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. 2018 Dec;27(6):449-454.
doi: 10.1177/0963721418793140. Epub 2018 Oct 31.

Personalized Education to Increase Interest

Rolf Reber  1 , Elizabeth A Canning  2 , Judith M Harackiewicz  3
Affiliations

Personalized Education to Increase Interest

Rolf Reber et al. Curr Dir Psychol Sci. 2018 Dec.

Abstract

A long-standing ideal of school education has been to connect instruction to a student's life outside school in order to render subject matter interesting. New technologies enable instructors to personalize learning materials to increase situational interest. After distinguishing three main methods to personalize education (context personalization, choice, and active personalization), we review recent intervention studies designed to increase situational interest, which is necessary for the emergence of individual interest. Across all three kinds of interventions, some studies point to the possibility of increasing interest for students low in initial interest. Despite progress in developing personalized interventions for school practice, research on the theoretical mechanisms behind the success of the interventions has just begun.

Keywords: choice; context personalization; interest; personalized education; utility-value intervention.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

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