Supporting Students to be Lifelong Learners
Self-Directed Learning
There is growing talk in education circles about empowering students to be self-directed in their learning. Whilst there is much talk, the actual implementation of this takes years of scaffolding and planning, as well as a true understanding and change in the role of the teacher within the learning environment. This, of course, is an exciting journey to empower your students and allow them to fulfill their potential. Let’s explore this more…
What is Self-Directed Learning?
Being self-directed means students have a voice and choice in their learning. It is about empowering students to be an active, rather than a passive participant in the learning process. Where possible the learning may be driven by student interest with meaningful and relevant activities.
The seven facets of self-directed learners:
- Being Aware: Students are able to describe their strengths and learning gaps. This metacognitive awareness requires an understanding of how the brain learns, where they are in their learning journey and where they are heading.
- Setting Goals: Once students know where they are at and aware of their gaps, they can formulate appropriate goals to further their learning. This is firstly initiated with the teacher and over time, students are entrusted to plan their learning steps.
- Taking the Initiative: Students can work without constant guidance from a teacher and can problem solve when they are stuck. They have multiple learned strategies to assist them to problem solve, rather than relying on the teacher as the first responder.
- Identifying and Choosing Resources: Students have the ability and agency to identify and choose both people and material resources to complement and enhance their learning. This may include experts in the field, Internet searches, books, podcasts and videos, etc.
- Choosing and Implementing Appropriate Learning Strategies: This means students can make choices in their learning with and/or without teacher direction, to be ‘an agent’ of their own learning. This may include using thinking maps, note taking techniques, study strategies, questioning techniques, working alongside others or independently, etc.
- Evaluating Outcomes: Students can reflect upon their learning, their processes and evaluate the effectiveness of both.
- Resetting Goals: Using the data and evidence from their evaluations, students are able to increase their self-awareness of their learning abilities and reset their goals to develop their next steps in their learning.
Why is Self-Directed Learning Important?
With a constantly changing world and futurists predicting that over 40% of our five-year-old children will be self-employed to have any form of income when they leave school, the ability to be self-directed is paramount for our students. Traditional education has been focused on the ‘employee mindset:’ Turn up on time, do as you are told, achieve a certain standard and clock out at the end of the day. This factory model served an important purpose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is not, however, as valid in the 21st Century with instant access to information and the continually changing landscape of the future. The ability to think, problem solve, be a self-starter, create and innovate are just some of the important skills for a prosperous future. These skills and dispositions are strongly developed in a self-directed culture.
Gradual Release: Understanding the Role of the Teacher in Self-Directed Learning
One of the biggest issues for teachers when developing self-directed learners is to be able to ‘let go’ of the control in the classroom, or to be able to empower and trust students in their learning and for the teachers to shift from being the fount of knowledge to a facilitator of the learning. This includes being able to instruct, guide, coach, personalise, motivate and give feedback to students to further their learning. This, of course, does not happen overnight and requires deliberate scaffolding. It means allowing students to take increasing and incremental responsibility for their learning over time. Students will make mistakes, fail and learn throughout this process.
A cartoon I saw said, “I expect you to all be independent, innovative, critical thinkers who will do exactly as I say,” is not what this is about! Developing students to be self-directed learning requires the teacher to embrace students as partners.
This gradual release from teacher-directed to student-directed with teacher supervision, to student self-directed happens over time. This means teachers gradually shift the responsibility of the learning from the teacher to the student. Dr Bena Kallick explains the progression like this: Let me do it while you watch. Let’s you and I do it together. You do it while I watch and help. Now do it on your own.
The Trinity of Self-Directed Learners is the ability to be
• Self-Managing
• Self-Monitoring
• Self-Modifying
- Self-Managing
Professor Art Costa & Dr Bena Kallick define self-managing as knowing the significance of and being inclined to approach tasks with clarity of outcomes, a strategic plan and necessary data. It involves drawing from past experiences, anticipating success indicators and creating alternatives for accomplishment.
A self-managing student knows how to manage at least two areas of themselves:
- Physical Self: Staying in their seat and keeping their hands to themselves has an awareness of stress within their body and ways to release this.
- Executive Function: This includes metacognitive awareness, or the ability to delay gratification, planning and organisation skills, prioritisation, the ability to get started and finish work and being able to stay focused on a task.
Self-Monitoring
Art & Bena explain self-monitoring to mean being aware of our own use of thinking skills, strategies, dispositions and their effects on others and on the environment. It involves having sufficient self-knowledge about what works, establishing conscious metacognitive strategies to alert the perceptions for in-the-moment indicators of whether the strategic plan is working or not and to assist in the decision-making processes of altering the plan and choosing the right actions and strategies.
The goal here is for students to be able to observe, record and assess their own academic and social behaviours. They have awareness
of their stories, narrative and self-talk, know where they are in the process of their learning and can evaluate themselves against pre- defined criteria and rubrics.
Self-Modifying
Art and Bena define self-modifying as taking time to reflect and to gain insightfulness by making meaning from an experience. Meaning is made by analysing feelings and data, comparing results with expectations, finding causal factors and projecting ahead to how these insights may apply to future situations. Self-modifying implies making a commitment to learn from and to employ those insights and meanings autonomously in future events and situations.
A self-modifying learner is able to use their self-evaluation and awareness to change their behaviour and strategies. They seek evidence of where they are in their learning process and amend their efforts to an improved outcome.
Where to Start…
A great place to start might be to define your learner profile or ‘who’ you want your students to ‘be’ because of the teaching and learning happening in your classroom/school. Next, decide on
a scaffolded approach at different year levels or a development over time. This process is more akin to the tortoise than the hare and should not be seen as an addition to your curriculum. It is an integrated approach which will do more than simply deepen the learning. Start slowly with small steps. Ultimately, you are aiming to empower your students to be able to navigate the complexities of life within and beyond the classroom. This takes time.
