This Critical Issue was researched and written by Beth Buchler, M.A., educational consultant and director of New-Learning Educational Services. She consults for schools, districts, educational agencies, and organizations as well as software companies. She also is on special teaching assignment with Argonne National Labs.
ISSUE: This Critical Issue focuses on teachers as students. It looks at their own independent learning traits in light of today's imperative that they both foster lifelong learners in their classrooms as well as become lifelong learners themselves (Bernard-Powers et al., 2000).
Independent learners are students who are responsible for their own learning: They take charge and are self-regulated. Such students are one of the critical indicators of any engaged learning environment (Jones, Valdez, Nowakowski, & Rasmussen, 1995).
As the learning community changes, rethinking the traditional traits within this evolving community is important. Teachers need time and support to re-examine, redefine, and reabsorb what it means today to be a student who is responsible, who takes charge, and who self-regulates in the context of today's changing learning environment. This rethinking process may help teachers both foster lifelong learning in their students as well as realize the goal themselves.
This Critical Issue begins with a look at the trend toward creating new learning organizations. It then identifies three learner challenges to realizing such an engaged learning community populated by independent learners. These challenges include:
Finally, it outlines the relevance of two learning mechanisms—professional
development and technology—meeting those learning challenges.
OVERVIEW: Just as independent learners inspire an engaged and effective classroom, teachers who are themselves independent learners inspire vital and engaged learning communities. Classroom teachers have both an easier and enjoyable time teaching when their students are responsible: when students take charge and are self-regulating. But are teachers mirroring the behavior that they try to foster in their students? Are teachers becoming the independent learners they try to develop in their classrooms? If not, how will they address the challenge of lifelong learning for their students and for themselves?
Growing emphasis on lifelong learning is supported by research and evidenced by several current factors. Research has effectively documented the connection between high quality teachers and improved student performance. Research continues to expand the definition of what that means. What makes a quality teacher? For instance, the Teacher Quality Collaborative's "Principles of High Quality Teacher Development" attempts to "…re-establish the role of the teacher as a professional who is central to the teaching/learning process" (Bernard-Powers, et al., p. 2). Bernard-Powers et al. state, "Fundamental…is the idea that adults are learners just as are children, and that everyone learns best when there are ongoing opportunities to develop questions, investigate, reflect, apply and share knowledge in real-life contexts" (p. 4).
Also, more time and money are being spent on professional development. (For a detailed appendix of selected major state funding programs for teacher professional development, compiled in 1999, see "Selected Major State Funding Programs for Teacher Professional Development".) In addition, an increase in the number of online courses offers teachers flexibility of time and place to pursue learning. (For an in-depth look at the scope of research emerging on this topic, see NCREL's E-Learning Knowledge Base.) Further, district and state learning plans mandate that teachers continue learning. However, despite such support and mandates, there are indications that teachers are not taking full advantage of learning opportunities.
This raises a dilemma: On one hand, few would disagree that the vast majority of teachers are responsible, that they take charge and that they are self-regulated. Most possess those traits inherent to all independent learners. However, perhaps some rethinking of these traditional traits is required, in light of a trend toward expanded communities of learning in which teachers find themselves members. What does it mean to be responsible, to take charge, and to be self-regulated in today's learning environment?
The New Learning Organization
Independent or self-directed learning can be defined as "a process in which individuals take the initiative, with or without the help of others" (Knowles, 1975, p. 11), to diagnose their learning needs, formulate learning goals, identify resources for learning, select and implement learning strategies, and evaluate learning outcomes. Ideally, citizens of a learning community are such individuals.
Before we can fully examine this element of teachers as independent learners, some groundwork must be established about learning. In a 1995 interview, Peter Senge, director of the Center for Organization Learning at MIT's Sloan School of Management, was asked the following question: "Schools are considered to be institutions of learning, but are most of them learning organizations?" He answered, "Definitely not." He also expressed his concern that "there's very little sense of collective learning going on in most schools" (O'Neil, 1995, p. 20). (See "On Schools as Learning Organizations: A Conversation with Peter Senge".)
If the ideal is a school in which collective learning takes place, how do schools move toward this goal, and how does the individual teacher add to this community?
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