Personalised learning: lessons to be learnt Vaughan Prain a *, Peter Cox a , Craig Deed a , Jeffrey Dorman b , Debra Edwards a , Cathleen Farrelly a , Mary Keeffe a , Valerie Lovejoy a , Lucy Mow a , Peter Sellings b , Bruce Waldrip b and Zali Yager a a Faculty of Education, La Trobe University, Australia; b Faculty of Education, Monash University, Australia Personalised learning is now broadly endorsed as a key strategy to improve student curricular engagement and academic attainment, but there is also strong critique of this construct. We review claims made for this approach, as well as concerns about its conceptual coherence and effects on different learner cohorts. Drawing on literature around differentiation of the curricu- lum, self-regulated learning, and ‘relational agency’ we propose a framework for conceptualising and enacting this construct. We then report on an attempt to introduce personalised learning as one strategy, among several, to improve student academic performance and wellbeing in four low SES regional secondary schools in Australia. We report on a survey of 2407 students’ per- ceptions of the extent to which their school provided a personalised learning environment, and a case study of a programme within one school that aimed to apply a personalised approach to the mathematics curriculum. We found that while there were ongoing challenges in this approach, there was also evidence of success in the mathematics case. Keywords: personalised learning; relational agency Personalising learning If Matt, a Year 7 student, had to tackle a difficult mathematics problem at school, he would use past experience to try to work it out. Failing that, he would seek peer help. As a last resort, because he does not like to ‘hassle’ his teacher, he would ask for assistance. At home, if he wanted to learn to play a new sport or video game, he would investigate it on the Net for any ‘tips or advice I could find from videos’, and then he would practise. If he still did not understand, ‘I’d ask *Corresponding author. La Trobe University, Faculty of Education, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia. Email: v.prain@latrobe.edu.au ISSN 0141-1926 (print)/ISSN 1469-3518 (online)/1 /0 0 -23 Ó 2012 British Educational Research Association http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411926.2012.669747 British Educational Research Journal Vol. 39, No. 4, August 2013, pp. 654–676 3 4 654