I recently listened to Douglas Rushkoff speaking about his new book Program or Be Programmed and identified facets of his main ideas that profoundly resonate for me with the power of student centered, self-directed education. Just as he weighs in on how technology as a tool can do for us but left un-tempered might reduce our personal empowerment, so I wonder how an over focus on benchmarking and data driven decision making diminishes the fundamental nature of education – learning how to learn as a process. “As one who once extolled the virtues of the digital to the uninitiated, I can’t help but look back and wonder if we adopted certain systems too rapidly and unthinkingly. Or even irreversibly. But those of us cheering for humanity also get unsettled a bit too easily, ourselves. We are drawn into obsessing over the disconnecting possibilities of technology, serving as little more than an equal and opposite force to those techno-libertarians celebrating the Darwinian wisdom of hive economics. Both extremes of thought and prediction are a symptom of thinking too little rather than too much about all this. They are artifacts of thinking machines that force digital, yes or no, true or false reconciliation of ideas and paradoxes that could formerly be sustained in a less deterministic fashion. Contemplation itself is devalued. The sustained thought required now is the sort of real reflection that happens inside a human brain thinking alone or relating to others in small self-selecting groups, however elitist that may sound to the techno-mob. Freedom—even in a digital age—means freedom to choose how and with whom you do your reflection, and not everything needs to be posted for the entire world with “comments on” and “copyright off.” In fact, it’s the inability to draw these boundaries and distinctions—or the political incorrectness of suggesting the possibility—that paints us into corners, and prevents meaningful, ongoing, open-ended discussion. And I believe it’s this meaning we are most in danger of losing. No matter the breadth of its capabilities, the net will not bestow upon humans the fuel or space we need to wrestle with its implications and their meaning.” Rushkoff
The value added of self-directed education and learning is that students internalize, develop and understand how to maximize their intrinsic learning potential; integrating self-management (contextual control), self-monitoring (cognitive responsibility), and motivational (approach a task in different ways using different strategies) dimensions. In this way the learner harnesses the natural desire to help achieve a meaningful learning experience that will last through adulthood. The highly motivated, self-directed learner with skills in self-reflection can approach the broader ‘real world’ as a continual classroom from which to learn. Self-directed learning becomes even more powerful when it's systematic, that is, when the learner participates in identifying:
• What areas of knowledge and skills we need to gain in order to get something done (learning needs and goals)
• How we will gain the areas of knowledge and skills ( learning objectives and activities)
• How we will know that we've gained the areas of knowledge and skills (learning evaluation)
• What are the criteria and means of validating
Listening to Rushkoff re-ignited and renewed my educator’s passion for distilling and cherishing the power of education as a tool that can be wielded to understand how with intention and forethought to learn from everything we do; to take advantage of every experience as a learning experience; to see systems and the people we work with as resources - a lifelong process.
“Just as we think and behave differently in different settings, we think and behave differently when operating different technology. Only by understanding the biases of the media through which we engage with the world can we differentiate between what we intend, and what the machines we’re using intend for us—whether they or their programmers even know it.” Rushkoff
