Self-Directed Learning

Discussions of Technology-Mediated Individual Learning position emergent technologies as integral aspects of current existence – that is, not as tools that one might use, but as elements of one’s being. These discourses are thus focused on seamlessly incorporating such technologies into formal learning experiences. This a goal can entail profound challenges to traditional curriculum content and pedagogical strategies.

Teaching Styles Discourses include any attempt to identify and/or categorize modes of teaching. The least sophisticated are presented as undifferentiated lists of teaching approaches, and the slightly-more-sophisticated use questionnaires, scales, and grids to generate teaching profiles.

Learning Styles Theories comprise dozens of discourses that purport to characterize and categorize ways that individuals take in information. The most popular versions focus on diverse perceptual preferences (e.g., hearing versus seeing), modes of engagement (e.g., active doing versus passive watching), and format of information (e.g., concrete versus abstract), but the spectra vary across such concerns as social structures, affective settings, and time of day.

Self-Regulated Learning, as the name suggests, is about one’s control of one’s own learning, which entails an awareness of strengths and weakness, a repertoire of learning strategies, and a growth Mindset or high sense of Self-Efficacy. The many models associated with Self-Regulated Learning are concerned with processes to develop that control, strategies to direct it, means to monitor it, and tools to evaluate it.

Design-Based Learning is structured around the making of artefacts through iterative (cyclical, improvement-oriented) processes of design, build, test, and revise. It is seen to engage deeper learning as learners develop, synthesize, and apply their knowledge to create artefacts through body-active problems solving, challenges, and other inquiries.

“Learning as acquisition” – the Acquisition Metaphor – is probably the most commonly invoked learning metaphor in English. It is evident in such phrases as “grasping the point,” “taking things in,” “getting it,” “picking things up,” “hard to swallow,” “remember this stuff,” and “cramming for the test.” It is not theoretically sophisticated, relying on the assumption that knowledge comprises externalized objects, and asserting that learning is a process of moving those objects from the outside to the inside.

The Attainment Metaphor is prominent in current discussions of formal education. It frames knowledge as existing in discrete regions (e.g., fields, areas) to be traversed, and learning is typically framed as progressing across (and sometimes dwelling in) those regions. Learning is cast in movement-based sensibilities –e.g., as “getting there.”

Folk Theories exist within every realm of human engagement. They are, in effect, uncritical and often-indefensible principles of action and interpretation that are woven through everyday language and broad cultural sensibilities. In effect, most of the past 150 years of research into learning has been focused on exposing Folk Theories and exploring more conscious and scientifically robust alternatives.

Self-Talk refers to the phenomenon that most people, while conscious, experience as an “inner voice” or a silent “talking to oneself.” Self-Talk has been identified by many as a critical site for educational attention, as it is both readily influenced and necessary for higher-level thinking (e.g., planning, problem solving, critical thinking, self-awareness).