PARENT TALK

Research findings in education and ways to help your child - Volume 98-5

Helping Children Become Self-Directed Learners

Round Pegs and Square Holes

In his book Working, Studs Turkle interviewed people to see what they liked about their jobs. For each category of job he examined, he described a satisfied person and a dissatisfied person. For example, he portrayed Rip Torn as a bitter actor versus a little-known actor who was quite happy with his work. One worker interviewed had been building stone walls for forty years, and seemed to be the happiest person that Turkle had found.

Turkle wanted his readers to conclude that happiness was being a round peg in a round hole; dissatisfaction resulted from being a round peg trying to fit into a square hole. The roundpeg- squarehole concept of career advice doesn't seem to work well in today's changing workplace. Futurists predict young people entering the job market in the 90s will make at least five career changes in their working lives. Perhaps the best preparation for five careers is learning how to learn.

All the more reason for us to think about a curriculum that prepares our children for a life of change. A curriculum that prepares them to ask questions, to search for new ideas, and to act as self-directed learners throughout their lives. Their satisfaction will emanate as much from their love of learning as it will from the nature of their careers.

Beliefs about Learners

When we say that we must change to meet future realities, we are stating our belief that the future will be different. What other beliefs do we have about learning that will guide us in coaching our children as they step into the future? Our beliefs might include some of the following:

  • Learners need to pose their own questions and to hypothesize their own answers in all subject areas.

  • Learners should test their ideas on others in order to refine them.

  • Language is central to thinking. Through language, learners establish a base, a common platform. They use language for refining ideas and resolving conflicts.

  • Children need to share their background on a topic, pose common questions as well as personal ones, collaborate in their search for answers, and record their journey towards resolutions.

Operating under these beliefs, children will want to learn language, want to expand their knowledge, want to communicate effectively, and will find joy in watching themselves learn.

Principles of Learning

Our beliefs need to be translated into action - not only specific behaviors-but into principles to guide how we approach learning. Consider these principles for learning:

  • Learning is the process of making sense of the world.

  • What students learn is very dependent on their previous understanding, their attitudes toward learning, the ways they perceive and organize the world, and their current context.

  • Learning requires experimentation, risk taking, and error correcting.

  • In a school setting, learning requires many resources and materials, such as books, computers, and videos.

  • To reduce ambiguity and uncertainty, learners establish order by recognizing patterns or principles and constructing guidelines that give them a sense of control. Spelling patterns and text structures, for example, help learners acquire this sense of control.

  • Language proficiency occurs through frequent and diverse practice in purposeful, functional settings.

  • Language growth is developmental; that is, vocabulary, syntactic complexity, and forms of expression expand over a lifetime as experience, cognitive skills, and personal interests prompt development.

  • Language is a global human behavior that manifests itself in many ways (primarily in reading, writing, listening, and speaking), but it is basically an integrated learning experience.

  • Learning is personal; it begins with personal purposes and questions.

  • Learning requires feedback both to reinforce and to test hypotheses.

Parents Take Action

If you want your child to become a selfdirected learner, you need to take steps to make it happen. You don't have to abandon your job to become a full-time teacher, but you do have to consider how to guide your child and how to help with homework. You need to take deliberate action to help your child grow as a conscious, determined learner. Let's describe your actions in clear statements. You can translate these statements to match your personal beliefs and learning principles.

Action Statements for Parents

  • I will write my personal beliefs and principles on a sheet of paper and post it where I can read it regularly.

  • In helping with homework, I will begin each new problem by saying to my child: "Let's see if we can make sense of this."

  • I will always invite my child to solve the problem or the question first by saying: "What are your ideas? What are your purposes here? Do you see any patterns?"

  • I will ask my child to make notes and then to share her ideas with me.

  • I will create a study space with my child. If it can't be created at home, we will use a library, church, or community room.

  • When my child gives relevant study information, I will praise him or thank him for the information. When he analyzes a situation or interprets a character, I will encourage him to use his insights and intuitions.

  • At the end of a study session, I will ask her to write a statement in her journal of one thing that is important to her.

As you work with your child, you may write other guidance statements that become important in your mutual search for what it means to be a self-directed learner. Keep your own journal as a way of recording progress and as a way of capturing your personal insights into what it means to become a self-directed learner.

Developing Active Learners

We need to construct images of what a self-directed learner does. Then we have a better idea of how to guide this learner. Here are a couple of beginning images.

Charlie and the Solar System

Charlie came home from kindergarten and announced that he had learned all about the solar system that day. "Tell me about it," said his mother. And he began to rattle off excitedly all the things that came to his mind about orbiting planets around the sun, including some of their names.

Suddenly Charlie became downcast. "We were supposed to draw a picture of the solar system for you, but I have forgotten some of the names."

"Where do you think we can find the names of the planets?" asked Mom. So they looked in the encyclopedia for pictures and the names of the planets. Charlie then could draw his picture and label each planet with its name. More importantly, Charlie learned there is a method for looking up answers to questions that arise in school and in life.

Wisely, Charlie's mother used his question to teach him that he could find answers on his own if he knew where to look.

Nicole's Christmas Book

Nicole's Grandpa gave her a book for Christmas. She had just started the first grade, and Grandpa wanted to give her something to read. Together they sat down to read this new book.

They talked about the pictures in the book and Nicole described what she thought was happening in the story based on the pictures. "Well," said Grandpa, "let's read the story to see if you are right. I'll read a page then you read a page."

Grandpa began reading about the happy woman who drove a school bus. When Nicole began reading she came to a directive the school bus driver gave to the kids: "Stand behind the line." Pointing to the word stand, Nicole said, "I don't know that word. I don't think we have read that word in school."

"Do you know this word?" Grandpa asked, pointing to the word and in a sentence that began: "The boys and the girls..."

Nicole pronounced the word correctly, but still was unable to make the transfer to stand. She did not seem to know how to get started.

Grandpa wrote down a list:

and
land
sand
band
stand

With a sheet of paper he covered the beginning consonants leaving "and" showing in all spots. "What do you see?"

"And."

One by one he uncovered the first letter in each word, pronouncing it and asking Nicole to pronounce the word, too. " Many words sound Iike other words. When you are stuck, this may be a way to start figuring out what the unknown word is. But first you need to sound out the letters you see at the beginning of the words."

Fostering a self-directed learner

Carl B. Smith, Director, Family Learning Association

Parents regularly ask themselves how they can help their children to succeed in school, in a job, in life. They know instinctively they cannot direct their children's lives forever. Children must gradually learn to direct their own destinies. In a sense, then, home education and schooling both aim at producing a self-directed learner. Parents want their children to have a sense of personal direction and to know how to move towards their goals with confidence and skill. They want a map that leads to a self-directed learner.

But how do parents and teachers know what to do to guide their children? To answer that question we need to examine the makeup of a self-directed learner.

For sake of simplicity, let's describe a self-directed learner as a person who can set his or her own purpose, has the knowledge to work towards that purpose, can use appropriate skills to move forward, and decides how to integrate the experience into personal life. Purpose, knowledge, skills, and personal stories could serve parents as watchwords for guiding their children.

Sense of Purpose

The self-directed learner has a sense of purpose that usually goes beyond the activity of the moment. Depending on the age and circumstance of the learner, he wants to please parents, get a good mark, write for a newspaper, build buildings, or get into law school. These purposes, whether personal (I want to be the best) or social (My team relies on me), give him a guidance system to stay focused on the target.

Knowledge

A student does not become a critical thinker unless she has sufficient knowledge to make decisions. She cannot draw a conclusion unless she has enough information on which to base that conclusion. Literature, mathematics, science, a sense of history, community experience, and observation of nature all give knowledge she can use to reflect, to inform, and to organize her perception of the world.

Strategies and Skills

The self-directed learner must have a repertoire of strategies and skills. Learning and life surround him with complex issues. To face those issues he needs not only basic skills, but also complex problem-solving strategies. These will allow him to comprehend what he reads, to understand his social environment, to figure out scientific phenomena, and to help him win someone over to his point of view.

Personal Stories

The concluding step in this learning process relies on the learner's ability to personalize knowledge. It might be called story telling. The learner tells himself a story about how he uses knowledge, participates in events, searches for more clues, manipulates tools, and so on. Personal stories of this sort bring long-range benefits for the learner. Parents can encourage personal stories in various ways:

  • At the end of a good novel, ask: "What do You think will happen next?"

  • "If you had been there, how would it be different?" is a provocative question that applies to history, fiction, and scientific experiments.

  • For scientific and vocational learning, ask the learner: "Can you see yourself doing that (experiment, job, calculation)?

  • "How would you have argued that case?" is a question that brings learners into political debates, moral issues, and personal values discussions.

Characteristics of the Self-Directed Learner

Think of the people that you admired in school or in your work life. What made them stand out in your mind? Were they people who knew what they wanted and seemed to move securely towards achieving their objectives? Did they find the material and the people resources that they needed to get the job done? Those folks exhibited the characteristics that we assign to a self-directed learner.

The self-directed learner needs to develop in four areas:

I. Developing habits of the mind
II. Training in essential skills
Ill. Gaining knowledge that supports growth
IV. Creating personal narratives

I. Habits of the mind
A. An attitude of self-confidence infused with

  • personal purpose

  • priorities

  • earlier success or failure.

B. An attitude of inquiry developed through

  • models of asking questions

  • personal images (from rewards or disappointments)

  • mentoring.

C. Attitude of self-monitoring

  • Am I moving in the right direction?

  • If not, how can I get back on track?

D. Critical reading and thinking

  • Analyze the text: What does it say?

  • Consider alternatives; don't jump to conclusions.

  • Establish criteria; make comparisons.

  • Formulate hypotheses.

  • Support statements with evidence.

  • Make a judgment: What does the text mean?

II. Skills that make learning possible
A. Reading and writing patterns

  • Phoneme-grapheme patterns

  • Syntax and usage patterns

B. Patterns of text organization

  • Narratives

  • Didactic and argumentative texts

C. Skills in locating information

  • Using libraries, books, indexes

  • Using on-line searching techniques

  • Refining questions

Ill. Knowledge that supports growth
A. Math and science structures or operations
B. Historical themes and theories
C. Artistic movements and events
D. Psychological and spiritual movements

IV. Personal narratives
A. Stories that explain personal life
B. Stories that explain history
C. Stories that weave together the events of spirit and experience
D. Stories that reflect respect, responsibility, and values

A Study Technique for the Self-Directed Learner*

i

*Abstracted from Smart Learning by William Christen and Thomas Murphy.

Here is a method of notemaking that is called "i" notes, and is especially appropriate for selfdirected learners. Notice the word "notemaking", not "notetaking." It is the difference between learning actively and learning passively. Notemakers control what goes with their notes. They don't just copy words. They read or listen-then thinkbefore they write.

Look at the letter "i" in the illustration. This shape can help your child make study notes. Making an "i" note begins with an actual drawing of a large "i" on an 8 x 11" page.

The topic and main idea will go in the circle, with details filling the box below. Just below the "i", have her leave space for a summary. Just outside the "i" on the left, she can list at least one major study question, and in the top left, she should list the new vocabulary that is important.

Parts of an "i" note

When your child writes "i" notes, she records the topic and the main idea of the reading or lecture right at the top. An "i" note has six parts: the topic, main idea, details, summary, study questions, and vocabulary list. Here's how to make sure she has them all:

  • Preview the material. Determine the topic.

  • Read actively, listing new vocabulary as you go. Discover the main idea.

  • Select the important details that describe the main idea.

  • Write a summary. Restate the major ideas in your own words.

  • Write at least one study question.

As she builds her "i", encourage her to use as few words as possible. The less she has to plow through during review, the easier it will be. But make sure the information is complete enough to enable her to understand it. In listing details, she should delete words that are mentioned in the topic and main ideas. Write only keywords. She should use only as many words as she needs to keep the meaning. This is her system to retrieve information when she needs it. If she cannot tell you about the material as she scans her "i" notes, she hasn't put enough information down.

Summary Writing

Writing a summary is the best way to see if she has a complete understanding of the main idea. A good summary restates the main idea in one sentence. Don't include details in a summary.

Study Questions

How does she write study questions? They begin with words like what, how, why, describe, define, compare, and show.

How many "i" notes should be written for a topic? Limit your child to no more than seven main ideas for one topic, with the fewer she must build the better. However, make sure she has all the necessary information for the topic she's working on. Don't leave anything out! Clearinghouse on Reading
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