strategies when assessing personalized learning: distinguishing
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between assessment and evaluation, providing ongoing formative assessment, and

identifying learning targets and scales.
Distinguishing between assessment and evaluation. Study participants distin-
guished between assessment and evaluation, acknowledging the different purposes of
each. When asked what advice he would give teachers who were working in PLEs, Jim
was clear that his “first bit of advice would be to keep it really simple, to have . . . clear
expectations for what you are and aren’t going to evaluate.” He elaborated, “I question
the value of uniform evaluation in personalized learning. I think each of the students
has different assessment-based needs.” Liesl explained, “I’ll give the common assess-
ments that everybody gives so that we can prove that my kids are learning what they’re
supposed to be learning, but I basically do this as a project-based learning class.” Paul
described his process for emphasizing assessment over evaluation as he explained
gradually moving away from using numbers for grades and instead providing only
narrative feedback. “The first step was to write comments only on their work, and
put the numbers up on Schoology, which was the LMS we were using. . . . Then the
next time I gave the formative feedback and same thing, said, ‘If you’re curious about
the grade, go ahead and look on Schoology.’ And then after a little while, I just stopped
putting the numbers on.”
To provide this narrative feedback to students, teachers emphasized the ways in
which they monitored student learning regularly and often, offering feedback and
feedforward to students.
Providing ongoing formative assessment. Teachers stressed the importance of
helping students identify strengths and areas for improvement while the learning was
occurring rather than evaluating only the end product. Margot explained, “While
they’re writing some sort of piece, it’s my role to look over their writing, give them
feedback, and help them with some of the detail work.” Maria held regular weekly
meetings for this purpose, explaining, “I call them up when I’m seeing things that
I’m red flagging or curious about, so once or twice a week they’ll come up and check
in with me.” Jim used a similar process to align students’ projects with their learning
goals. He offered, “It’s self-guided, really. I ask for check-ins and I give feedback
around if I think they need to do a better job of establishing what their goals are in
relationship to their project.” Denise emphasized self-assessment in this formative
process, asking students to identify where they think they are on the learning scale
at a given moment. She explained, “They tell me they think they’re here or there
and we talk about what it looks like to get to the next level on the learning scale or
what they think needs to happen.” The learning scales referenced here were a third
key strategy that teachers employed as assessors.
Identifying learning targets and scales. Teachers described learning targets and
scales as their primary way to communicate clear expectations. Connie explained that
in her art room, “I have three learning targets that I assess on. ‘Using self-direction and
initiative I can refine and complete an artwork using the artistic process’ is the first
one.” It was important that the learning targets were made consistently accessible
to students. Stacey noted that the targets “are posted around the room. They know
this is the agenda for the class. It’s what we want to get to at the end, but we can be
really flexible within the 6 weeks as to when we do that.” Denise echoed this sentiment,
conveying, “They always have the scale, sometimes it’s on the board, sometimes it’s
printed out, it’s even taped or glued in their folders, so it’s everywhere.”
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The identification of these learning targets and skills served as the basis for ongoing
formative assessment. However, teachers also experienced tensions and challenges as
they acted as assessors, particularly in relation to high expectations and work quality.
We describe this tension, and others, next in relation to role conflict in PLEs.

Role Conflict and Prioritization

Participants described several teacher roles as being both expected and yet simul-
taneously incompatible with PLEs. First, teachers wondered how to meet what they
perceived as societal expectations for teachers while also serving as empowerers and
transferring more control of learning from themselves to their students. Crystal spoke
retrospectively of working through this issue. She reflected on her internal expectation
that a teacher’s role is to provide the answers, as she described, “I had to really let go of
a lot of the paradigm that I thought of what I should be, and realized that the one-on-
one, student-led conversations and conferences were much more meaningful than
me telling them something.” Other teachers worried about external perceptions and
the expectation for teachers to keep quiet, focused classrooms. Amelia explained:
“If you let them be independent you have to allow for those natural learning moments
that come from wasting time, which, as a teacher, like (screams) if somebody walked in
right now and saw this I’d be fired! I mean, they would think, ‘What’s going on? How
is this allowed?’”
Natalie explained that the role conflict was so overt that she’d been asked not to
divulge to others that she didn’t provide grades in her class, stating, “I’m supposed
to keep this on the down low but I’ve gotten rid of grading for the last 3 years because
I don’t want extrinsic motivators to interfere with the intrinsically motivated learning
that I’m trying so hard to promote!”
Teachers similarly identified role conflict between and among the roles they adopted
for the PLEs. For example, because this type of personalized learning aimed to pro-
mote SDL, teachers adopted the role of empowerer as they created opportunities for
students to direct their own learning. Within these opportunities, teachers supported
student learning by applying the strategies associated with both the scaffolder and
scout roles. As they did so, they confronted the question of how to empower learners
while concomitantly scaffolding and scouting. On the one hand, teachers were ex-
pected to let students drive their own learning and, on the other hand, teachers were
expected to provide structures, resources, and templates. Were students leading if they
weren’t setting their own deadlines? Were students owning the learning if teachers
were curating resources? What was the right balance and how should teachers manage
their actions when their roles conflicted? In particular, participants questioned which
of their roles to consider as primary and how to reconcile the risks associated with
prioritizing one role over another.
Prioritizing the empowerer role. As teachers in the PLEs increasingly considered
student self-direction as a goal, they adopted the empowerer role to foster self-direction.
Prioritizing the empowerer role felt like a natural default for many teachers in this
study, given that a key aim of their personalized learning initiative was to place the
student in the metaphorical driver’s seat. Yet participants voiced concern about po-
tential costs of such prioritization. Amelia summarized this challenge, stating, “It’s
hard to know . . . ‘How far do I let that one go before I should intervene?’” They
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worried about depth and accuracy if they placed the empowerer role above that of
scaffolder. Would too much empowerment come at the cost of learning content?
Maria acknowledged this challenge: “To be able to catch every factual detail or in-
accuracy for 17 different projects is nearly impossible!” She described a recent, related
conundrum: “A huge thing that came up with the last presentations was just truthful-
ness and, you know, saying things that are actually factual. . . . How much do you
catch? How much do you let the student go up and say makeup was invented in east-
ern Europe in the 1500-something on Thanksgiving Day? How much am I responsible
for that student and what they say, and how much is the student responsible? And
that, I feel that quality control as a teacher we sometimes care more about the quality
than the students. Where does our role ultimately end?”
Amelia reconciled the possible limitations on students’ mastery of content with the
opportunity to identify needed self-direction skills, explaining, “I haven’t seen amaz-
ing, wonderful in-depth content learning, but I feel like the learning is coming out
more in terms of recognizing pitfalls that students might have with independence
skills.” For Amelia, empowering for self-direction won out, yet she grappled regularly
with such questions. In these ways, the teachers confronted daily challenges of role
conflict and, accordingly, made choices about prioritization.
Prioritizing the scaffolder and scout roles. Prioritizing the scaffolder and scout
roles presented its own challenges. Teachers worried about squelching students’ self-
directed ambitions if they provided too much direction. Stacey explained that it “gets
tricky because sometimes their ideas are so big and amazing and awesome, yet not
that realistic within time, space, money, logistics, knowledge base. . . . ” She wondered
how to have “those conversations where you’re not completely shooting down their
ideas but giving them reasonable, realistic pathways and goals that they can feel ac-
complished with.” And Natalie explained, “Kids tend to come in and say, ‘Can we
get right to work?’ Which is a wonderful question, right? Wouldn’t every teacher want
that? I feel foolish saying, ‘No, sit down. I want to tell you something, teach you some-
thing.’” Maria described, “In the beginning we had them fill out a goal every single
day. . . . That became kind of tedious and a little bit too force-fed.”
Teachers also felt that prioritizing the roles of scaffolder and scout ran the risk of
shortchanging the development of self-direction skills. Crystal wondered how to “not
necessarily swoop in and save them, which can be really hard when they’re strug-
gling.” Maria described how she felt pulled between scaffolding and empowering:
“Their first project . . . worked out to be 20 or so class periods. So I was even as specific
as, ‘On October 1, you should be researching . . . , on October 5, starting your presen-
tation,’ which I felt was a little bit too guided. . . . In trying to give students autonomy
in creating their own deadlines, it just doesn’t always work. So I try to impose dead-
lines, and that doesn’t always work!”
Amelia echoed this conflict, reflecting on how the provision of greater structure
might result in more content but fewer skills in time management. “I feel like learn-
ing has been happening, but it’s hard to measure that and to not get lost in, ‘Oh
my gosh, they could be learning more if we just put them in this class that was struc-
tured and they followed and they got that content!’ But, then, I don’t know if they’d
have the power of learning from wasted time, because sometimes you have to waste
time and you have to do a really crappy job on a project to learn why that didn’t
feel good.”
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Prioritizing the assessor role. Much of the conflict described above might have
challenged teachers less had they not also been playing the role of assessor. Although
the teachers espoused the importance of authentic audiences, they were similarly
aware that students’ final products resulting from self-direction might be less pol-
ished or less accurate. Margot described this issue, explaining, “Some (projects) are
going to be OK, but they’re not going to have the greatest quality. And, if those are
public presentations, sometimes it’s hard when they’re not the greatest quality but
they’re totally student driven.” Maria also described a few projects that fell short of
meeting what she considered a sufficient standard of quality. She offered, “I think
some students were feeling embarrassed to put their work out there. And I feel like
the authentic audience was very important but I feel it’s about high expectations
and having them continue trying to meet those expectations.” Paul summarized,
“Grading, assessing is very clearly one of the hardest pieces and it’s hard to reduce
that pressure if you’re scoring kids on their performance. . . . Some of the shifts that
we’re moving into for instructional purposes make beautiful sense—but for evaluation
purposes, can be really harsh.”
In each of these instances, teachers grappled with role conflict as they faced deci-
sions about meeting expectations within the array of roles.

Discussion and Implications

The JFF and CCSSO (2015) identified the need for research that would inform our
understanding of teacher competencies in PLEs. Indeed, several of the strategies de-
scribed by participants in this research aligned with the proposed Educator Compe-
tencies for Personalized, Learner-Centered Teaching (JFF & CCSSO, 2015). Explored
through role theory, however, it became clear that the teachers in this study were
challenged by more than the acquisition of new teaching competencies. The roles
to which they had become accustomed throughout their careers—the set of expecta-
tions, norms, and behaviors that they had long sought to fulfill (Banton, 1996)—
clashed with the new roles they sought to assume for PLEs. Rather than serving as
experts who teach required subject matter and “pass on required knowledge to stu-
dents” (Cuban, 1993, p. 15), the teachers in this study described themselves as em-
powerers who let students lead, learned with and from students, and aligned curric-
ulum with students’ interests. They described internal struggles and concern about
external judgments as they departed from traditional social norms and expectations
that have positioned public schoolteachers as figures of authority and control in the
classroom for centuries (Metz, 1978; Waller, 1932/1965). That teachers experienced
conflict between their PLE roles and those they had been socialized to perform was
relatively unsurprising, given prior research on teachers who engage in reform-oriented
practices (Jong, 2016). In turn, role ambiguity, or a lack of clarity about role expecta-
tions (Rizzo et al., 1970), can produce cognitive strain and, often, diminished results
(Jones, 1993). Moreover, strain that results from these conflicts can negatively affect
job performance (Goode, 1960; Merton, 1957a).
Role theory suggests that individuals who experience role strain typically respond
in one of several ways to minimize or resolve the effects. One option is to determine
the relative importance of the roles and emphasize that which is most important
 t eac h er ro l e s i n pe rs o nal i zed l ear n i ng e nv i r o nm e nts • 000

(Merton, 1957a). In this case, a teacher might respond to a student presenting inaccu-
rate information, for example, by prioritizing the empowerer role and withholding
feedback about accuracy while advancing assessment aims in other ways. Conversely,
because individuals tend to prioritize the roles that are most central to their identity
and for which they are most likely to be evaluated (Parsons, 1966; Stryker, 2001), teach-
ers who were being evaluated on the basis of their student’s accuracy might prioritize
the assessor or scaffolder roles instead. Another response to role strain might be to
abridge the role set by discarding the least compatible roles (Merton, 1957a). Here a
teacher might decide to discard the empowerer role, determining it to be incompat-
ible with the status of assessor. Yet another alternative is Goffman’s (1959) concept of
role distance, in which an individual may continue to fulfill the conflicting roles but
do so with a sense of detachment. This might result in a teacher’s continuing to fulfill
both empowerer and assessor roles yet becoming numb to the potential conflict be-
tween two primary stances and related actions. Alternatively, teachers may improvise
in new roles to distance themselves from the aspects of the role that create conflict
(Stebbins, 1967).
Whether through prioritization, abridgement, or distancing to the degree that these
responses to role conflict impede the adoption of roles and practices important in
PLEs, the implementation and ultimate efficacy of PLEs may suffer. These responses
may reflect a range of ways teachers have been “hugging the middle” (Cuban, 2007)
between conflicting norms and expectations for teaching, increasing the appearance
of student-centered practices but ceding little in the way of authority and control
to students. And myriad role conflicts further complicate the caution that accompa-
nied the release of the Educator Competencies for Personalized, Student-Centered
Teaching: The competencies should “not be read as progressions or prioritized until
further research can be conducted. We do not currently have enough information
about implementation of personalized, learning-centered approaches to prioritize the
domains, or outline a progression for training in the competencies” (JFF & CCSSO,
2015, p. 4).
Using role theory as a lens for examining this study’s findings also helps reveal the
interplay of expectations, norms, and practices as teachers take their position in PLEs.
Understanding teachers’ experience with this interplay has implications for teacher
preparation programs, in-service professional development, and school change plan-
ning. Teachers’ engagement in each of these efforts helps shape the behaviors, norms,
and expectations of the profession. Role conflict and strain may be reduced if these
efforts jointly foster in preservice and in-service teachers the knowledge, beliefs, skills,
and dispositions that align with the goals of the PLE and help educators effectively
navigate the role strain they may experience while also meeting the requirements
for national accreditation. This alignment may rely on reducing the potentially con-
tradictory visions for teacher roles among PLEs, InTASC standards, and accreditation
standards for teacher preparation. Collegial dynamics through student teacher place-
ment, initial teacher placement, and mentoring may also either reduce or exacerbate
role strain for emerging teachers. In addition, teachers’ perceptions of role shifts en-
countered in the transition to PLEs could inform the design of broader implementa-
tion of PLEs, including, for instance, the phasing of implementation, new systems de-
velopment, and community engagement that acknowledge the role conflicts that
teachers face in the course of significant school change.
000 • the e lementary s cho o l journal d e c e m b e r 2 02 0

This study contributes to the limited research on teaching roles adopted by teach-
ers of elementary and middle grades who are developing PLEs. The roles of empow-
erer, scout, scaffolder, and assessor identified within this research are by no means the
only roles that teachers assume in PLEs. Similarly, the list of associated strategies is not
comprehensive. This study suggests a number of areas ripe for future research in an
era of increasing personalization with regard to teachers’ roles. For example, how do
role prioritization, role abridgement, and role distance, as well as other responses to
role conflict, play out over time? What are the implications for PLE implementation,
particularly with regard to effects on student interest, engagement, and achievement
in PLEs? What teacher roles emerge in more culturally or racially diverse school set-
tings? How do teacher roles in PLEs in elementary and middle grades compared with
those in high schools? To what extent do teachers’ prior backgrounds or philosophical
orientations influence the ease with which they adopt new roles? What is the status
of teacher preparation in terms of curriculum for personalized learning? And how
might insights into these questions inform taking PLEs to scale in schools, districts,
and states?

Conclusion
As an increasing number of states, districts, and schools implement PLEs that entail
fundamental changes in the purposes and practices of schooling, understanding what
this reform means for teachers’ roles within and beyond the classroom is a critical ini-
tial step. This study represents one of the first empirical investigations into teachers’
roles in PLEs focused on co-construction of learning by students and educators in the
elementary and middle grades. The findings suggest that implementing PLEs requires
more than teachers adopting new teaching practices. Rather, the teachers in this study
described the need for teacher roles that empower students in the learning process,
scout student interests and resources to support their learning, scaffold emergent proj-
ects, and assess diverse forms of student work. They conveyed how adopting these
roles involved challenging norms and expectations related to past roles they and
others expected them to fulfill, as well as how the new roles presented their own chal-
lenges. Therefore, schools intending to enact personalized learning should attend to
the internal and external norms and expectations for the various roles teachers play
in the learning lives of elementary and middle school students.

Appendix A
Teacher Participant Demographics

Table A1. Teacher Pseudonyms and Their Corresponding Teaching Positions

Name Grades, Subject(s), Grade Level(s), and Team Configuration

Amelia Teaches science on a seven-teacher, multi-age, sixth- to eighth-grade team

Teaches as a generalist during a daily, 1-hour, personalized learning class
Cassandra Teaches all subjects in third grade and partners closely with fourth-grade teacher
Connie Teaches sixth- to seventh-grade art as a member of Unified Arts team
Teaches a daily personalized learning class
 t eac h er ro l e s i n pe rs o nal i zed l ear n i ng e nv i r o nm e nts • 000

Table A1. (Continued)

Name Grades, Subject(s), Grade Level(s), and Team Configuration

Crystal Teaches math courses in seventh through twelfth grades
Denise Teaches humanities on a four-teacher, multi-age, seventh- to eighth-grade team
Teaches a daily personalized learning class
Jason Teaches social studies on a four-teacher, multi-age, seventh- to eighth-grade team
Jim Teaches sixth-grade language arts and integrated studies on sixth- to eighth-grade team
Teaches as a generalist for a 1- to 2-hour thematic block
Keb Teaches humanities and interdisciplinary courses in seventh and eighth grades
Liesl Teaches on a two-teacher, sixth-grade team
Margot Teaches on a two-teacher, looping, fifth- to sixth-grade team
Teaches math on a seven-teacher, multi-age, sixth- to eighth-grade team
Maria Teaches as a generalist during a daily, 1-hour, personalized learning class
Melanie Teaches humanities on a three-teacher, seventh- to eighth-grade team
Teaches as a generalist in a daily personalized learning class
Michael Teaches science on a four-teacher, fifth- to sixth-grade team
Teaches as a generalist during a daily, 1-hour, personalized learning class
Natalie Teaches sixth- to eighth-grade art as member of Unified Arts team
Natasha Teaches math on a four-teacher, fifth- to sixth-grade team
Teaches as a generalist during a daily, 1-hour, personalized learning class
Paul Teaches science on a four-teacher, seventh- to eighth-grade team
Stacey Teaches fifth- to eighth-grade sustainability as member of Unified Arts team
Travis Teaches on a two-teacher, looping, fifth- to sixth-grade team
Vanessa Teaches literacy and social studies as part of a two-teacher, fifth- to sixth-grade team
Victoria Teaches all subjects in fourth grade and partners closely with third-grade teacher

Appendix B
Teacher Interview Protocol
Throughout the protocol [this personalized learning initiative] is replaced with the name
of the class or initiative at the interviewees’ schools.

1. Please describe your role as you worked with students during [this personalized learn-
ing initiative].
2. How, if at all, is this role different than the one you play at other times while teaching?
3. Has your role been the same since [this personalized learning initiative] was put into
place or has it changed at all over time?
4. Please talk about whether this role emerged naturally or was intentionally pursued.
5. To what extent have you experienced challenges with your role as it relates to [this
personalized learning initiative]? How have you responded to these challenges?
6. Has the role of educator/teacher been played by others (e.g., community members,
students, virtual mentors) during [this personalized learning initiative]?

a. In what ways is this different than the usual roles they play?
b. In what ways is this different than is typical for your school community?
c. How have you collaborated with these individuals?

7. What are your goals with regard to your role in [this personalized learning initiative]
moving forward?
000 • the e lementary s cho o l journal d e c e m b e r 2 02 0

Note
Penny A. Bishop is professor of education at the University of Vermont; John M. Downes is direc-
tor of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at the University of Vermont; Steven Netcoh
is a postdoctoral fellow at the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at the University of Ver-
mont; Katy Farber is a professional development coordinator at the Tarrant Institute for Innova-
tive Education at the University of Vermont; Jessica DeMink-Carthew is an assistant professor of
education at the University of Vermont; Tricia Brown is a doctoral student in the Department of
Education at University of Vermont; Rachel Mark is a professional development coordinator at the
Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at the University of Vermont. Correspondence may
be sent to Penny Bishop at [email protected].

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