Encouraging and Supporting Self-Directed Learning

by Fran on September 10, 2012

Do we want students to take ownership of their learning, to become more confident and self-directed, to become life-long learners? A way to encourage and support them in this endeavor is to engage them in meta learning. Meta Learning: understanding, directing, and assessing your learning. Here are some suggestions:

Make “learning about learning” a daily part of classroom conversation.
Include students in lesson planning.
Teach “reflection tools” and use them regularly in the classroom.
Given your model for lesson planning/teaching, introduce specific learning strategies. In our case, there will be strategies for Purpose, Operations, Remembering, Teamwork, Action, Laying a Foundation, and Self-management.
Initiate, encourage, and support the use of student designed and used assessment tools.

Today we will write about two of these suggestions.

Make “learning about learning” a daily part of classroom conversation. Recently I found a wonderful paper by Chris Watkins titled “Learning about Learning” that goes into an excellent level of detail about how to make learning a part of classroom discussion. https://www.um.edu.mt/educ/about/publications/mrer/files/JMERN5I2P3.pdf

He suggests 4 practices taught over time:

*noticing things about learning (in real time)

*talking about learning (retell learning stories)

*reflecting on learning (writing in a learning journal)

*making learning an object of learning (focusing on the process)