Independent Learning - Essay Example

? Independent Learning Independent Learning Independent learning is self directed learning. According to Ritchhart, Church and Morrison (2011: p5), a learner defines, organizes and completes the learning. In addition, the learner decides the personal path and to measure their individual research as well as reactions from classmates at the same level as guidance and information that they gain from their facilitators. The process of integrating the learners into the education system allows them to start connecting with the outside world. Therefore, they have the ability to learn and think for themselves, and not wait for their teachers. Independent learning abilities are an indispensable training for life and for change to, and success in, occupational, college or higher learning courses. Independent learning skills support students’ capability in assessing, recording and reflecting on their education. Steinberg and Davidson (2005: p467) state that also promote independence in organization, decision-making and problem-solving. Nonetheless, they take time to institute and, for several students, require premeditated modeling and teaching. Therefore, if students are to become actively engaged in increasing their autonomy in their personal education, they must first of all gain the aptitude to learn how to study. A supportive setting that permits students to learn from errors and develop about their successes is a prerequisite. Ideally, such ability building will be in progress early and continuous throughout a person's learning (Cooper, Kiger, Robinson and Slanky, 2011: p65). The educators need to focus on learners' existing requirements. Students study preeminently when motivations for learning in a classroom gratify their own intentions for enrolling in the course. Students may bring diverse requirements to the classroom. For instance, they want to study something so as to complete a certain assignment or activity, the desire to seek novel experiences, and the desire to perfect skills. In addition, they may want to conquer challenges, the urge to become proficient, they desire to achieve and do well, the desire to feel engaged and to mingle with other individuals. Fulfilling such requirements is satisfying in itself, and such rewards uphold learning successfully than do grades.  Therefore, teachers may design in-class activities, assignments, and discussion queries to tackle these types of requirements. The teachers should make learners active participants in education. Students learn by making, designing, doing, creating, writing, and solving. Passive learning dampens learners' enthusiasm and inquisitiveness. Teachers are supposed to pose questions, and not inform students something when they can ask them. Furthermore, they ought to encourage students to propose approaches to a quandary or to speculate the outcome of an experiment. The students may be divided into small groups, encouraging interaction and sharing their different ideas on the subject. Research has revealed that an educator's expectations have an influential consequence on a student's performance. Thus, if a teacher acts as though he expects motivation, interest and hard work from his students in the course, they are more likely to be so. The teachers need to set practical expectations for learners when they grade examinations, give presentations, formulate assignments and conduct discussions. "Practical" in this perspective means that the teacher’s standards are high enough to inspire learners to do their most excellent work but not so high that learners will predictably be discouraged in attempting to meet those expectations. To build up the drive to achieve; learners must believe that realization is possible, which means that the teacher needs to present early prospects for success. Teachers should assist students in setting achievable objectives for themselves. Failure to arrive at unrealistic objectives can dishearten and aggravate students. Hence, it is imperative to motive students to concentrate on their continued development, not merely on their grade on whichever one assignment or test. Moreover, Cooper et al (2011: p65) argues that teachers ought to assist students assess their progress by pushing them to critique their individual work, examine their strengths, and act on their weaknesses. For instance, the teacher should consider requesting students to present self-evaluation sheets with one or two homework. The teacher must advise students on what to do in order to succeed in the course. A teacher is not to let the students struggle to comprehend what is anticipated of them. For this reason, the teacher has to reassure learners that they can perform in the course, and explain to the students exactly the requirements for success. Educators need to engage students in creating goals, and then individualize the goals in line with curriculum principles, learner welfare and choices (Kanfer and McCombs, 2000: p90; Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Sheldon, and Deci, 2004: p247). For instance, learners can become engage in establishing their personal learning goals during guided class deliberations where teachers shape the learning goals and likely variations in attaining those goals. In small group deliberations, learners can share their individual interests and then make out how these fit with the educator’s list. By assisting students identify their individual educational goals and objectives; educators can steer students to perceive whether these are reliable not only with their individual interests, but also how they may be aligned with curriculum expectations and standards. An educator must refrain creating extreme competition between students. Competition generates nervousness that can impede with learning. Thus, a teacher should reduce students' predispositions to contrast themselves. Sternberg and Davidson (2011: p234) report that learners are conscientious, demonstrate better comprehension, generate more work, and are more constructive to the teaching technique when they work together in groups, instead of competing as individuals. In addition, a teacher must desist from open criticisms of learners' performance and from remarks or actions that pit learners against each other. A self-access facility may be as uncomplicated as a cabinet or shelf having activities that learners may do on their own so as to give them additional extension or practice to what they do in class (Cooper, Kiger, Robinson and Slanky, 2011: p456). Resources could comprise periodical articles with queries and answers; graded readers, puzzles, and questions. Students can even be requested to bring in and or create resources for the self-access facility. Self-access resources have the benefit of permitting the students to work at their own speed on an action targeted to their requirements, which is not constantly possible in a usual classroom. If learners conclude their class work before time or desire to work on something throughout their free time, they can select something from the self-access facility.  As students become extra self-aware, they will identify that they require additional practice in areas and this facility will enable the teachers help them with finding suitable activities. The teachers should encourage the use of authentic texts in class during learning. Authentic texts are resources which were not initially intended for learning use. They may include magazine or newspaper articles, radio and TV recordings. According to Ritchhart, Church and Morrison (2011: p56), these resources may be motivating as they link the classroom with the external world and make the learners notice that education does not occur only in the classroom. Teachers can persuade learners to bring in their individual, authentic texts to add to classroom activities so as to make them have a beneficial effect. Studies disclose that there is significant instructional, education environment, and teacher disparities that contribute to the progress of independent and responsible learners (Lodewyk & Winne, 2005: p7; McCombs & Miller, 2006: p214). Moreover, Australian researchers have established that, besides instructional framework variables, it is significant for teachers to expand their individual socio-cultural perceptions. Hence, they will appreciate how individual learners are subjective to cultural and social factors in the classroom that come up from the educator’s or other classmates’ behaviors (Ritchhart, Church and Morrison, 2011: p58). Research also reveals that the outcome of instruction, education environments and education discrepancies are imperative in enhancing learner self-efficiency, enthusiasm to learn and education achievement results. Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Sheldon, and Deci (2004: p258) argue that the teacher’s personal level of self-efficiency or self-confidence in his/her aptitude to tutor and reach a range of student proves to be vital. Other key variables consist of classroom ambition structures, individual learner success objectives and cultural disparities. All of these variables deeply influence enthusiasm and achievement in the classroom. What this implies for educators is that they have to be conscious of their individual levels of self-confidence when operating with learners. They also must be responsive to diverse influences and understanding of social behaviors for learners of dissimilar cultural settings. This will form requisites of their own and other learners’ ways of connecting. Even juvenile children develop awareness of their proficiency, self-determination or independence in learning situations. Learners’ beliefs and understandings concerning enthusiasm become more distinguished and complex over time. This is as a result of boosting their understandings of what it takes to be smart and competent as a learner. During middle upbringing (grades 3 to 6), a feeling of relatedness to educators in particular, becomes increasingly imperative. That is why constructive educator-learner relationships offer fundamental establishments for assisting students become more independent and accountable for their own education and motivation. The function of suitable option and control throughout these middle years is fundamental to learners’ ongoing commitment and academic enthusiasm. Metacognitive skills and knowledge offer the basic configuration for the growth of optimistic self-r regulation and self-control of one's thoughts and approach (Kanfer & McCombs, 2000: p102). For best growth of metacognitive capabilities, nevertheless, developmental psychologists accentuate that persons need to have a comparatively well-defined and secure self-identity that could leads to self- consciousness (Urdan, 2004: p255). It is this self-consciousness that is the foundation for self-regulation. This was discovered in a research study by Cooper et al. (2011: p450) signifying that self-regulation offers a connection to different types of self-control in human, emotional, behavioral, perceptual, and cognitive organizations. For learners to become more skillful at self-regulation, they must be offered chances to pursue their individual learning strategies and objectives and, rewarded when these objectives are accomplished. A substantial amount of research has revealed that feelings and self-perceptions have explicit effects on academic results. For instance, studies by O’Mara, Marsh, Craven, & Debus (2006: p193) demonstrate that intercessions such as open metacognitive training, feedback and praise, aimed at transforming students’ outlook of themselves as successful subjects in dissimilar subjects, can be effectual in transforming adolescents’ self-assessments. Consecutively, researchers have revealed that increases in learners’ self-assessments optimistically impact their enthusiasm, education, and achievement (McCombs & Miller, 2006: p234; Narciss, 2004: p232). Further, Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Sheldon, & Deci (2004: p256) report that learners’ intensity of dispensation, examination performance and diligence in learning all augmented when they were in independence supporting classrooms where educators let learners have a degree of the option and power over learning options. The psychological dimension has been tackled as a student's mental condition. The dimension is the level to which the student or the self that upholds active control of the educational process. The dimension is essential and adequate to elucidate self-direction in learning (McCombs, 2007: p45). For that reason, self-direction in learning is an inner progression that in due course ought to be selected and worked upon by the person. An individual's aptitude to take full advantage of self-direction in learning can be improved. Damon, Eisenberg, and Lerner examined the relationship connecting self-direction in education of adult university learners and Bandura's construct of self-effectiveness. Learners who show a high level of self-effectiveness also demonstrate a high level of self-direction in education (Damon, Eisenberg and Lerner, 2006: p935). Self-effectiveness has been described as people’s beliefs concerning their performance abilities in a certain domain. Self-effectiveness concentrates on people’s attitude regarding their performance potential in a sphere of influence (McCombs & Miller, 2006: p23). Self-effectiveness beliefs manipulate the options people make and the path of action they follow (Vansteenkiste, Simons, Lens, Sheldon, and Deci, 2004: p247). Furthermore, the research reports a person's sense of self-effectiveness is also connected to achievement goals (Urdan, 2004: p250), attributions (O’Mara, Marsh, Craven, & Debus, 2006: p187) self-regulation and volition. These variables depict the degree to which people are active partakers in their own learning. Educators should provide criticism to learners that offer them accurate information about the certain skills they have gained, and need to develop in order to be victorious in their class. For instance, teachers should start novel learning tasks with chances, for students to raise questions and seek assistance from their educator or classmates if they have complexity understanding requisite performances or concepts (Narciss, 2004: p216). Students gain knowledge to use criticism from their educator and peers to transform their commencement of how proficient they are in dissimilar learning activities or subjects. Criticism also helps learners make better learning options. In conclusion, this paper has tried to highlight the significance of developing learners' autonomy and has put across several ways in which an educator can integrate learner training into a usual classroom.  Developing autonomous learning capabilities is not about allowing learners work unaided, it is about helping learners to build skills, which will assist them to become excellent learners; to take accountability for education and have the ability to relate these skills to whichever new educational situation. The path towards independence is frequently a long and unsteady one, and students require substantial support. Educators must not to strive to realize too much too early and must not be too rigid on themselves if they do not observe an instant transformation in their students. Bibliography Cooper, J., Kiger, N., Robinson, M., & Slanky, J. 2011. Literacy: Helping Students Construct Meaning. New York: Cengage Learning. Damon, W., Eisenberg, N., & Lerner, R. 2006. Social, Emotional and Personality Development. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons Kanfer, R., & McCombs, B. 2000. Motivation: Applying Current Theory to Critical Issues in Training. In Tobias, S. & Fletcher, D. (Eds.), Training and Retraining: A handbook for Business, Industry, Government, and the Military (pp. 85-108). New York: Macmillan. Lodewyk, K., & Winne, P. 2005. Relations among the Structure of Learning Tasks, Achievement, and Changes in Self-efficacy in Secondary Students. Journal of Educational Psychology. McCombs, B. 2007.  Balancing accountability demands with research-validated, learner-centered teaching and learning practices. In Sleeter, C. (Ed.), Educating for democracy and equity in an era of accountability. New York: Teachers College Press McCombs, B., & Miller, L. 2007. Learner-Centered Classroom Practices and Assessments: Maximizing Student Motivation, Learning, and Achievement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press Narciss, S. 2004. The Impact of Informative Tutoring Feedback and Self-efficacy on Motivation and Achievement in Concept Learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology. O’Mara, J., Marsh, W., Craven, G., & Debus, L. 2006. Do Self-concept Interventions make a Difference? A Synergistic Blend of Construct Validation and Meta-analysis. Educational Psychologist Ritchhart, R., Church, M., & Morrison, K. 2011. Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding and Independence for all Learners. New Jersery: John Wiley and Sons. Sternberg, R., & Davidson, J. 2005. Conceptions of Giftedness. Cambrige: Cambridge University Press. Urdan, T. 2004. Predictors of Academic Self-handicapping and Achievement: Examining Achievement Goals, Classroom Goal Structures, and Culture. Journal of Educational Psychology. Vansteenkiste, M., Simons, J., Lens, W., Sheldon, K., & Deci, E. 2004. Motivating Learning, Performance, and Persistence: The Synergistic Effects of Intrinsic Goal Contents and Autonomy-Supportive Contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Read More