Personalized, Competency Based Learning (PCBL)

Personalized, Competency-Based Learning (PCBL)

Overview

What is Personalized, Competency-Based Learning (PCBL)?

In a personalized, competency-based learning system, the following principles influence the daily actions of the educational community:

Students are empowered daily to make important decisions about their learning experiences, how they will create and apply knowledge, and how they will demonstrate their learning.
Assessment is a meaningful, positive, and empowering learning experience for students that yields timely, relevant, and actionable evidence.
Students receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs.
Students progress based on evidence of mastery, not seat time.
Students learn actively using different pathways and varied pacing.
Strategies to ensure equity for all students are embedded in the culture, structure, and pedagogy of schools and education systems.
Rigorous, common expectations for learning (knowledge, skills, and dispositions) are explicit, transparent, measurable, and transferable.

The Utah State Board of Education is continuing the innovation for PCBL with the release of the Utah’s PCBL Framework and continuation of the PCBL Grant Programs. PCBL moves the focus of the classroom from teaching to learning based on fixed and well-defined targets for all students. It provides equitable access for each student to demonstrate core knowledge and skills in personalized and differentiated ways and can also empower students to engage in opportunities for deeper learning. PCBL moves instruction beyond information dissemination to a focus on transferable skills necessary for success in the modern world.

Advisory Committee

Dr. Patty Norman
Deputy Superintendent
Utah State Board of Education

Syd Young
Advisory Committee Facilitator
Utah State Board of Education

Bryan Bowles
Former School District Superintendent
Utah Charter School Board

Royd Darrington
Expert, Blended Learning
Juab School District

Blaine Edman
Current Local Education Agency (LEA) Administrator
Alpine School District

Christina Guevara
Former Teacher
Spectrum Academy

Nick Harris
Former LEA Administrator
Weber School District

Nicki Slaugh
Expert in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education
Quest Academy

Logan Toone
Expert, Assessment of Student Learning
Davis School District

Matthew Winters
Current Teacher
Weber School District

Sonia Woodbury
Current Charter School Administrator
City Academy

Policy

Regulation

Administrative Rules
Utah State Board of Education Administrative Rules

R277-121: Board Waiver or Administrative Rules
April 9, 2020

R277-419: Pupil Accounting
March 11, 2021

R277-712: Competency-Based Grant Programs
June 22, 2020

Utah State Legislature

House Bill (H.B.) 181: Personalized Competency-based Learning

Title 53F-2-511: Reimbursement Program for Early Graduation From Competency-Based Education

Title 53F-5-501: Competency-Based Education Grants Program

Utah’s PCBL Framework and Related Initiatives

Utah's PCBL Framework

The Utah's Personalized, Competency-Based Learning (PCBL) Framework seeks to create a bridge from the Utah State Board of Education’s Board Strategic Plan and Utah's Portrait of a Graduate to the work of educators and students in Utah’s classrooms as they work to achieve the learning outcomes as described in Utah’s Core Standards and the Utah Portrait of a Graduate Competencies.

To achieve this, the PCBL framework leverages six essential components necessary to create a personalized, competency based learning approach. The six essential components are:

Purpose and Vision
Student Agency
Demonstrated Competency and Assessment
Customized Supports
Equity and
Social Emotional Learning

When these elements are used in concert with one another they set the learning conditions to support schools and districts in achieving the ideals of PCBL. Furthermore, the PCBL Framework provides clear indicators and promising practices for educators and students needed to cultivate student learning including clear learning expectations and targets that allow students to know what they need to do to demonstrate mastery.