Self-directed Learning

Critical Practice

Merryl Hammond, Rob Collins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138981591
• eBook ISBN: 9781134731015
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Aimed at those educators who wish to make their practice more consistent with progressive educational principles, namely helping learners to take greater control over planning and managing their own learning. The book contains a balance of theory and practical suggestions.

Chapter 1

Building A Co-operative Learning Climate

... the vindicating superiority of those who do the enlightening over those who are to be enlightened is theoretically unavoidable, but at the same time it is fictive and requires self-correction: in a process of enlightenment there can only be participants. (Habermas, 1973:40)

Chapter Preview

By building a co-operative learning climate we aim to develop an open, interdependent atmosphere in the learning group – one which is both accepting and challenging; one which is most conducive to meaningful, deep learning; one which encourages learners to critically examine themselves, their work and their potential roles as change agents in the context of social, economic and political issues both inside and beyond the educational sector. We find the building of such a climate to be a fundamental step in opening our minds and our hearts; it also improves our chances of reaching our greatest potential as critical self-directed learners and as facilitators of the self-directed learning of others. We accordingly consider building a co-operative learning climate to be the first step in the critical self-directed learning (SDL) process. Once such a climate has been established, participants can be encouraged to analyse their situations, and then to plan, implement and evaluate their learning as we describe in subsequent chapters.

In this chapter, our discussion is guided by three questions:

•What are the reasons for and potential problems of building and maintaining a co-operative learning climate?

•What are the essential features of a co-operative learning climate?

•What strategies will help achieve these features in practice?

Self-Assessment

Because this chapter deals with several aspects of the learning climate, we have split up the self-assessment exercise, starting each section with part of it. The broadly-phrased exercise below provides an overview so you can decide which sections will be most useful to you. There are three columns for you to rate yourself in the self-assessment exercises. We suggest that you use the first column before you start reading, and the second one after your reading – thus ‘measuring’ your learning. The third column is for a later reassessment if you decide to read more about learning climates, perhaps using some of the resources we refer to. Please use a rating scale of 1-5 where 1 indicates that you feel very unsure of an aspect, and 5 indicates that you feel very confident and/or competent. Clearly, the higher your score, the less you need to improve. Priority can be given to items you rated low.

As a co-ordinator of critical SDL, I do/would/can:

•explain what I mean by a co-operative learning climate •discuss the rationale for and potential problems of trying to build a co-operative climate •express my ‘learning climate philosophy’ •attend to the physical aspects of the learning climate •build and maintain a co-operative psychological climate •build and maintain a co-operative social learning climate •build and maintain a co-operative intellectual climate •build and maintain a co-operative administrative climate My additional ideas about the learning climate:

Total:

Each of the items in the self-assessment is discussed in the sections below. Depending on your ratings, you may want to skip to a section on which you have rated yourself low.

Overview: Co-operative Learning Climate

What Is A Co-operative Learning Climate?

As we use the term here, a co-operative learning climate is one which is consistently democratic, open, collaborative, challenging and critical but also non-threatening. Here, learners and facilitators are equal participants (Habermas, 1973:40) and stand in a ‘subject-to-subject relationship to one another’ engaging in an ‘authentic dialogue’ (Freire, 1970b:vii, 12). Such a climate has major implications for the role of facilitator, and we agree with Brookfield:

This concept [of facilitation] rejects the equation of facilitation with a nondirective attempt to serve as a resource person to learners who are essentially in total command of their learning activities. Instead it argues that facilitating learning is a transactional drama in which the personalities, philosophies, and priorities of the chief players (participants and facilitators) interact continuously to influence the nature, direction, and form of the subsequent learning. (Brookfield, 1986:viii)

Different terms (learning environment, learning milieu, classroom climate) are used in the literature and authors make different emphases. Most focus on the social relations in a learning group – the nature and quality of interactions between learners and teacher, and among learners themselves. Others extend the idea to include psychological and physical conditions:

[The learning milieu] is the social-psychological and material environment in which students and teachers work together. [It] represents a network or nexus of cultural, social, institutional, and psychological variables. These interact in complicated ways to produce, in each class or course, a unique pattern of circumstances, pressures, customs, opinions, and work styles which suffuse the teaching and learning that occur there. (Parlett & Dearden, 1977:14-15)

While agreeing with this definition, we would add that the intellectual and administrative climates should also be considered, together with a broad ‘learning climate philosophy’. Each of these elements is discussed later in this chapter.

Educators committed to building a co-operative learning climate should:

1.become critically aware of how educational oppression – in its subtle and unsubtle forms – usually operates;

2.help learners establish altered power relations in the learning group;

3.design educational experiences and administrative arrangements which are genuinely co-operative;

4.behave in an open and facilitating way in the learning group, and encourage learners to do so too.

If one or more of these conditions is weak or absent, the learning climate will almost certainly revert to being learner-oppressive and competitive, and the chances of critical SDL occurring are greatly reduced.

Why Build A Co-operative Learning Climate?

Before reading our ideas below, why do you think educators should try to build a cooperative learning climate?

Learners and educators are freed

The analogy from political discourse which views teachers as oppressors, and learners as oppressed is useful here (see Freire, 1970a:42). Boud echoes the theme that oppressors are oppressed by their own actions, and will remain so until those whom they oppress are liberated:

By creating a rigid and unresponsive structure [teachers] can severely inhibit student self-directedness and establish an unhealthy dependency which not only turns students away from learning in its wider context, but which diminishes the teacher as a person. (Boud, 1981a:17)

Educators committed to justice and personal freedom from oppression can be more consistent in their practice if they build a co-operative learning climate rather than perpetuating or tolerating a conventional learning climate with its stated and unstated assumptions of teachers and the teaching institution being in complete control. Liberation for us as facilitators comes when we stop taking responsibility for the learning of everyone else, and start taking responsibility for our own learning instead.

While personal liberation for learners and educators is a worthy goal to strive for, it would be a lost opportunity to stop there. As we see it, the ultimate purpose of building a co-operative learning climate is to provide a basis for experimentation with and critical reflection on alternative power relations. The lessons learned at this individual level in a learning group help develop critical awareness of oppressive power relations in the larger society. Although personal liberation in learning does not necessarily lead to critical awareness and action in other spheres, learners who take charge of their own learning are more likely to become active controllers of their lives in other situations. They may resist subsequent attempts to oppress them and be more committed to showing others the benefits of each person taking greater personal control rather than either controlling others or being controlled by them.

A co-operative climate eases participants into new roles

Faced with the demands of a self-directing and self-achieving learning role, persons (both teachers and students) react with a complex range of defensive behaviours, which is a measure of the depth of transformations required.... Much more examination of this role transformation process is required to develop practical aids to help learners and educators cope with it. (Hadley, 1981:145)

Learners are more likely to resolve their initial fears and doubts in a climate of mutual trust and acceptance. Likewise, educators who feel unsure about their new roles as SDL co-ordinators can at least relax, be themselves, and draw support from learners if the climate is co-operative. (Griffin, 1977:13; Hammond. 1985a:21, 23; Knowles, 1980:45-9; Potts, 1988:133-4; Shelton, 1981:167; Stanton, 1988:125-31; Tough, 1981:39-40)

A co-operative climate promotes effective learning and reflection

The beliefs, feelings and assumptions of teachers are the air of a learning environment; they determine the quality of life within it. When the air is polluted, the student is poisoned, unless, of course, he holds his breath. (Postman & Weingartner, 1969:43)

Research shows that students who feel anxious and threatened tend to use an ineffective ‘surface approach’ to learning (superficial, rote-learning) rather than a ‘deep approach’ in which meaning is constituted and links are made with past experience and prior knowledge. A non-threatening climate can thus be crucial in promoting effective learning. Moreover, in a cooperative climate, learners participate more freely in decisions about what, when and how learning will take place. This in turn ensures that their learning is more relevant than if the educator arbitrarily makes these decisions. (Fransson, 1977; Marton & Saljo, 1976)

We discuss reflectio...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Preface
• Building A Co-operative Learning Climate
• Analysing The Situation
• Generating A Competency Profile
• Diagnostic Self-Assessment Of Learning Needs
• Drafting Learning Agreements
• Self-Management Of Learning
• Reflection And Learning
• Evaluation And Validation Of Learning
• Co-ordinating Critical Self-Directed Learning
• Epilogue
• Appendix 1:Group Process Self-Assessment
• Appendix 2:Personal Letters
• Appendix 3:From Description To Analysis
• Appendix 4: Learning Objectives
• Appendix 5:Open Letters
• References
• Index