Personal Autonomy for Pupils in Schools - Essay Example

In What Ways can Schools Foster the Personal Autonomy of their Pupils Autonomy encompasses activities or systems, which allow individuals to do for and by themselves. Derived from the Greek words auto for "self" and nomos for "law", the term describes the practice of self-government, which includes freedom to do more for oneself, by oneself, and with others. Barandiaran (2004) defined autonomy as an “abstract systemic kind of organization (relation between components and processes in a system), a kind of self-maintained, self-reinforced and self-regulated system dynamics resulting from a highly recursive network of processes that generates and maintains internal invariants in the face of internal and external perturbations, a process that separates itself from the environment, [thus defining] its identity”. Autonomy then simply is associated with “network”, “self-organization” and “closure”. Network can be provided by the existing policies, ways and rules as a point of reference of ones behavior, decisions and actions to understand and define his stand, that is to self-organize for definition of his identity and establishment of his role. “Autonomy demands that individuals have the capacity to form opinions and plans and defend them, and also to become persuaded to change them” (Wikipedia, n. d.), that specifically are self-directed and self-regulated, active participants in their learning and in the governance of their learning environments. Within the context of these definitions, autonomy in schools calls for systems, which allow the student or pupil to act on his own such that his potentials could be maximized. How then can schools promote autonomy among pupils to practice self-autonomy? In order for schools to evolve beyond direct instruction, the role of the teacher must change from that of dispenser of knowledge to facilitator of learning who, through an understanding of each student’s learning preferences and motivational “buttons,” can help students learn from numerous resources (including the teacher) and foster self-directedness that may eventually lead to a love of learning. A strong internal desire for learning is essential for life-long learning, a crucial aspect of “knowledgework” as described later in this article. To ensure that students are internally motivated, life-long learners, the classroom and school environments must transform from autocracies that are strictly controlled by authoritative adults to more open, democratic settings that more resemble Senge’s (1990) learning organization and other organic, flexible structures that can readily meet the changing needs of the environment (Nordgren, 2006). There are several existing school programs, which foster self-autonomy among pupils. Scotland schools for one develop systems in education aimed to develop creativity as a by-product of self-autonomy among pupils. East Plean Nursery in the village of Plean on the outskirts of Stirling (LTS Online, n. d.) demonstrated enterprising as a way to involve the children in all aspects of planning of a project to ensure their ownership of the initiative. This included discussion about the reasons for the project, steps required to take plans forward, sourcing of materials, funding and potential partners. The project involved improving the environment of the nursery by upgrading the lighting and redecorating the room. The need to provide lighter learning spaces for the children became an opportunity to introduce enterprise activities into the 3-5 curriculum. Stirling Council upgraded the lighting while the nursery teacher focused on involving pupils, parents, staff and the local community in the redecoration. The nursery teacher used the project to develop language and communication skills through discussion. Encouraging the children to generate ideas and illustrate them through artwork fostered creativity. The children developed ICT skills through the use of digital cameras throughout the project. Financial education was introduced by discussions about budgets, costing and expenditure. Every child contributed to the exercise of drawing up health and safety risk assessments. The overall emphasis was on planning learning in response to pupils ideas and involving the children in all aspects of the project. Establishing close partnerships with parents was a key feature of the project. Parents and other members of the community helped with transport and contributed their own skills such as painting and decorating. Prior to visits to local hardware to buy materials, contact was established between school staff and the management of the company to explain the rationale behind the initiative. Children, school staff, parents, community partners and others who had worked on the project attended the celebratory tea party in the freshly painted nursery. The project allowed realisation by the children that they could change their environment aside from the fact that pupils have developed their language, communication and social skills. They also gained increased knowledge and understanding of occupations, hygiene and health and safety. The project as a tool for developing self-autonomy among pupils has used practical experiences to assist expressive and aesthetic development. Involvement in the improvement in physical development and movement brings closer parental and community partnerships. Nursery as a school was seen as very much part of the community.  Developing sense of citizenship also fosters self-autonomy among young citizens. Gerard McKernan teaches at Glenwood Nursery School (LTS Online, n. d.) where he is involved in a citizenship project designed to help pupils make informed choices and decisions. The aim of the project is to involve young pupils in making informed decisions about ways to enhance the nursery, and to understand the reasons for purchasing an interactive whiteboard. Pupils are involved in a number of information gathering activities at their local primary school which already has an interactive whiteboard. They use the digital still and video cameras to record their findings. The information they gather helps the pupils recall their visit to the primary school and what they learned in order to arrive at their decision. In the first part of the project, the teacher, the nursery nurse and a group of pupils visit the local primary school to see how the interactive whiteboard is being used and how it works. The visit will help them make a decision about whether it will be a useful piece of technology to have in their nursery. One of the teachers demonstrates how the board works and the nursery children have the opportunity to try using the stylus on the board by drawing shapes. Whilst they are doing this the other children record their visit using the cameras. Once back at the nursery they have to decide whether or not they want an interactive whiteboard. They were shown the photographs of their visit and discuss the advantages and disadvantages. Points such as the board being difficult to reach were raised and allowed the children to talk about its location within the nursery. Photos of the interactive whiteboard were placed around the nursery and votes were cast using post-it notes placed on the photos. Pupils collected the information successfully which in turn generated interesting and creative discussions. The children were fully engaged in the activity and motivation was at a high. Many of them brought their own ideas and issues to the topic and were very capable of articulating their thoughts and making informed decisions. It was beneficial to have the children use various ICT equipment even though there is the possibility of them breaking if they don’t fully understand it, said Mr McKernan, who believes that pupils need to have hands-on experience of the technology and be able to play with it in order to learn about it. As a follow up the pupils will make a model of the interactive whiteboard and test it in different locations around the nursery, take photographs and then make a decision about where it should be placed. The practice of making the pupils to decide on something based on available information allows these children to develop the sense of responsibility on their decision and actions. Falkir Nurseries (LTS Online, n. d.) have used the expressive arts for learning develops creativity. Creativity among children develops self-autonomy as they let themselves immerse in the activity. It seeks to cultivate, stimulate childrens powers of self-expression and encourage childrens development through involving and supervising children in expressive arts activities. Self-autonomy is encouraged in this activity on the premise that recognition of children as powerful learners, children co-construct their own learning and listening to children, accepting their theories and supporting their lines of discovery and enquiry is the best way to let them learn. Self-autonomy is further enhanced through recognition that children have a range of creative languages, all of equal value and importance of which they are given opportunities to use these languages in free expression. Initially themes were selected in collaboration with staff but as the project has progressed the emerging themes reflect the interests of the children and have proved to be the most successful. Themes included Water, Travel, Myself, Butterflies, The Senses and Christmas/Winter. In the Butterflies theme, children learn about the life-cycle of the butterfly and are encouraged to express their ideas and feelings about butterflies through dance, song, poetry, painting, drawing, role play and story telling. Children are encouraged to use a range of materials and artefacts, and to present their ideas in a variety of ways, including use of overhead and slide projectors. Additional stimuli are added in some themes by the introduction of visitors, including a bird and Santas harassed assistant, courtesy of the projects drama teacher. Children were learning in a socially constructed environment and were encouraged to construct their own learning with support from adults as educators and materials which develop creativity and imagination. As a result of the project it has been pointed out a child who is labelled as being especially shy or withdrawn from the group was observed to display a marked change in behaviour. A number of late speakers have been observed to gain confidence during projects and to begin to speak about the theme as it has progressed. Children have developed collaborative working practices and the ability to negotiate with one another. Children are more able to work co-operatively in the classroom. Working within an integrated arts approach promotes inclusion and develops children’s ability and confidence to communicate with others and to increase levels of participation. The projects promotion of different creative languages has also benefited children with special needs. One child was observed to socially interact with other children through imaginative play, which staff had not witnessed before, and there was an increase in his use of language. Activities, which focus on problem solving also develop personal autonomy among pupils. Activities like these are called thinking skills sessions. This is exemplified by the following case. Sara is working with four pupils on a classification exercise. She has a collection of toy cars, buses, taxis, lorries and asks the pupils how they could sort them. One pupil suggests sorting according to whether the vehicle has a spoiler or not. Another suggests sorting according to shape, and another suggests sorting according to whether they feel rough or smooth. The pupils try out each classification idea and Sara questions them about the groups they have assembled. The lesson ends with the ‘not’ game. Pupils have to select a vehicle and ask what it definitely is not. One pupil says the car in question is definitely not metallic blue.  Sara sees clear benefits from the thinking skills and problem solving programs. Pupils are very keen to make suggestions, justify their reasoning and articulate their thinking. They are also very good at working in groups and listening to each other and they are not put off when presented with a problem, but are keen to tackle it. Finally, they realize that they are thinkers and have an active role to play in the learning process. By collaborating with the teacher and peer, a child learns how to negotiate, reason out, and decides to solve the given task. Self-autonomy is at play at its best. Relationship is also a way to ensure self-autonomy among learners. Friendship between two young children helps them to learn about the needs and feelings of others and allows them to develop confidence and resilience. Adults can support young children by valuing their relationships and friendships. Relationships and friendships can play an important role in supporting children and opportunities for children to interact with one another and with older and younger children are important. Finally, the close bond between the children also helps to ease transitions. Among others, the following are also effective in promoting self-autonomy. Sensory play can be fun and can also encourage children to persevere. Routine tasks are valuable opportunities to interact responsively with young children. Mealtimes are opportunities for social interaction and developing trusting relationships. Tuning in to children effectively means recognizing that some of the everyday activities and the more routine parts of the day, such as mealtimes, bath-times and changing a nappy, all provide valuable opportunities for adults to interact with children and for children to develop and learn. Establishing respect is one key feature in ensuring effective practice with young children and their families. Flexible planning, close observation and the ability to reflect on how things have gone all help adults to ensure that the environments children find themselves in are as responsive and thoughtful as possible. Understanding what a childs behaviour indicates is an important aspect of responsive care and helps to promote close and consistent relationships. Responsive care is one key feature of effective practice when working with young children. Sharing of learning intentions and success criteria with children; encouraging children to self-assess and reflect on their own learning; and enabling children to be more involved in the planning and direction of their learning and setting goals or targets for learning. Young people ‘seeing the big picture’, understanding how they can develop through the tasks, setting ambitious goals, reflecting, developing skills and knowledge, taking risks; relationships and a learning environment, which are not only harmonious but also result in focused, challenging team-working; young people managing and developing tasks, which reflect the real world and are seen through to a purposeful conclusion; resources, being understood and managed effectively by pupils themselves; and products, which have purposefulness, originality and value are the key values of school fostering personal autonomy (Nordgren, 2006). Aside from classroom activities, which are positively fostering self-autonomy among pupils, listening to children’s voice is necessary so that the opportunity to give their views raised student self-awareness and that staff gained increased understanding of pupil needs and were more focused on actually addressing them through reformed pedagogical practices. It empowers students and give them greater agency in their learning by establishing them as active agents in a democratic partnership – has been overlooked by some (Noyes 2005). But teachers are not always open to the opinions or suggestions for improvement that are voiced by pupils (Davie and Galloway 1996). As McIntyre et al. (2005) point out, “it cannot be claimed that schooling is primarily intended to benefit pupils if pupils’ own views about what is beneficial to them are not actively sought and attended to.” To sum up, schools can foster personal autonomy among pupils by letting the students own their learning through activities; use standards and national curricula that guide rather than dictate; employ constructivist teaching strategies that empower students; utilize trust and adult supervision; exercise democracy and empowerment and keeping in mind the Global Workforce Competence: making schooling relevant to the workplace. This practices should be done so that pupil can learn and live with maturity the responsibility of learning as a part of his community. References Barandiaran, X. (2004). Behavioral Adaptive Autonomy. A milestone in the A life route to AI? Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Artificial Life. MIT Press, Cambridge: MA, pp. 514--521. Davie, R. and Galloway, D. (1996) ‘The voice of children in education’, in R. Davie and D. Galloway (eds.), Listening to Children in Education. London: David Fulton LTS Online. (n.d.) Supporting early years care and education in Scotland. Early Years. Retrieved at april 21, 2008 from http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/earlyyears/index.asp McIntyre, D., Pedder, D. and Rudduck, J. (2005) Pupil voice: comfortable and uncomfortable learnings for teachers. Research Papers in Education 20 (2): 149-168 Nordgren R.D. (2006, Feb).E-Journaling: Progressive Educational Practices and Environments in Sweden: Preparing Students to Live and Work in the Global Age. Current Issues in Education [On-line], 9(5). Available: http://cie.asu.edu/volume9/number5/index.html Noyes, A. (2005) Pupil voice: purpose, power and the possibilities for democratic schooling. British Educational Research Journal 31 (4): 533-540 Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline. New York: Doubleday/Currency. Wikipedia. (n.d). Individual Freedom: Autonomy, Information, and Law. Page was last modified 01:18, 17 August 2007. Accessed: April 21, 2008 from http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php?title=5._Individual_Freedom:_Autonomy%2C_Information%2C_and_Law Read More