Some eight years ago, an uncle sought to help his niece to develop a personal timetable to guide her self-directed learning during the school term.
He sought to help the niece to draft the personal timetable, a few days ahead of the official reopening of schools.
“Uncle, we don’t have free time during which we can study on our own,” she said.
“All the available time before 8am and after 3.45pm, is taken up for extra tuition.”
The uncle, a retired educationist, expressed shock that students had no time to themselves to read or study by themselves.
The uncle found it strange. Although modern education is largely institutional, it is a private and personal initiative. The assumption is that the school environment nurtures the potential of each child to the best possible extent of the child. It is for this reason that the school system recognises two modes of learning. Learning as directed by the teacher and learning as directed by the learner himself or herself.
From a policy perspective, instructional time is the amount of time during which students receive instruction from a classroom teacher in a school context. On the other hand, self-directed learning is an approach to education that empowers learners to lead their own learning experience within and outside a school context.
The Basic Education Regulations 2015 designates 8am to 4.45pm as instructional time. The law provides 8am to 3.30pm for class hours—for curriculum activities and 3.30pm to 4.45pm for co-curriculum activities. Combined, they constitute instructional hours as defined above.
The same piece of delegated legislation provides for self-directed learning. It provides for the time between 5pm and 9.30pm for self-directed learning. It has broken the time into two—5pm to 7.30pm for self-directed activities Monday to Friday and 7.30pm to 9.30pm preps Monday to Friday.
What this means is that the law bans extension of instructional time after 4.45 and before 8pm during the weekdays and weekends.
Preferably, this is the time students can take charge of their own education or learning under the enlightened leadership of a school system. Self-directed learning, which preps is all about, is a process of a learner, learning independently.
Self-directed learning implies several assumptions. It implies that children have capacity to learn on their own given the appropriate drive or support.
Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky, called this kind of support, scaffolding. According to Vygotsky, scaffolding is an instructional practice where a teacher progressively removes guidance and support as students learn and become more competent.
Vygotsky propounded another concept connected to scaffolding called the zone of proximal development. He defined ZPD as the space between what a learner can do without assistance and what a learner can do with adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.
Teaching is similar to someone helping a child to climb a hill. Once the child gets to the peak of the hill, the parent leaves him or her to explore the top of the hill on his own. Only when the child wants to get to the next higher peak of the mountain range, does it need support.
A great school, a great teacher is one who facilitates learning in ways that learners progressively grasp increasingly new concepts on his own as they do.
The school or the teacher enables learners to take charge of their own studies. They are supposed to master inherent powers in each subject, in order to explore the complexities and ambiguities that define the nature what English biologist and anthropologist Henry Huxley, defined as “the laws of nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws.” The learners are expected to grow intellectually by mastering all these.
The period designated as official instructional time—8am and 3.45pm—is the best time students can learn on their own. The six hours each day, or 30 hours instructional hours is sufficient to teach the syllabus and let the learners conduct their own studies.
All the school ought to do is to ensure that the students are at the right place at the right time within the school and if outside, under supervision by a teacher.
The quality of learning from self-directed learning manifests itself through the maturity in thinking and behaviour of the students apart from the comparatively improved mastery of the subjects they are learning.
It is American psychologist, Howard Gardner, who postulates that there are various learning styles open to human beings. The implication of this is that each learner has a unique learning style.
Self-directed learning is flexible. Each learner deliberately adopts his or her own style to study new topics or go over topics on subjects he or she didn’t understand well.
Self-directed learning also creates opportunities for peer learning or teaching. Students unite around groups to discuss areas of subjects of mutual interest they don’t understand. They can meet with a view to improving their understanding of difficult concepts. The discussion helps to sharpen their communication and social skills.
Additionally, self-directed learning helps learners to identify problem areas in any of the subjects they are studying. They subsequently conduct their own research or investigations from textbooks, books and other reference materials. Students develop budding research or problem-solving skills they wouldn’t otherwise have had had the teacher or school taken all their waking hours in the name of extra tuition or remedial teaching.
Self-directed learning creates a chance for students to do extensive reading of books beyond the textbooks written against a prescribed curriculum or syllabus.
The reading of fictional and nonfiction books in the school library and those their parents and guardians bought for them improves their literacy skills, to say nothing of reading fluency. Extensive reading improves comprehension skills. It also widens their mental horizons.
A school or a teacher who allows self-directed learning sends out deep messages to the student’s body. The messages are that: the school or the teacher is in business of preparing the students for the future—whatever that future may be—and not for examinations and that the school or teacher is sure about the quality of education he is giving to the teachers and lastly that he has trust in the capacity of the students to take charge and run their own education with optimal but restrained support.
Allocate time for self-directed learning and students like the niece we started off this article with, will be assisted to make a timetable which will guide him or her on how to utilise the time—optimally.
Communication officer, Ministry of Education