Teachers, schools, districts, states, and technology developers endeavor to personalize learning experiences for students, but definitions of personalized learning (PL) vary and designs often span multiple components. Variability in definition and implementation complicate the study of PL and the ways that designs can leverage student characteristics to reliably achieve targeted learning outcomes. We document the diversity of definitions of PL that guide implementation in educational settings and review relevant educational theories that could inform design and implementation. We then report on a systematic review of empirical studies of personalized learning using PRISMA guidelines. We identified 376 unique studies that investigated one or more PL design features and appraised this corpus to determine (1) who studies personalized learning; (2) with whom, and in what contexts; and (3) with focus on what learner characteristics, instructional design approaches, and learning outcomes. Results suggest that PL research is led by researchers in education, computer science, engineering, and other disciplines, and that the focus of their PL designs differs by the learner characteristics and targeted outcomes they prioritize. We further observed that research tends to proceed without a priori theoretical conceptualization, but also that designs often implicitly align to assumptions posed by extant theories of learning. We propose that a theoretically guided approach to the design and study of PL can organize efforts to evaluate the practice, and forming an explicit theory of change can improve the likelihood that efforts to personalize learning achieve their aims. We propose a theory-guided method for the design of PL and recommend research methods that can parse the effects obtained by individual design features within the “many-to-many-to-many” designs that characterize PL in practice.

老师，学校，学区，州和技术开发人员都致力于为学生提供个性化的学习体验，但是个性化学习（PL）的定义各不相同，设计通常跨越多个组成部分。定义和实施的可变性使学习PL和设计可以利用学生特征来可靠地实现目标学习成果的方式变得更加复杂。我们记录了PL定义的多样性，这些定义指导在教育环境中的实施，并复习了可以为设计和实施提供信息的相关教育理论。然后，我们报告使用PRISMA指南对个性化学习的经验研究进行系统综述。我们确定了376项独特的研究，这些研究调查了一个或多个PL设计特征并对该语料库进行了评估，以确定（1）谁研究个性化学习；（2）与谁，在什么情况下；（3）着重于学习者的特征，教学设计方法和学习成果。结果表明，PL研究由教育，计算机科学，工程学和其他学科的研究人员领导，并且他们PL的设计重点因学习者的特征和他们优先考虑的目标结果而异。我们进一步观察到，在没有先验理论概念化的情况下，研究趋向于进行，但是设计往往隐含地与现有学习理论所提出的假设相吻合。我们建议在理论上指导PL的设计和研究的方法可以组织对实践进行评估的努力，而形成明确的变革理论可以提高进行个性化学习的努力实现其目标的可能性。