Learner Profiles

Promoting self-awareness & agency to stimulate relevant learning and enhance student wellbeing

Student engagement at the secondary level is an area of concern in our nation's schools. Our learner profile looks at what motivates students, how they learn best and their relative strengths, what supports could help improve their learning, and the career pathways that may be a good fit based on that information. As a result, students develop self-awareness, agency, & enhanced wellbeing.

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Shortlisted

Overview

HundrED shortlisted this innovation

HundrED has shortlisted this innovation to one of its innovation collections. The information on this page has been checked by HundrED.

Web presence

2021

Established

1.7K

Children

1

Countries

Target group

Students upper

Updated

May 2024

Our mission is "Empowering Students to Learn, Create, Lead, and Succeed." We hope our learners will thrive both inside and outside of school through engagement in meaningful and relevant learning experiences, improved relationships, and an enhanced sense of self-awareness, efficacy, and agency in their learning. Residual effects may also lead to decreased disciplinary & mental health referrals.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

Our teachers and administrators wanted to increase student engagement and better understand how they could personalize learning and improve student wellbeing. Our learner profiles not only allow our staff to learn more about our students, but it also enhances our students' self-awareness and efficacy, promotes agency, and stimulates thinking about durable skills and career pathways.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

Our students take a Google survey at the beginning of the school year, which is fed into a Google data warehouse site our personalized learning coach uses to compile and analyze the data. Each student's profile is shared with them, their teachers, and their parents/guardians. Our personalized learning coach also shares data snapshots with teachers to help them understand the trends in each area and how they can not only support individual students using this data, but also the larger student community. We evaluate this data to look at the effectiveness of our instruction, systems, and structures to ensure we are creating an environment that cultivates curiosity and motivation to engage in meaningful and relevant learning that will provide a foundation for them to thrive as they leave our school and enter into the larger world.

How has it been spreading?

This year, we have a team of teachers who are working together to re-imagine the high school experience and are piloting cross-curricular course options that allow students to use their learner profile data as part of an iterative cycle in which they learn about themselves, research a problem they want to solve or a career pathway of interest, and then participate in site visits, internships, and field experiences. Our students have presented at a Remake Learning site visit about relevant learning experiences, have volunteered at our fall Fireside Chats and spring Community Connections events, and will be sharing their learning experiences at a series of year-end presentations for a team of school and community leaders.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Learner Profile Survey:
https://sites.google.com/burrell.k12.pa.us/bhs-learner-profile-survey/home

Learner Profile Interpretation & Discussion Guide:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mdl1rOrfQEfTsMrQYq2CFiwkihnLMOXa/view?usp=sharing

Contact Personalized Learning Coach Dan Pounds (dpounds@burrell.k12.pa.us) for more information!

Implementation steps

Take the learning profile!

We ask students to take the learning profile within the first week of school. We offer multiple modes of access (email, posted to Google Classroom, link written on board) and dedicate one social-emotional learning (SEL) class period for students to take the survey. New students who register after the first week meet with our personalized learning coach to take the profile once they have started. Our teachers are also encouraged to take the profile so they are familiar with the questions.

Compile, organize, share, & analyze the learner profile data

We use a Google Data Warehouse to compile the data sheets that connect to the learner profile survey with other learning data (PSSA, Keystone, etc) into a PDF for each student. This gives us a view of the whole child that our teachers can use to build relationships, plan instruction, and connect students with relevant learning experiences. The learner profiles are shared with the students, their teachers, and their parents/guardians.

Share the Learner Profile Interpretation and Discussion Guide

We share the Learner Profile Interpretation and Discussion Guide with all students, teachers, and parents/guardians so they can understand and utilize the information in the learner profiles. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mdl1rOrfQEfTsMrQYq2CFiwkihnLMOXa/view?usp=drive_link

Use the data!

Our personalized learning coach shares data snapshots & works with teachers to plan personalized & relevant learning experiences. A team of teachers partner with our PL coach to conference with students about their learner profiles and encourage students to use the data in a project in which the students increase their self-awareness and agency by digging into their profiles, researching what career pathways may be a good fit, and considering what problems they are passionate about solving.