Self Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm

Ian Cunningham

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000176087
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

Self Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm proposes revolutionary change to the educational system. The overwhelming research evidence is that the sum total of educational and training input accounts typically for only 10–20% of what makes a person an effective human being.

Balancing theory, evidence and practice, this ground-breaking book demonstrates that current structures in education are ill-equipped to support a learning-based approach. It establishes the case that learning, as a core human activity, is too important to be left to schools and other educational institutions. The book goes beyond just a critique of current practice in showing how a New Educational Paradigm can work. Self Managed Learning College (for 9–17 year olds) has no classrooms, no lessons, no imposed timetable and no imposed curriculum. This is a place where students can learn whatever they want, in any way they want and whenever they want. And it works – as evidenced by the lives of former students and from academic research. Dr Ian Cunningham, its founder, draws also on his extensive work in using Self Managed Learning in many of the world's largest organisations to show how this new paradigm can be put into practice.

The book blends the unequivocal research evidence that we need a New Educational Paradigm with a real live demonstration of what it could look like. It should be essential reading for anyone wanting to see how a new approach to education can be achieved.

1

An introduction to the basics of Self Managed Learning

Introduction

The central subject of the book is young learners, and what and how they can best learn. Earlier books on Self Managed Learning have addressed the organisational world and the role of Self Managed Learning processes in companies and public sector organisations. (See, for example, Cunningham, 1999; Cunningham et al., 2000). This book is more about the application of Self Managed Learning to those who might normally be in school or college. The case of Self Managed Learning College is used in this book as an exemplar of what I am calling a ‘New Educational Paradigm’. It is just one example of a growing international movement that is challenging the School Paradigm. In later chapters I will refer to some other examples of other kinds of learning-based approaches that are also examples of this growing trend.

At the start of the chapter I will discuss some relevant concepts that can feature in a New Educational Paradigm. I will follow this with some information about Self Managed Learning College that will provide a context for later chapters.

Some basic concepts

In discussions with philosophers of education it seems as though the most common notion of the role of education is to develop autonomous individuals who can live and work within their own societies. Hence ideas of autonomy also need to be considered and what that actually means in practice. At an educational conference some time ago, I was in a discussion group with a number of academic philosophers of education. When they talked about autonomy, I suggested that means and ends needed to be synchronised. How can individuals become autonomous in a process which doesn’t allow them to be autonomous, namely the process of schooling? I suggested that schooling needs to change if we are to be serious about developing autonomy. This was regarded as a laughable idea. Somehow the notion is that people become autonomous through a process which does not develop autonomy.

Linked to the idea of autonomy is the idea of independence. In discussions in schools there is often reference to the desirability of independent learning. The problem is that independence is separated from interdependence. In this book I will argue for a balance of independent and interdependent learning.

The issue of who has power and how it is used is an important factor when we think about learning. Typical dictionary definitions of education emphasise the notion of instruction, training and teaching. Implicit in this is the notion of an adult instructing a child. That might be a teacher or instructor or tutor, or it might be a parent or someone else in a position of authority. The overwhelming majority of writings about education discuss teaching and learning as though these are symmetrical processes. Somehow it is assumed that what is taught equals what is learned, even though all the evidence shows that this is a false assumption. This book is about learning rather than teaching, although of necessity I address the reasons why I have concerns about schooling and teaching.

The literature on the notion of power tends to suggest there are different modes that need to be analysed. For instance, ‘position power’ suggests that a person has power over others by virtue of their position. A headteacher or school principal would be a good example of the use of position power. Another kind of power is that of ‘expert power’. Teachers claim expertise in a particular subject or subjects and that this gives them power over learners by virtue of that expertise.

Notions of empowerment cover two key aspects. The first is the idea of not taking power away from the individual but giving them the opportunity to exert their own personal power over their own situation. A second dimension is the idea of helping individuals who have been de-powered by virtue of aspects of the social situation they found themselves in.

In terms of what is called ‘autonomous home education’, empowerment is in the first domain: that is, that individuals in the family (typically the children) are not subjected to overbearing authoritarianism from adults (generally parents). The second idea of giving back power to young people comes more in the kinds of programmes that I have been involved in where often young people come out of school and need assistance to regain their own personal power over their learning.

In this context I am not talking about ‘position power’ or ‘expert power’, but about ‘personal power’. A key notion is individuals having power over major issues in their lives, particularly here about choices of what to learn, where to learn it, when to learn it and, most importantly, why learn it. I appreciate that the term ‘empowerment’ has been sometimes used to justify taking power away from people and then giving a bit back. In school that might mean ‘empowering’ students to have a school council with representatives empowered to raise issues about the school, so long as it does not involve students having power over their own learning. This notion of empowerment is used to justify minor tidying up of school arrangements, but it does not genuinely empower students in the way that I mean it.

Alongside the idea of empowerment there are other concepts which are relevant. The idea of freedom for the individual is central to much of the literature on what is termed alternative education. For me freedom is conceptually close to autonomy and empowerment. Carl Rogers’ book Freedom to Learn (1969) was an influential text and the Freedom to Learn Network in the UK is an important collaboration of educational organisations interested in freedom for young people in their learning. This network, I believe, constitutes an example of the New Educational Paradigm as it supports organisations and communities where the principles discussed in this book are manifest.

The International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC) is another significant body that draws together people under the umbrella of democratic education. The fact that there are literally hundreds of schools and learning communities committed to the notion of democracy is again part of this New Educational Paradigm. IDEC is an interesting non-organisation. At each conference there is a general meeting which agrees where the conference will be in two years’ time. Whoever is organising a conference makes the local decisions on arrangements. There is a generally agreed understanding that the conferences will rotate around different continents but other than that there are no rules, there is no constitution and no central organising group.

Learning not school education

The title of this text indicates that it is about learning and not school education. This is quite deliberate, even though it may surprise some readers. After all most people in authority believe schooling is a good thing and there are organisations attempting to create compulsory education worldwide. The espoused basis for this is the idea that there is an entitlement to education for young people. So, I have to explain what I mean by a different approach. My fundamental stance is that humans are crucially learning creatures. Human babies are born with the least range of inbuilt abilities of any animal. Babies have to learn hugely in the first few years of their life and, even then, they are not able to survive on their own. Learning is central to being human and absolutely crucial for our survival. And the learning of a baby, whilst extensive and crucial, is not generally categorised as education.

Education, on the other hand, is currently seen largely as an institutional process where teachers teach in classrooms against a defined curriculum with a narrow range of assessments of performance as a central part of the activity. Education and schooling are seen as one. It is this problem that I am addressing here. I am aware that people may cite the saying ‘I never let schooling interfere with my education’ – the saying that has been ascribed to Mark Twain, though that is not certain – but even such a stance is in itself recognising that school and education generally go together as concepts.

Let me take a couple of dictionary definitions. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘educate’ as ‘give intellectual moral and social instruction to (a pupil, especially a child), especially as a formal and prolonged process’. ‘Education’ is defined as ‘the act or process of educating or being educated; systematic instruction’. The Chambers Dictionary defines the verb ‘to educate’ to mean ‘to bring up and instruct; to teach; to train’. ‘Education’ is defined as the ‘bringing up or training e.g. of a child; instruction strengthening of the powers of body or mind; culture’. A New Educational Paradigm sets itself against this educational model.

I do accept that there are people who want to broaden the definition of education to include learning outside institutions. There are also examples of many parents home educating, where clearly such activity occurs outside an institution. However, the judgement of the efficacy of such activity tends to be against educational standards. This is not inevitable, of course, and it is possible to recognise that through home education children are learning a wide range of things that would fall outside what schools provide. However, it is really difficult to attach the word ‘education’ to what might be seen as day-to-day learning. We learn all the time and because it is such a ubiquitous process it tends to be missed as part of our normal living activity. At a trivial level I had to learn that the bus timetables had changed recently. This would not normally be seen as education, but it is important to know that we need to learn practical things that affect us in our daily lives. This is the implication of a New Educational Paradigm.

Another interesting example of learning not formal education came up when 13 of us who had had the greatest involvement in research and practice on learning in organisations in Britain came together to see if we could agree about learning. We drew up a Declaration on Learning which we all felt we could agree on, even though the 13 of us came from different backgrounds; for example, some were very much university-based researchers, and others worked in consultancy or in organisations. What linked us is that we had all written numerous books and papers and done significant research and practice over a considerable amount of time. At one meeting of the group we were discussing an aspect of the Declaration. One person suggested that as we were thinking about learning, then education and training should only be used as a last resort. We suddenly found that we could all agree to that statement. In organisations education and training activity tends to be very expensive and often ineffective because there is no attempt to measure what has come out of the education or training activity. The assumption that one size fits all and that everybody has the same learning need at the same time is completely erroneous.

I will take just one piece of evidence here, though more will follow. I have spent most of my working life supporting learning in organisations. (Only recently have I been involved in the learning of young people in what we call Self Managed Learning College.) In my organisational work I gathered together a team of experienced researchers to look at learning in organisations. We researched many thousands of managers and professional people across organisations around the world. We wanted to know what makes them effective at work. They all talk about things that they have learned but very little reference is made to education, training, colleges, universities, courses, and so on. Indeed, not just our research, but that conducted by a number of universities in the UK and in the USA has shown that the maximum contribution of education and training to the performance of a professional person is about 10–20% (see Burgoyne and Reynolds, 1997; Cunningham et al., 2004; Eraut, 1998; Eraut et al., 1998; McCall et al., 1988; Wenger, 1998). Most of the useful learning that we gain comes from what tends to be dismissed (by officialdom) as informal learning, such as that from peers, family, travel, reading, and s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 An introduction to the basics of Self Managed Learning
• 2 An introduction to Self Managed Learning College
• 3 The centrality of learning
• 4 History and background
• 5 An evidence basis for action
• 6 Some evidence and a response to this evidence – with a focus on schooling
• 7 The wider evidence about learning and education – and its implications
• 8 The experience of Self Managed Learning
• 9 The roles of adults
• 10 Some conclusions and some directions
• Index