Original URL: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr200.htm

Critical Issue: Working Toward Student Self-Direction and Personal Efficacy as Educational Goals

ISSUE: Because learning in schools is traditionally dominated and controlled by adults, students seldom make decisions about their own learning (Goodlad, 1984). Even though our philosophies of education purport to graduating students who are responsible citizens capable of participating thoughtfully in a democracy, our educational practices have a tendency to foster dependence, passivity and a "tell me what to do and think" attitude.

OVERVIEW: A touchstone of effective learning is that students are in charge of their own learning; essentially, they direct their own learning processes. In a discussion of indicators of engaged, effective learning, Jones, Valdez, Nowakowski, and Rasmussen (1995) describe characteristics of students who are responsible for their own learning. One characteristic is a student's ability to shape and manage change, in other words, self-directed. Covey (1989) recognizes the importance of self-directedness, which he calls proactivity, by including it as one of the habits characterizing highly-effective individuals: "It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen" (p. 71).

We as educators can nurture student self-direction and personal efficacy by providing students with opportunities before, during and after instruction to exercise some control of their own learning. This does not mean students make all the decisions and it does not mean reverting to a curriculum of "personal relevance" of the '60s or the "child centered curriculum" of years ago. An emphasis on student self-direction and efficacy means that we teach and engage students in specific strategies that offer them opportunities to make decisions and solve problems on their own without being told what to do at all times. It means we provide them with strategies designed to help them process information effectively and to be self-confident, believing that they have the abilities to succeed. And perhaps most important, we help students become more reflective about their thinking and learning processes.

Specific strategies we can provide include encouraging students to set their own goals for personal development and instructional improvement, and planning ways to achieve these goals. According to Hom and Murphy (1983):

"A growing body of research indicates that when students are working on goals they themselves have set, they are more motivatived and efficient, and they achieve more than they do when working on goals that have been set by the teacher" (p. 104).

From the world of business we know that people who achieve success are those who engage in planning, identifying specific goals, and designing strategies to work toward them (Peters & Waterman, 1982). To reach goals they have set, students can benefit from learning a variety of problem-solving strategies. Research (Perkins, 1992; Pressley, 1992) indicates that there are many strategies that all of us as learners can use while engaged in thinking through complex problems: (1) talking ourselves through problems; (2) asking what we know and need to find out; (3) posing questions; (4) visualizing relationships with existing knowledge; and (5) drawing our own conclusions. The importance of identifying the nature of the problem and planning strategies to solve it is emphasized by Sternberg (1985) who notes, "Better reasoners tend to spend more time encoding the terms of a problem than do poorer reasoners"(p.104).

When we help students develop an awareness about their own thinking and learning processes, we are helping them think about the effectiveness of the strategies they use in reaching the goals they have set. Essentially, they are "thinking about thinking," a process known as metacognition. In general, use of a long-term metacognitive strategy of planning what is to be done, monitoring our progress, and evaluating the results is an effective way of helping students take more control of their own thought and feeling processes (Barell, 1985).

Research helps us understand the important role played by self-confidence and a feeling of being in control. For example, research suggests that students perform at higher levels if they have confidence in themselves (Pressley, 1987) and that personal efficacy is a matter of internal locus of control. Students with more internal locus of control attribute their success to their own abilities and not to luck or chance, as do persons with an external locus of control (Thomas, 1980). When students realize that their thoughts control their actions (i.e., their locus of control is internal), they can positively affect their own beliefs, motivations, and academic performance (McCombs, 1991).

Marge Dawe, a teacher at Richard Elementary School in Detroit, Michigan, describes how she works to build personal confidence in the minds of her students. [Audio file, 162k] Excerpted from the video series Schools That Work: The Research Advantage, videoconference #7, Preparing Students for Work in the 21st Century (NCREL, 1992).

In some situations, students may require extra guidance from teachers in order to self-direct their learning. Types of guidance include helping students develop an awareness of their beliefs about their abilities and about their role in choosing to learn or choosing not to learn.

The implications for assessment in classrooms where students are self-directed are obvious. In both the during and after stages of instruction, students continuously monitor and evaluate their own learning processes. Self-regulation and efficacy imply that students begin to share more in their own self-evaluation (Costa,1991; Wiggins, 1993; Barell, 1995) and not leave all assessment to their teachers.

• Administrators commit to students taking more ownership of their learning.
• School districts commit to informing parents about the nature of student self-direction and personal efficacy, especially as it pertains to areas of curricular revision.
• School districts work to increase the community's level of concern about student self-regulation and efficacy as educational goals and their support for the corresponding curricular revision.
• Teachers give students opportunities to share control of learning through understanding and mastering specific strategies.
• Teachers provide students with ample opportunities to set goals and monitor progress, both individually and collaboratively, in school and at home.
• Students assume responsibility for learning strategies and working toward their implementation, reflecting on their own performance and setting goals for self-development.

ACTION OPTIONS: Teachers design instruction where students have multiple opportunities to engage in the following:

• Setting goals for the improvement of their own learning. This can be done on a weekly basis or at greater intervals. Students set goals, design strategies and identify indicators of success as well as reasons for setting the goal. Continual monitoring helps students engage in reflective thinking.

Barbara M'Gonigle, a teacher at Dumont High School in Dumont, New Jersey, describes how she uses thinking journals in her class to help students set their own goals. [Audio file, 333k] Excerpted from a videotape provided by the author and Barbara M'Gonigle.

• Reflecting on their own performance by engaging in planning, monitoring and evaluating behaviors that foster self-awareness and can work in conjunction with personal goal setting (Barell, 1995). This encourages students to become co-investigators with teachers of their own thinking processes (Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1983). A thinking journal can be one very effective tool for such an investigation of thinking.
• Developing metacognitive behaviors; using a variety of strategies to manage thinking processes.
• Becoming better at posing their own questions. As students read, listen and discuss, they may ask, "Do I understand completely? Can I picture what I am hearing/reading? If not, what gaps exist? What do I need to question the speaker/author about?"
• Pre, during and post reading strategies that include the KWL method, reciprocal teaching and the development of graphic organizers whereby students must think for themselves and exercise some control over the text. (Ogle, 1986; Palinscar & Brown, 1984).
• Coordinating long-range curricular planning (students and teachers together), using KWHL a modification of the KWL strategy.
• Developing personal efficacy by identifying, valuing, and utilizing dispositions and habits of mind (Marzano 1992; Perkins, 1992) such as: acknowledging how thought affects actions; believing in one's ability to succeed; persisting; accepting responsibility for personal actions; overcoming impulsiveness and fostering deliberateness; becoming more open to others' ideas; listening; cooperating; and believing in the necessity for precision and clarity of thought.

For these purposes, thinking journals, graphic organizers, interviews, and class discussions can be most beneficial in helping students become more aware of these dispositions and of the underlying beliefs about self that affect their will to learn, to choose, and to participate in a variety of learning challenges (McCombs & Marzano, in press).

• Becoming problem posers, not always relying on the teacher. By sharing some control, teachers empower students to pose problems for themselves and the class to consider, either through a KWHL long-term strategy, in thinking journals, during collaborative problem solving, or as part of their performance assessment.

Barbara M'Gonigle, a teacher at Dumont High School in Dumont, New Jersey, describes how having students create their own math problems based on their math curriculum is an effective means for engaging students in their learning. [Audio file, 315k] Excerpted from a videotape provided by the author and Barbara M'Gonigle.

• Self-assessment in portfolios or on videotape to enhance their personal control and efficacy.

Barbara M'Gonigle. a teacher at Dumont High School in Dumont, New Jersey, describes the importance of students assessing their own progress in the classroom. [Audio file, 225k] Excerpted from a videotape provided by the author and Barbara M'Gonigle.

• Communicating with their parents or guardians to demonstrate the learners' reasons for their successes and what their future goals are.

Janet Burgett, a teacher at Pusey Elementary School in Council Bluffs, Iowa, describes how she observes student-led parent/student conferences. She uses these opportunities to help develop the discussion topics during the parent/teacher part of the conference. [Audio file, 315k] Excerpted from the Audio Conference Reporting to Parents (NCREL, February 23, 1995).

• Administrators support teachers by providing professional development time and opportunities to work toward researching, implementing, and evaluating the above instructional strategies.
• Administrators and teachers incorporate a coaching model of supervision for the improvement of instruction and for evaluation, thereby encouraging the development of staff's own personal improvement plans, with post observational conferencing that can be described as a mutually-enhancing learning process.
• Administrators meet with students, teachers, parents, and other community members to discuss how to reach the goal of self-regulation, determination and efficacy in the school at large.

IMPLEMENTATION PITFALLS: In traditional classrooms the teacher is seen as the information giver; knowledge flows only one way from teacher to student. In contrast, the methods used in a collaborative classroom emphasize shared knowledge and decision making. The teacher has the knowledge of content, skills, and instruction but values the contribution students can make. The personal experiences, prior knowledge, and cultural background they bring to the learning experience are used as a basis for instruction. Collaborative teaching requires teachers to share authority with students allowing them a voice in setting goals, deciding on activities, etc.

Teachers may have a great deal of difficulty learning how to share control of instruction with students. Teachers are taught to make the decisions in the classroom and helping students make their own decisions will conflict with some teachers' learned experiences as well as their feelings about being in charge. The reorientation towards a student-owned classroom requires not only a cognitive but an affective reorientation as well. For some teachers this is a most difficult challenge. Finding time for planning collaborative instruction is another problem.

Similarly, students who are used to relying on teachers to give them so much structure, direction and information will have to learn to start asking themselves, "What can I do before I ask an adult?"

And, finally, it will be easier for some schools to discuss and work toward self-direction for students than it will be for them to implement similar strategies for all the adults within the building.

DIFFERENT POINTS OF VIEW: Some psychologists point out that fostering self-determination and personal efficacy can conflict with our goals for collaborative work (Sigel) unless we find ways to mold both goals into our instructional programs. Overemphasis upon self-direction strategies may result in perpetuating competition as the norm within classrooms (Kohn, 1986).

Other educators will note that efficacy and self-direction can refer not only to the individual but to a group, a class of students, that decides upon goals, designs strategies and collaboratively evaluates progress on a group basis. As Vygotsky (1978) notes, learning to think occurs within a social context; group speech gradually becomes internalized as personal self-talk about confronting life's difficult, complex situations.

Finally, personal efficacy means taking control of one's destiny. This concept has very strong implications for school restructuring and change, for students' engaging in their own self-assessment, and a complete reorientation of our thinking about who controls the educational processes for whose benefit and why. (See Apple, 1979; Anyon, 1979). Schools are generally controlled by adults for reasons that meet the needs of adults or the needs of society as perceived by adults. Some critics (Apple, 1979) suggest that schools help students reproduce knowledge of a dominant social, economic class, and not engage in producing for their own knowledge.

Further, many parents are concerned that a reorientation toward student self-direction and personal efficacy will diminish the influence of home and school and inadequately prepare students for the work force.

ILLUSTRATIVE CASES:

Jeff Howard and "Efficacy Project"

Lake Okoboji High School, Milford, Iowa: A Sense of Place Project

CONTACTS:

Efficacy Institute
128 Spring St.
Lexington, MA 02173
(617) 862-4390; fax (617) 862-2580
Contact: Jeff Howard

Maryland Assessment Consortium
10350 Whitewasher Way
Columbia, MD 21044
(301) 694-1337; fax (301) 694-1800
Contact: Jay McTighe, Director

References

Date posted: 1995