Personalized Learning in the Changing Mathematics Classroom

Meeting the varied academic needs of a diverse student body is not a new problem, and the realization of a need for personalized learning has been developing rapidly amongst all students—moving away from the one-size-fits-all approach that came with standardized curricula and assessment for students of the same age. In this article, I give a narrative overview of the need for personalization in learning mathematics, providing a summary of different interpretations of the construct of personalized learning and a touch on its theoretical and historical background. I discuss how personalized learning fits within social constructivist theories of learning, and how it is consistent with the process of developing students into independent learners. The main objective of the article is to find out how technology—artificial intelligence in particular—can be utilized to facilitate the process of personalizing mathematics learning. Mathematics educators look to respond to the needs and preferences of contemporary students and take advantage of the educational affordances that artificial intelligence platforms offer. The use of learning management systems, interactive learning systems, intelligent tutoring systems and social media in the personalization process is reviewed, and also the use of artificial intelligence systems in the process of gathering student data. Adaptive hyper-media are used in the process of hyper-personalization —adapting automatically to students’ learning needs and learning preferences. Some recommendations are given on how to move to a personalized classroom and concerns, challenges and recommendations are raised, speculating about the future role of personalized learning in mathematics education.