Self Directed Learning May be THE most important skill for learners!
Written by AdministratorThere is a provocative conversation going on over at the future of education NING site. If we are going to reform education or see a breakthrough in education strategies, self directed learning is important. The conversation is entitled Self Directed Learning May be THE most important skill for learners! and I thought I would give a quick synopsis here:
It started when a friend of mine started to teach on line and commented that her students who were not self directed were the ones who were struggling. If we believe the stats of Christensen et al in Disrupting Class then within the next 10-15 years over 50% of all education will go on online. Therefore her comment today that her undergraduates are suffering because they are not self directed learners and that they have to be online strikes home.
Ryon Patterson brought in the connection with global awareness and education, but was hesitant about online as children need personal interaction (for that matter we all do).
Ken Long presented skepticism about too much "go our own way" elements in education, especially when it comes to certifiable results. He ended with this comment: i think that's short sighted and self centered, and presumes that only your own education matters. In the long run this will undervalue the work of knowledge centers, and then it will be back to the wild west with no way to rely on the quality of whatever hits your search engine results. There are no "quality" economies of scale, and no incentive to create multi-person knowledge centers/projects
Interested? Follow the Read More Link
Changing the Way the US Army teaches officers
Written by AdministratorWho would have thought the of all the PAR projects taken up in the first year of the Future(s) Project that the one in the US Army would show the greatest results? Good work Ken Long and his team.
Related Video
References
Attwell, G. (2009). Social software, personal learning environments and the future of teaching and learning (pp. 1-13): Scribd.
Begley, S. (2007). Train your mind, change your brain : how a new science reveals our extraordinary potential to transform ourselves. New York: Ballantine Books.
Elliott, J. (2003). Interview with John Elliott. Educational Action Research, 11(2), 169-180.
Granovetter, M. (1973). The strength of weak ties: A network theory The American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360-1380.
Hickman, L. (Ed.). (1998). The essential Dewey, Volume 1: Pragmatism, education, democracy Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society ([1st ed.). New York,: Harper & Row.
James, E. A. (2006a). An evaluation of Web-Based Professional Development using participatory action research to study educational disadvantage in the United States. Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research 2006, Geneva, Switzerland.
James, E. A. (2006b). A study of PAR for educators developing new practise in areas of educational disadvantage. Educational Action Research, 14(4). Read More...
Conclusion
LIE is at the far end of the continuum of conversation about how much control a young person should have on their education. Western educators entertainment versions of this idea when they discuss student-centred education, although in that case it is usually seen as a set of potential activities resulting from top-down curricular choices. As with constructivist theory, student-centred work is contained within the context of some other force telling the student and teacher what needs to be learned.
I have come to describe the circumstance whereby students decide what they want to learn as student-driven learning. In this model, educators/facilitators help provide processes and direction so that that learning is efficient and inclusive of commonly agreed upon basics. The debate can be graphically organized across two continuums in a matrix as is shown in Figure 3 below.
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Educator-driven process. |
Students driven process. |
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Educator-driven curricula. |
Educator-driven curricular choices with professionals the guiding, and assessing the entire process. |
Educator-driven curricular choices delivered in online or other modular context, so that students decide upon and employ skill sets and outcomes of their own choosing. |
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Student-driven curricula. |
Student-driven curricular choices with adults facilitating process and skill sets that aid mastery. |
Student-driven curricular choices with little or no adult facilitation (LIE). |
Figure 3: Educator/student-driven curricular/educational choices
Next Steps
Findings
- International survey respondents show an overwhelming willingness (88%) to consider and support alternative forms of non-traditional school education. The caveat on this finding is that, as is frequently the case with PAR studies, motivation to participate in the survey was likely driven by dissatisfaction with the status quo.
- The first year participatory groups tended to centre their conversation on tensions with schools rather than on more strength-based approach of considering “What do our children need to thrive?”
- The Hole in the Wall material was popular. Using a ranking system based on number of website hits, the Hole in the Wall video ranked 14out of 89 and documents about the project ranked 38 and 48out of 89.
- When the Hole in the Wall Project came up during participatory discussions, it was linked with the work of Ivan Illich and whether or not schools were a useful design for education. What emerged was the dichotomy in the belief of whether or not young people are able to contain themselves and move forward based on an internal reference of control, or to what extent do they require external guidance?
- Figure 4 (below) diagrams the topics of discussion across the network for the first six months. Many topics were covered, however all of the groups and individuals discussed the debate around this issue of the amount of guidance that children require. Read More...
Context
This research project builds on the initial work by the Hole in the Wall Project (Mitra, 2007; Mitra et al., 2005) and seeks, in part, to discover whether and to what extent his ideas of least intrusive education (LIE) were interesting or provocative to online participants during the first year of discussion in the Future(s) of Education Project. For those unfamiliar with the Hole in the Wall Project, Mitra embedded computers in the walls of villages in rural India. Without instruction, 100% of the children in the villages learned to browse the Internet, learning an average English vocabulary of 200 words, even in locations where they have seldom, if ever, heard English spoken. The startling thing about the project, to educators, but perhaps not to parents, is the fact that this huge scale of learning was accomplished with no instruction. From this, Mitra coined the phrase “least intrusive education” (LIE) suggesting that children know how to learn and that we should not get in the way as they do so. The methodology employed in the study of the Future(s) response to Mitra’s work was mixed, based upon participatory action research cycles, analyzing data from weblogs, e-mails, articles, triangulated with quantitative evidence from an online survey.
Methods and Scope
Participatory action research (PAR) is as much a philosophy as a methodological choice (Elliott, 2003). I see it as both. Philosophically PAR promotes the democratic power of the voice of diverse peoples to design their own worlds. Methodologically I adopt a three step cycle that assures I apply data collection and analysis techniques to the actions I take and forces me to formally reflect and use those reflections as data to drive future actions. Figure 2, below, diagrams resources of data and communication. Read More...
Background
It requires troublesome work to undertake the alteration of old beliefs. Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself. John Dewey
Schooling implies custodial care for persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by the simple fact that a school has been built to serve them. Ivan Illich
The two quotes above, introduce key considerations regarding the distance between education and schooling. Yet, it is commonplace, wherever one travels in the world to have people complain about their “systems of education” as though there were no difference between education and schools. Margaret Mead would suggest, as she did when she said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever does,” that while it is hard work, it is important that people work together and believe they can help change these realities. These are the key concepts behind the Future(s) of Education Project and my work as an independent academic.
For the last six years, I have been pursuing the potential of using participatory action research (PAR) online, in networked groups, as a means of moving forward on complex issues in education. I see two parts to the PAR process: First participants need to work together without hierarchy based on their other roles in life. Second the process they follow needs to support communication, action and reporting back so others can learn what they do. PAR does a good job of ensuring both as it guides participants through a three-part cycle: discovery, action- measurement and reflection. Read More...
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