Self-directed learning

Self-directed learning is a way of approaching to becoming a better individual and being a much successful person. It is necessary that you control your own learning experience and start developing your personal, academic and social skills.

This approach push yourself to your best possible performance and  actions, it guides you through the management of different learning experience, helping you identify your own style and strengths to reinforce, develop or change.

 You can help yourself and motivate to assess your efforts and work harder every time. You can control as much of the learning experiences, shifting the control to your own domain, developing skills with an inner control and applying the search of your own talents and energy. It undoubtedly leads you to actively produce outcomes, think independently, plan and execute your own activities in order to succeed.

You can control your own path and drive, you can achieve new enterprises and skip old structures you were used to, but you need self-control and responsibility in achieving your own interest and aspiration in the sake of world common good. You have to face difficulties and find alternatives to solve all the problems you face. Teaching is the best way to approach to self-directed learning; this world is in constant change and learners are too, so we need to keep updated strategies and research on problems to demolish old teaching habits and learn to be better teachers, as we are adapted to face our learner’s new needs and expectations, approaching to them in a more dynamic and accurate way.

We need to set the standards of achievement a step higher to ourselves and our learners’, but one we can achieve in a certain term and we can measure and keep the track on the progress we make.  We need to go far and deep our own performance and progress.

We need to develop self-efficacy and help our students become efficient learners as well. That is, believe in our ability to succeed, to be positive and actively approach to goals, tasks and challenges; we need to identify goals to accomplish and fight ourselves to put our plans into actions.

People with a strong sense of self efficacy view challenging problems as tasks, not troubles; they are more committed and fight for recovering and progress. That is what we need in society, we need self-directed citizens, those who work hard to achieve and progress.

We do not need people who avoid challenges, who get easily down under obstacles an do nothing about it, those who center their performance feedback on negative outcomes; we need positive standards, we need people willing to perform tasks successfully, those who accomplish and encourage themselves and their group to achieve high standards.

Those who are good at self-efficacy, normally contribute to the growth and development of the team efficacy.

We need to give children opportunities for mastering experiences, give them the opportunity to control their behavior and environment; we need to create opportunities for them to make decisions and reflections on the results.

If we trained kids to be self-directed learners, our future would be bright and clear, so in order to have more self-reflective learners we need to establish self-directed teaching in our classrooms, we need to focus meaningful tasks and help them stick to internal motivation and problem resolution. We need to help them realize why they are learning and in what ways it would help its environment and society. A source for this is the use of technology and real life experiences or tasks.

There are plenty of sources and studies that could help us in the development of self-efficient learners, although some critics said it is not applicable equally to all adult learners as not everybody know where to go with their knowledge and self-direction can be affected by fear of lack of confidence can create dependent learner s and reduce motivation and its expected results. Besides not all learners including adults have a  clear idea of where their learning direction should be. So we need to look at the particular learner’s context and situation to help them be more aware of their learning experience and goals only in that way we can create a better society and develop our future in a local and global perspective.