Self-Directed Learner

Front matter

cre) CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group

THE THREE PILLAR MODEL FOR DEVELOPING SELF-DIRECTEDNESS

EAA A

Preface

About the author

List of figures

List of tables

A model for self-directedness Self-directedness and adult learning People and places

Reflective practice and action research Learning and teaching

Leadership and management Summary

References Index

Contents

117 143 187 216

224 236

Preface

Chapter 1

‘We've got this saying, “performance by the aggregation of marginal gains”. It means taking the 1% from everything you do; finding a 1% margin for improvement in everything you do."

Sir David Brailsford

Introduction

Educating others is fundamental to individual and societal improvement; it has to rank as one of the most, if not the most, important of trades. To paraphrase Dewey,’ while DNA provides the mechanism for the continuation of biology, education is the mechanism for the continuation of society. We, as a human race, have reached our advanced stage of societal development because educators at all stages of learning have provided the mechanism for society to improve and achieve. Yet, still, we are not perfect and so the next generation of educators (that’s us) steps forward to use our expertise to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes that enable our learners to move medicine and healthcare forwards.

With the importance of the role of the educator in mind, when we become educators we accept a responsibility to strive for excellence. Though medical education is often altruistic in nature, we must constantly seek to improve our practice and in doing so improve the outcomes for our learners individually and as part of a forward-moving community. The community we are educating in is not the one in which our learners will be working. In reality the healthcare community is constantly evolving and will become increasingly unrecognisable to those who worked in healthcare 50 years ago and difficult to imagine for those of us here today. Health Education England predicts ‘A significant part of the workforce in 2030 will find themselves working flexibly across specialisms and care settings in roles and places of work largely unfamiliar to the workforce today? ® Most of us can probably see this coming, but predicting what the outcome will really look like in the final draft is beyond my powers.

This constant progression is not unique to healthcare and many organisations today, the National Health Service (NHS) included, strive to be ‘learning organisations. These are organisations that seek to facilitate the learning of their employees and are open and willing to learn and change at an organisational level.

It is against this background that we begin to see the importance of the self-directed learner. We work in a community where standing still is going backwards; therefore we need workers with a desire to learn and the ability to do so without direct supervision. As educators we cannot simply assume that self-directed learning is pre-programmed into all learners; instead we must put in place mechanisms to develop the skills, motivations and self-belief for our learners to become self-directed both in the immediate learning experience and throughout the rest of their career.

Self-directed learning is perhaps the Holy Grail of adult learning and for good reason. Within this seemingly simple phrase lies the battleground for the frustrations of both educator and learner as they work through the difficulties of an unequal and sometimes intense partnership. The busy educator needs to guide the learner successfully through their learning with the knowledge that the best long-term outcome is a self-directed learner. Working against this is the knowledge that, in the short term, it is quicker and easier to tell them the answer. Meanwhile, the busy learner is under pressure from all sides and wants the answer handed to them with a minimum of fuss. It seems to me, as someone who has taught teenagers as well as adults, that the latter tend to revert to the former when they take on the ‘learner’ label. Think about the last time you went on a course. What did you look at when you received the schedule for the day? You probably glanced down the lectures or workshops, but did your eye linger longer on the timings of the breaks? Did you find yourself thinking about what might be laid on for lunch given the chosen venue? Did you look at the end time and wonder if you could get home earlier than usual? If not, congratulations; you are truly a very focused individual, but you are the exception. Keeping in mind that even the best of us are not always as focused as we perhaps should be will help dissipate the mounting frustrations of working with adult learners who seem to have a Peter Pan approach to learning and just will not act like adults.

‘Self-directed learning’ has been circulating as a buzz phrase in education for many decades now. The past few decades have seen increasing interest in the idea of learning organisations, career-long professional development and lifelong education. Accreditations such as ‘Investors in People’ are evidence of the focus on continual development for many businesses. As part of this progress the self-directed movement has grown and now finds itself firmly embedded in many adult learning contexts. So it seems self-directed learning is here to stay as one of the most important aspects, if not the most important, of adult education. After all, to steal from an old proverb: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’ If we want our learner to continue drinking from the educational well (sorry, may have taken the old adage a step too far there) after their formal education, we must find a way to instil in them a high level of self-directedness. Obvious, I think, yes. Easy, most definitely, no. After many decades of work the magic bullet to create self-directedness continues to elude researchers in adult education. Most probably because there is no magic bullet, no quick fix. Sorry. The development of self-directedness is a complex beast. Individual psyches, varying intellects and personal motivations are all bundled up to create our learners, making each and every one of them unique and therefore the mechanism to promote self-directedness in them equally unique.

THE THREE PILLAR MODEL OF SELF-DIRECTEDNESS If self-directedness is our cake, the raw ingredient is our learner. As adult educators we have to ‘bake’ our learner to make them self-directed, and in order to do this we need a recipe. OK, so I may be forcing the analogy somewhat but stick with it. In this chapter we will construct a model that provides us with a recipe, a system for considering what we need to put into place to develop self-directed learners. This model is built upon research from many relevant fields combined with half a cup of experience and a pinch of common sense (definitely pushing the analogy now, sorry). It is fundamentally based upon the ‘aggregation of marginal gains’: any single action or change in methodology is unlikely to have a significant impact upon the learner's self-directedness, but taken together the right combination of factors will add up to substantial change.

In this model, the ultimate aim - self-directedness — is a block held up by three pillars, each of which is necessary for successful self-directedness (see Figure 1.1). e Skills - learners must have the skills necessary to complete the learning process and insight into their own strengths and weaknesses in relation to these skills. e Motivation - learners need motivating in order to complete the tasks associated with their formal learning; they also need to develop an understanding of their own personal motivations to ensure they can continue to be self-directed in future situations.

e Self-belief - learners have to believe that they are capable of completing the task successfully.

Each of these pillars is necessary to support the characteristic of self-directedness; remove one of the pillars and self-directedness will fall down. We will discuss each of these pillars in more detail soon, but first we will look more closely at how the self-directedness block is supported by the three pillars.

Skills Motivation Self-belief

FIGURE 1.1 A three-pillar model of self-directedness

The fundamental concept of the three pillar structure is that the learner will need each of these pillars in place if they are to successfully become self-directed. If one (or two) is missing they are unlikely to develop a self-directed approach to their learning.

Without the Skills Pillar

If the learner has the motivation and a high level of belief that they are capable of completing the task but lacks the skills required to successfully negotiate the learning process, they will probably make an attempt at the task. However, without the skills they are likely to fail, or at least only succeed at a superficial level; this will impact upon their self-belief and likely damage internal motivating factors.

Without the Motivation Pillar

If the learner has the skills combined with a high level of self-belief but lacks the motivational factors, they will be unlikely to attempt the task. For some learners (and some tasks) the task itself, and the belief that they are capable of doing it, may be enough to provide motivation. However, this needs to be considered by either the educator or the learner when undertaking a task.

Without the Self-belief Pillar

If the learner has the learning skills and the motivation but a low level of self-belief they will not believe they can successfully complete the task. They will either make no attempt at the task or will attempt it with little enthusiasm, thus reducing their chances of successful or effective completion. The consequence of the latter outcome is further damage to their level of self-belief, preventing attempts at future tasks and entering the learner into a negative cycle: low self-belief, leading to inhibited effort and enthusiasm, followed by failure, causing a further drop in their level of self-belief.

It is the combination of all three pillars that has the strength to support self-directedness. If we can put in place suitable mechanisms to develop the necessary skills, motivation and self-belief in our learners, we can build up each of the three pillars. In the following chapters we will look for metaphorical bricks that could be used to build each pillar in our model. These are the things educators can do to teach learning skills, improve motivation and develop self-belief. First, though, we will look in further detail at the structure of each of the pillars. We will use some well-known and well-regarded theoretical models to provide us with a number of categories in each pillar to help organise our thoughts about each aspect of self-directedness.

THE SKILLS PILLAR

In order for our learners to become truly self-directed in their learning we must provide them with the skills to learn from experience. Self-directed learning should be more than simply selecting a course from the limited few available or affordable or within the appropriate timescale for their next performance review. It should be experiential in nature and part of a continual process of learning, but this requires an understanding of the experiential learning process. Therefore, we must identify and help the learner develop an implicit and explicit understanding of their learning. In childhood education the learner is led through the learning process, being very much guided and supported by their teacher, and as learners mature, their ability to take over this process to varying degrees will develop. If we are to expect self-directedness from our adult learners, it is only fair we ensure they have the necessary skills to negotiate the learning process. Their subsequent workplace learning may be entirely self-directed with learners negotiating the learning process independently. There are some workplaces where it is common practice for a ‘light touch mentoring process, but often individual development is still self-sought. In formal education settings the learning process tends to be quite organised and carefully structured to build upon prior knowledge. Learning in the workplace, however, is likely to be far less stepwise than many learning cycles would suggest. The skilled learner will manage to meet each point on the cycle without having to strictly adhere to the prescribed stages of learning. By providing the learner with learning skills during the more formalised learning processes we give them the ability to cope in an often chaotic workplace (at least it is in my world) where they may have little to no formal support.

It is important to emphasise that the skills we are talking about in this pillar are the skills necessary to learn; that is, the knowledge and insight that a learner must develop to be able to guide themselves through the learning process. This pillar does not relate to the skills that the learner may need to acquire in order to meet learning objectives, competences or curriculum statements. One of the (many) challenges for educators is to ensure adequate focus on learning skills and not get caught up entirely in the content of the learning. It is tempting, particularly when there is a curriculum and a deadline involved, to focus on the knowledge and skills required to meet these objectives. If, however, we intend to develop self-directed learners, their understanding of the learning process is an essential consideration during all interactions.

Experiential learning

Experiential learning put in its simplest form is the idea that we learn from experience. Not exactly rocket science to the modern educator. It has become firmly embedded in the foundations of all education but particularly in adult education. Though it can be argued that all ages are constantly learning from experience (yesterday my two-year-old daughter learned that a goat baas like a sheep because she heard it at the farm), for the purposes of this book we will obviously focus on adult education.

Cognitively based learning cycles are relatively abstract in nature; they are embedded in the internal, mental activity involved in the learning process. Behavioural models provide less room for conscious thought, being based within subconscious behaviours, with the stimulus rather than the individual determining the behaviour. Experiential learning combines cognitive with behavioural within a broader, more holistic, reality-driven setting. The importance of experiential learning for adult education has been emphasised repeatedly, not least by Knowles‘ who included the role of experience as the second of his four assumptions of adult learning. It is logical, therefore, to use experiential learning as a mechanism for identifying the learning skills necessary for self-directed learning. As such, the structure of the Skills Pillar in our model of self-directedness will be based on experiential learning.

Experiential learning has been popularised by Kolb’s learning cycle, but actually the basis for this approach to learning lies much earlier in educational research. Kolb’s work drew heavily upon previous work on experiential learning by both Dewey and Lewin.

Dewey’ was acutely aware that an individual’s learning takes place within a wider context and that there has to be an interactive, social element to learning. His research explored the impact of setting learning opportunities into real life contexts. He believed teaching should focus on experience not didactic lecturing or asking learners to plough through textbooks (we'll ignore the irony of this being a textbook). His fundamental philosophy was that learning is most effective when it is combined with genuine experience. This seems, to me at least, to be fairly obvious, but in the early 1900s the traditional view of learning was strongly held and Dewey was proposing fairly radical changes to the teaching methods of the time.

An experience, a very humble experience, is capable of generating and carrying any amount of theory (or intellectual content), but a theory apart from an experience cannot be definitely grasped even as theory. It tends to become a mere verbal formula, a set of catchwords used to render thinking, or genuine theorising, unnecessary and impossible.” ® *

There is nothing that an educational writer likes more than a good cycle. Reflective cycles, action research cycles, educational cycles, learning cycles, we will see so many of them throughout this book we risk dizziness and nausea. Nonetheless, here we go: Dewey’s work (as illustrated by Kolb) laid some very solid foundations for the experiential learning movement (see Figure 1.2). What begins to emerge is a key skill for all: controlling the initial reactive impulse to allow time for observations, reflections and the cognitive collation of new information.

l Impulse 1 a Impulse 2 a | | = Knowledge 1 a” Q Knowledge 2 a”

FIGURE 1.2 Dewey’s Experiential Learning Cycle (as illustrated by Kolb)

One of the other key influencers of the experiential learning movement was Lewin. Kolb® discussed the relevance of Lewin’s work in the introduction to his Experiential Learning Cycle. Lewin based much of his work around action research cycles (we will come to these in Chapter 5). He felt that much of the ineffectiveness of individual and organisational behaviour could be traced to an imbalance between action and observation. Weve all met people at each of these extremes - those who spend so much time observing they never get anything done and those who rush headlong into action and fall over themselves. He borrowed the idea of feedback loops from electrical engineering and pieced it together with his research into learning. The outcome was a cycle which provides a goal-orientated, reflective action approach to learning; see Figure 1.3.

Concrete experience

Testing implications Obseivatiónsand reflections of concepts in new situations

Formation of abstract concepts and generalisations

FIGURE 1.3 Lewin’s Experiential Learning Cycle (as illustrated by Kolb)

The learning process is initiated by some form of practical experience. The following stages of reflection on the experience, absorption of the details and subsequent examination of the new information complete the cycle to feed back into another concrete experience when the new information is put into action.

Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle®

Like many things in educational research, Kolb’s learning cycle was built upon the work of researchers, like the aforementioned Dewey and Lewin and also Piaget, who is often seen as a founding father of experiential learning and constructivism. Using their ideas as a foundation, Kolb discussed the nature of learning and identified a continuum of learning. He suggested that learning is not a single thing that takes place in allocated places of learning. Instead he identified a continuum from specific performances, to learning, to long-term development (see Figure 1.4).

Typically, an immediate reaction to a limited situation or problem is not thought of as learning but as performance. Similarly at the other extreme, we do not commonly think of long-term adaptations to one’s total life situation as learning but as development. Yet performance, learning and development, viewed from the perspective of experiential learning theory, form a continuum of adaptive postures to the environment, varying only in their degree of extension in time and space. Performance is limited to short term adaptations to immediate circumstance, learning encompasses somewhat longer term mastery of generic classes of situations and development encompasses lifelong adaptation to one’s total life situation." ° *”

Performance — Experiential Adaptation — long-term immediate reaction to =) P T development to cope a situation with change

A continuum of learning

FIGURE 1.4 Kolb’s continuum of learning learning

Brookfield‘ divided experiential learning into two realms. First, there is the learning taking place from direct participation in lifes events; the immediate learning from ‘that went well/that went badly’ thought processes that determine how we will deal with a repeat of a particular experience in the future. These instantaneous reflections on performance under a particular circumstance are one type of experiential learning. The alternative is the learning undertaken by students who are taught in more formal environments but provided with appropriate activities from which to gain experience. These (usually) more structured and prescribed learning experiences form the second realm of experiential learning. If we consider Brookfield’s realms of experiential learning in the context of Kolb’s continuum of learning, we can see that the two realms are really part of the same continuum rather than two separate ideas. The instantaneous reflections on performance are one end of Kolb’s continuum while the formal learning realm lies in the middle of the continuum. In combination, over a long time period, these two realms will lead to the development of the individual in a broader manner. Thus experiential learning can be found at the heart of the whole continuum of learning, and it becomes apparent that the learning process in each of these circumstances must have similarities that can be drawn together. Experiential learning is not just for workplace reflections, it allows us to scrutinise learning in all situations: formal, informal, short term, long term, teacher led or learner led.

Kolb’s learning cycle (see Figure 1.5) is firmly rooted in experiential learning and is constructed from four stages of the learning process, very similar to those proposed by Lewin. Kolb used these four stages to identify and classify the differing sets of abilities needed for each stage:

e concrete experience abilities: learners ‘must be able to involve themselves fully, openly and without bias in new experiences’

e reflective observation abilities: learners ‘must be able to reflect on and observe their experiences from many perspectives’

e abstract conceptualisation abilities: learners ‘must be able to create concepts that integrate their observations into logically sound theory’

e active experimentation abilities: learners ‘must be able to use these theories to make decisions and solve problems. *”

Concrete experience

Active Reflective experimentation observations

Abstract conceptualisation

FIGURE 1.5 Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle

For an example of the process of experiential learning I will turn to my two-yearold daughter who, as mentioned, discovered that goats ‘baa’ in a similar manner to sheep. I know this is hardly adult learning but it is a neat, simple example of experiential learning in action. So, on our trip to the farm, I can certainly vouch for her engagement with the experience and feel that she participated fully in the day’s activities. One of the best things about parenthood is the reinvention of the mundane world around us. Perhaps to successfully achieve this first stage of the learning cycle we have to find our inner two-year-old, and approach life without the constraints of adult cynicism and fear of failure. The next stage of the learning cycle is reflective observation; can a two-year-old reflectively observe? Perhaps that’s a discussion for another day, but at yesterday’s bedtime and this morning she was chattering away about ‘goat farm baa, ‘sheep baa; ‘stroke goat; ‘goat baa’ (anyone with children will recognise the circular nature of these conversations). So is she reflecting on the experience? I think as much as she is capable; she can't yet consider other perspectives (after all, what did the goat think about meeting her?), that particular skill will develop with age. Later this morning we got out her farm set to play with, and she picked up the sheep and the goat: ‘baa. The next step is abstract conceptualisation: she has taken the real life experience and is now applying it to the model that she is playing with. While she was playing, with a little help, she built a pen. Into that pen she put the sheep and the goat; they belong together because they make the same noise. She was experimenting with the new concept, putting it into the context of her world. Perhaps next time we go to a farm she will expect to find the goats in a pen with the sheep as she problem solves based on the new experience. Of course, if the goats are nowhere near the sheep, she will have to re-evaluate her initial hypothesis and find another way of classifying her farm animals.

There are some conflicts within the Experiential Learning Cycle (see Figure 1.6) because, in order to complete the cycle, the individual must possess skills that are contradictory in nature. The learner must expose themselves to concrete experiences but also conceptualise things in abstract contexts. They have to be reflective observers as well as being decision makers and problem solvers.

Learning requires abilities that are polar opposites and the learner, as a result, must continually choose which set of learning abilities he or she will bring to bear in any specific learning situation.5 ® * den= (Reteton (Concrete K> Theoretical

FIGURE 1.6 Learning skills conflicts in Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle

The contradictory nature of the skills needed to complete the learning process adds to the challenge for the educator as well as the learner. We are asking the learner to master these very different skills and to recognise when to use them. Not an easy task and made almost impossible if we do not lend a helping hand in their development. However, in the context of Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, it is tricky to see exactly what the skills are. How do we help learners develop their ability to take on new concrete experiences? Or to abstractly conceptualise? There is some help to be found by looking at the work done by George Kelly.

Scientific inquiry and experiential learning

Kelly’s” work is grounded in constructivism - linking experience and internal processes. He identified a similarity between the learning process and the process of scientific inquiry. His work was based upon the premise that people's psychological processes are scientific in nature and it has been incorporated into the Cognitive Behavioural Therapy movement. Kelly proposed the idea that every individual has a number of ‘constructs’ that are developed through personal experience. The very individualistic nature of these constructs means they can sometimes be a warped version of reality, but the differences are as a result of the individual's experiences. To take a very (very) simplistic example, someone who has been to the dentist once and had a horrible time has a 100% experience ofa horrible time at the dentist. In truth, though, I know some very nice dentists. These constructs are used by the individual

——_

Choose a Compare model or goal with reality

Execute the Concrete Identify difference solution P experience N (problems)

f Active Reflective | experimentation observations Select a Select a solution problem Abstract n conceptualisation /

Evaluate consequences Consider alternative of solutions solutions

FIGURE 1.7 Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle compared to the scientific process (as illustrated by Kolb)

to make predictions about likely outcomes of a particular behaviour. These hypotheses are then put to the test, through a combination of investing in and encountering the event. The actual outcome will either confirm or refute the initial hypothesis, which may require a revision of the original construct. So when the second trip to the dentist is not so bad after all, the initial hypothesis has been disproved and the individual has to review their future predictions. Essentially, this suggests that we can view thought processes as a series of mini scientific inquiries, often called the ‘man as scientist’ approach. It links closely with Piagets? ideas of assimilation (the digestion of external factors to fit with internal constructs) and accommodation (the creation and adapting of internal constructs as a result of external factors). He links these ideas to another scientific process: that of equilibrium. Piaget describes our cognitive processes as equilibration - a process of constant exertions towards a cognitive equilibrium that will never be reached because there will always be new variables and influences.

To pull this into the experiential learning arena, we need a comparison of the scientific process with the Experiential Learning Cycle. Fortunately for us, Kolb did this as part of the development of his cycle (see Figure 1.7); he aligned the scientific process against the stages of his Experiential Learning Cycle.

Using the process of scientific inquiry as a lens to view experiential learning materialises the necessary skills in a more tangible form so we can see more clearly what we must help our learners to develop if they are to become self-directed.

Limitations of the Skills Pillar

It first has to be noted that, like much of adult education literature, research into experiential learning is almost entirely based in Western culture. This cultural bias in the research may or may not be of significance to the construction of the Skills Pillar, but it must certainly be taken into consideration. This three pillar model has been developed to help educators work with the learner(s) that are in front of them; at each step I would ask that educators consider their learners as unique individuals. The skills bricks that are uncovered throughout the rest of this book will not all be applicable to all learners, as the bricks required will depend on their personality, current skills, previous experiences and the learning context. Keeping this in mind should help to minimise the cultural bias issue that arises when attempting to draw conclusions for broader, mixed groups of learners.

As has already been briefly mentioned, the separate and sequential nature of the stages of Kolb’s cycle is perhaps unrealistic for a work-based learning environment. However, for our Skills Pillar it is the skills needed for experiential learning that matter not the order in which they are used. If, in reality, workplace learning does not happen in this nice sequential and step-wise manner it does not matter as long as the learners have all the necessary skills. Ifa learner can successfully predict, reflect, problem solve, evaluate and so on, they will be able to negotiate a more chaotic learning environment.

One of the key criticisms of Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle is that reflection is a single step in the cycle. As we shall see in Chapter 5, reflection is more complex than this. For this model of self-directedness, Kolb’s learning cycle is being used as the overarching structure for the pillar; it is not an end point but a beginning. There are many possible bricks to be added to build the reflection skills needed for this section of the Skills Pillar.

The Skills Pillar: summary The Skills Pillar is primarily constructed around Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle* (see Figure 1.8), and in the subsequent chapters of this book we will uncover the tools and strategies that adult educators can utilise to develop the learning skills of a self-directed learner. We will be looking for anything that may help us to achieve the following for our learners.