The lesson of these criticisms is that PCBE requires full commitment. If your team is not going to implement PCBE fully, then it will be a waste of your time and effort. If you are committed to doing it well, this book will help you get where you want to go.
How Is This Book Organized?
The purpose of this book is to help a team of preK–12 teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders to improve its school or district by transforming to PCBE. We offer ideas and transformation processes for the classroom, the school, and the district. This book is intended for a team of educational stakeholders because the transformation to personalized competency-based education cannot be done effectively in a single classroom—it must be a schoolwide or districtwide effort.
Part I is about the PCBE vision. Its chapters offer ideas about what changes you might want to consider for your PCBE classroom, school, and district to better meet students’ needs in this post-industrial, digital-age society. All three levels of change should be done together (if you are an independent public charter school or private school and don’t have a district or central office to deal with, then obviously only the first two kinds of changes are important). Your team should consider six core ideas while developing your vision, each of which is addressed in a separate chapter (chapters 1 through 6). Chapter 7 presents two comprehensive case studies that exemplify the core ideas—one for an independent public school (not in a school district or charter network) and one for a school district.
Part II is about the change process. These chapters address the difficult challenge of how to transform from what you have now to what you envision (with the help of part I) to maximize student motivation and learning. Chapter 8 helps you to decide on the best scope for your change effort and describes a framework for the change process that applies to every scope. Chapter 9 offers detailed guidance on sequential activities for a school district, while chapter 10 offers such guidance for an independent public school (not part of a school district or charter network). The appendices offer criteria for assessing readiness for transformation, as well as detailed lists of helpful resources for enhancing your success.
Now that you have some understanding of PCBE, recognize that complex paradigm change is the only way to achieve strong outcomes for students, and have a sense of how to navigate this book, let’s move on to the nuts and bolts of making PCBE a reality in your school context.
PART I:
VISION
Core Ideas ofPersonalized Competency-Based Education
Part I provides ideas based on research and practical experience for you to consider building into your ideal vision of PCBE. You should form a team of teachers and other stakeholders to develop your vision (see steps 1.2 and 2.1 in chapters 9 and 10, pages 159 and 189, for guidance). We suggest that your team explore six core ideas while developing your vision (we originally introduced these core ideas in our previous book, Reinventing Schools: It’s Time to Break the Mold [Reigeluth & Karnopp, 2013]).
1. Competency-based education
2. Learner-centered instruction
3. Restructured curriculum
4. New roles
5. A nurturing culture
6. New organizational structures
Please note that all six core ideas are important and interdependent aspects of PCBE. Chapters 1 through 6 address each of these core ideas respectively. However, they do not constitute a model because they can be implemented in very different ways. Rather, they constitute a different paradigm of education, within which there can be many different models. The challenge for your team is to figure out what features are best for your school or schools. Also, your team should not attempt to create your ideal vision without consulting part II: Action, first.
Each chapter begins with principles that identify features of PCBE based on research and the sciences of learning and instruction (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; Reigeluth, Beatty, & Myers, 2017). Then, each chapter offers some detailed guidance for your team to consider in developing your own vision of PCBE. The detailed guidance sections take a question-and-answer format to help you conceptualize your vision. Many changes you decide to make in your classrooms may require that changes be made on the school level and even the district level, so we address all three levels within each chapter.
The first time you read part I, we recommend that you skip the detailed guidance sections, to give you a better understanding of how the principles in each chapter are interrelated and interdependent. Once you’ve read through the principles in part I, return to each chapter to delve into the detailed guidance. Also, be sure to consult part II before designing your ideal vision. This will give you a more holistic (systemic) view for your vision. At the beginning of the first six chapters, we provide the following “map” (table P1.1) to help you keep track of where you are in this scheme.
Chapter 7 presents two case studies that span all six core ideas—one for an independent public school that includes changes on two levels (classroom and school), and one for a school district that includes changes on all three levels (classroom, school, and district).
Table P1.1: PCBE Core Ideas and Principles
| Core Ideas | Principles |
| 1. Competency-Based Education | A. Competency-based student progress B. Competency-based student assessment C. Competency-based learning targets D. Competency-based student records |
| 2. Learner-Centered Instruction | E. Learning by doing F. Instructional support G. Personalized learning H. Collaborative learning |
| 3. Restructured Curriculum | I. Relevance to students’ current and future lives J. Whole-child education K. Balance of universal content and individual strengths L. Sound progressions in content |
| 4. New Roles | M. Teacher as guide N. Self-directed student O. Parent as partner P. Technology as a tool for students |
| 5. A Nurturing Culture |
Q. Strong and caring relationships
R. Multi-year mentoring and multi-age grouping
S. Motivational learning
|