Professional Development

Self-Directed Learning

Engaging Students in Learning

“Children are born learners; they are naturally curious and seek to explore their environments and understand themselves and others.”

Wehmeyer & Zhao, 2020, p. 20

Self-directed learning: enhancing student engagement and empowering teachers for success

Self-directed learning (SDL) enhances student engagement because the learner is self-motivated to seek opportunities to learn and to become actively engaged in those opportunities with a positive attitude.

Educators must teach students to learn as independently as possible by engaging students in learning through the creation of a classroom community that enhances student engagement by promoting student choice and emphasizing student direction in learning.

SDL is empowering teachers for success! Engaging students in learning can start simply by teachers infusing choices into meaningful learning events. Students become more motivated, interested and persistent in their learning. Having a choice (or choices) makes one feel a sense of ‘freedom’ to express their preferences for the direction they want to take their learning. (Wehmeyer & Zhao, 2020)

Students engage in goal setting and planning, as well as managing their learning, and monitoring their progress. Teachers enhance student engagement by aligning instruction with students’ strengths and abilities, engaging students in learning, emphasizing mastery, providing supportive formative feedback through meaningful dialogue.

Engage KM Educational Consulting for your professional development and instructional coaching needs!

Let us plan your professional development for one year or more to help you meet your school’s academic goal! We will custom-design your faculty workshops to engage and inspire teachers with innovative approaches and practical resources. We will coach individual teachers on instructional methods and technology integration to enhance student engagement.

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SDL: Engaging Students in Learning

Self-Awareness	Initiative and Ownership	Goal Setting and Planning	Engaging and Managing	Monitoring and Adapting
“What kind of learner am I?”	“How can my personal interests help me in my studies?”	“How can I develop action steps to achieve my tasks?”	“What am I learning about finding resources, using my time wisely, and seeking help when I need it?”	“Am I able to see when something isn’t working well, then adjust, and learn from it?”
Reflecting on past experiences to evaluate one’s strengths, limitations, motivations, interests, and aspirations within different learning contexts.	Taking responsibility for learning, finding purposeful driving questions, shaping opportunities to fit personal interests and seeking input from others.	Developing long-term goals, establishing meaningful targets, identifying effective strategies, and planning out steps.	Seeking out relevant resources and information to support goals and refining strategies; maintaining effective pace, reaching short-term benchmarks and long-term goals.	Evaluating progress, adapting strategies, seizing failure in order to grow from mistakes, and attributing success to effort, persistence, access, opportunity, help, and time. (“Building Self-Direction”, n.d.)

SDL Prioritized: Fully engage students in learning

SDL is prioritized as a fundamental school-wide goal, empowering teachers for success!
SDL key skills are mapped out across grade levels and explicitly taught and reinforced.
Instruction is engaging students in their own learning.
Learning resources are easily accessible, enhancing student engagement.
Classroom space is structured for student exploration and learner engagement.
Students feel safe to explore and take risks.
Supports are provided for all students to participate following Universal Design for Learning guidelines.

Self-Directed Learning Blog Posts

Our blog posts on SDL provide valuable insights for engaging students in learning!

Making Self-Directed Learning Visible

“Self-directed learning thrives in an environment where students can check in and reflect on their thoughts, observations, and feelings during a lesson.” (France & Almarode, 2022, p. 26) Teachers must cultivate a culture of noticing in their classrooms so the learners are tuned in to the learning experience. There are two ways teachers can cultivate this:

by consistently offering opportunities for students to show what they have learned
by providing tools that scaffold ‘noticing’.

The strategies used to engage students and to ‘make learning visible’ require students to plan, select, and organize their learning experience, as well as to integrate their thoughts and feelings into this experience. France & Almarode (2022) described four easy strategies to make learning visible:

Summarizing	Mapping	Imagery	Asking extension questions
Students construct a paper-and-pencil or technology-enriched summary of their learning.	Students create a concept map (T-chart, Venn diagram) to arrange, group, or link their thoughts and ideas.	Teachers use a thought-provoking image to engage students in learning. Or students create images to reflect their thinking and learning.	Teachers ask follow-up questions (What makes you say that? Tell me more!) so students reveal their thinking.

Pictures from our immersive workshops:

Suggested Readings:
Building Essential Skills Today (BEST): Self-Direction Toolkit. (n.d) Best-Future.org.

France, P. E. & Almarode, J. (2022, November). Learning to Notice. Educational Leadership, 80(3), 26-32.

McTigue, J. & Tucker, C. (2022, November). Developing Self-Directed Learners by Design. Educational Leadership, 80(3), 58-65.

Wehmeyer, M. & Zhao, Y. (2020) Teaching Students to Become Self-Determined Learners. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.