What About the Network in Self-Directed Learning? #digped #learnignsciences #cognition

 

The study of self-directed learning began a  graduate students of Cyril Houle, who studied “study of self-educating people” developed an idea for a thesis while taking a programming class with Dr Houle to study “the concept of a ‘learner learning something on his . . . [or] her own. ”

 

Allen Tough completed his research on “self-teaching” in 1966.

 

Simultaneously, since the 1950s,  Malcolm Knowles, another of Houle’s students, who researched adult learning, had been focusing in on “self-direction.” Knowles published a book in 1975 entitled “Self Directed Learning.”

 

These three scientists, and self-directed learning,  hold the top spots in citations around adult learning (it works in kid learning too...I don't really buy a difference between adult and children learning....literally almost everything that works in preschool works better with adults).

 

Yet what happens when you aren't so much self-directed but learning within a network?  Do we need new models to account for access to mentors and  a web of knowledge?