Self-Directed Learning
Submitted by Bena Kallick on September 10, 2009 - 04:23.
Welcome to our Habits of Mind blog. We hope you will enter this conversation by sharing your thoughts and ideas with others of a like mind around the world.
We will start the conversation by thinking about the significance of making certain that we are not just preparing our students for a life of tests but rather for the tests of life. In recent years, as the word “accountability” has overwhelmed the education enterprise, tests have taken on a new meaning. Anyone who has been through school knows that tests, regardless of the form that they take, provide data to us as students. The tests tell us how we are doing: sometimes in relation to our previous work, sometimes in relation to others in the class, and sometimes as opportunities or preventions for getting through a gate to further learning. As a student, we do not always accept the credibility of the test but it is a reality in the life of a student. The results of tests have become more significant as they measure not only how well a student is doing but also are being used to measure how well a school is doing or, in some instances, how well a teacher is doing. It makes sense, therefore, for teachers to prepare students for a life of tests. The focus on student success in tests has made teachers and administrators much=2 0smarter about how to accelerate the learning process for better results. On the other hand, in some instances, it has so overwhelmed the focus of the classroom that other more essential and enduring learning is put aside. We are preparing our students for a life of tests. Are we preparing them, also, for the tests of life? Is it only we who are getting smarter about how to manage learning and the evidence of learning as measured by tests? Do we have examples that show how students are managing their own learning—becoming more articulate and aware of where they are in the learning process and knowing what they need to do to improve? Ultimately, that is the vision: Students will leave our schools prepared for the tests of life—the tests that every workplace today insists upon for success—that of becoming a continuous learner.
Art and Bena
Grading is about process as well as product, about dependence r
When I taught a combined grade 1 and 2 class, spelling was always an important part of the language arts curriculum. I recall teaching the digraph ph and we searched our minds and our written texts for examples, making lists, drawing pictures and using colored pencils to highlight the spelling pattern whenever we found it. When the inevitable spelling test came around, the word 'elephant' was included. One child wrote down 'ellephant' and I sat and pondered it for a long time. Here was my problem - traditionally each word should only be marked as 'right' or 'wrong', but this little girl had learned the digraph perfectly, she had the right number of syllables, she had the starting and ending letters correct and phonetically the word made sense. So much was right and just one thing was wrong. In the 'tests of life' this is so often the case.
In political discussions before the last election I heard many one issue voters who argued that because they felt a certain candidate had one thing wrong, they could not possibly vote for him because, as a candidate, he must be wholly wrong. This kind of black and white, right or wrong thinking begins early and is reinforced little by little by the behaviors children see in adults. As we teachers take out our red pencils we need to be clear about what we are about to teach with their use.
There are some things in our lives that are clearly right or wrong, but not many. The process needs to be honored as well as the outcome. And so I changed the way I graded spelling whenever I could. It took a little longer but it taught a very different lesson. I would put a tiny tick or check mark above each correct letter letter in the word and circle the incorrect. That way the child could see that she had achieved much but still had further to go.
The self directed learner has been helped to understand the importance of the process. Effective teachers enable their students by activating the processes of learning rather than simply making judgments about the correctness of student responses.
Patricia Buoncristiani
www.ThinkingAndLearningInConcert.org
ausaTLC@aol.com
Curiosity Driven Learning
For many years I have served as a judge in Science Fairs (in the USA) at all levels K-12. The vast majority of submissions to these fairs were rather commonplace projects cobbled together from tin cans, bailing wire and duct tape. They were following prescriptions provided by their teacher purporting to be “the scientific method”. I am not sure what learning went on in these activities or, more importantly whether what was learned justified the time and effort spent on the project. For most of these students the learning was just one more disjoint episode on the way to graduation. On the other hand, there were a few spectacular projects, projects that gave clear evidence that understanding of fundamental concepts had occurred. These successful projects had one characteristic – they came from the curiosity of the student. I think this is one idea behind self-directed learning Art and Bena mention in their blog.
Here is one example. I remember it because I have thought of it many times since as I try to stimulate my students to go beyond the lesson. A student (about tenth grade) had built a wind tunnel and had tested various shapes for their stability. He had a very complete report with data and graphs to support each conclusion. He answered all questions about what he had done with an accuracy and precision that verified his thorough understanding. When I asked him how he got the idea for this project he told me that he was really interested in making rockets but the rockets he had been making recently were unstable and he could not find the right design for stabilizing fins. He recognized the need to do some experimentation and so built the wind tunnel. Fortunately, this work coincided with the Science Fair so he submitted it (and won).
I know all students are not interested in building rockets but I suspect that each student has something that inspires his or her passion. It just happens that the passion of many students does not correspond to subjects in the curriculum. Sir Ken Robinson has been making this point repeatedly recently in his defense of the Arts in the curriculum. Recognizing and encouraging the genuine interests of individual students is one way to promote flexible learning.
"If you think you’re too
"If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping in a room with a mosquito."
In agreement. Today a group of educators, having discussion around the concept of self-directedness, stumbled upon these same topics. What is it that we value? What other banks of work support self-directedness? How might we all use a common language model/label to anchor various work. For example, when we're learning, personalizing, ... Marzano's Nine how might we anchor them to self-directedness? And, what is the end result of self-directedness? What we started pushing around was the metaphor of the computer. Specifically, hardware and software. The software’ skills are the content and processing chunks. Ever changing. Pliable, fluid. The hardware skills are constant. The "defaults" or in our case the attitudes and dispositions that resourceful people draw upon to process the soft skills set before them. In the business world the terms soft skills and hard skills are just the opposite. We believe what is outlined above. That, in fact, it is the attitudes and dispositions that are the "hard" skills like a hard drive. Constant, readily available ... that allow a self-directed person to remain resourceful in an ever changing, "soft skill" world. Additionally, what HOM supports us in is making the invisible visible.
HoM and self directed processing
I am a lover of analogies and the computer analogy has often served us well when discussing education, but I would like to suggest a different framing.
I think the hardware is the neuroanatomy and chemistry of the brain that make up the firing networks we use for the perception and manipulation of reality. Some of this is hardwired and much of it is plastic and open to change. I understand that some of the newest generation of computers have the capacity to learn and adapt, but not with the remarkable dynamicism of the human brain.
The software is the programming that is loaded and in the human brain this is analogous to the attitudes, dispositions and learned skills that change and grow as we learn and mature. Some of these are acquired incidentally and some with great intention - the learning we do at school, for example. As programmers tell us so often, "garbage in, garbage out - don't blame the software!" For learners what goes in is the content of their learning and their experiences. This input is then worked on by the 'software' that has been put in place and is being carefully cultivated and exercised.
The differences here between the computer and the human brain are important. When I load software into my computer it remains as it is. It might become corrupted, but Microsoft Word stays the same, as does Photoshop. The interaction of either of these programs with the images or words that I provide to them doesn't change the programs. But experiences and new learning constantly change and adapt the connections between neurons in my brain, and the brain I enter the classroom with is subtly different from the brain I have when I leave. In a sense we are building the software in our own minds and in the minds of our students with every new experience. As educators we need to be sure that the changes we are facilitating in the brains of our students are changes that will provide them with the 'software' they need to be self directed, effective, creative human beings.
You are right. The input is in some senses arbitrary and we are missing the point when we focus all our attention on this as we attempt to review and reform education. As Sir Kenneth Robinson has pointed out, almost every education system in the developed world is attempting reform and typically they focus on input/content (curriculum) or assessment - the measuring of the output. What we should be focussing on is the third element - the ways in which we actually teach and help our students develop the 'software' in their heads. First and foremost here is the ability to think skillfully. Habits of Mind are key. When that competence is firmly wired and regulary reinforced - when the behaviors and dispositions have become a set of habits - our students will be more able to deal effectively with whatever input comes their way. They will have the 'software' they need to be self directed learners
Patricia Buoncristiani www.ThinkingAndLearningInConcert.org ausaTLC@aol.com
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