Key ideas

(also incorporates info from Bouchard, 1996Bouchard, P. (1996). Towards an etiological model of self-directed professional development. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada: Ottawa, Ont. , almost identical to this paper)

Interviews eight successful self-learners for professional development, examines “what makes SDL happen”

RQ: What makes SDL happen?

Open-ended semidirect interviews with 8 professional men and women

• have acquired identifiable, high-level skill/knowledge
• never attended post-secondary in their field

Assumptions:

• that as a learning mode, SDL is a tangible phenomenon
  • directly related to professional development
• that it leads to desirable consequences
• that as a concept it is distinct from “other-directed learning”
  • ie. there was a choice/option to pursue “ODL”, but SDL was consciously chosen

Fields:

• computer analysis
• structural engineering
• media technology
• accounting
• training
• journalism
• computer research systems
• management/new media

Dubin (1990) has referred to the “valence” of the learning activity as the basis for the learner's decision to engage in the learning process.

Allen Tough: “Learning without a teacher”: many adults propensity for autonomous learning. Mainly people with high educational attainment (sample failure, or correlation - higher ed provides ability to learn autonomously?)

In this paper, author believes that although higher ed might provide some SDL relevant skills, clearly many who have never attended much formal schooling can also be extremely good at SDL.

Some people are just good at learning in general, high level of transferability of skills.

Note that this is not necessary a skill at “self-learning”, simply good at learning in whatever modality “is convenient/possible”.

What kind of environment will make people more likely to acquire knowledge and skill autonomously?

Spear & Mocker (1984) typology:

• learning is “anticipated” or “unanticipated”
• learning episodes represent “single” or “multiple” events
• (multiple) learning events are “related” or “unrelated'.

elements

• learner expectations
• learner skills
• available resources

But how do these three interact? They cannot “explain” occurrence of SDL, no satisfactory causal chain.

Goals not so much skills and knowledge gained (“learning objectives”), but effects this would have on professional lives. Non-linear or emergent goal structure.

Unusual learning strategies, such as

• hiring consultants on a one-time-only basis
• delegating research tasks to employees
• validating new knowledge by discussing with business competitors
• modifying learning objectives to match the available resources (rather than the other way around)

Not much time was spent learning in an “academic” mode, i.e. by synthesizing information from theoretical treatises.

“Jumping into the water to learn how to swim” - an action taken by learners after which they had no choice but to learn on their own, often under considerable pressure.

Examples:

• Falsified qualifications to get a job
• Quit job to start a new career
• Submit proposal for a contract that he would need to learn how to do (just-in-time learning?)

SDL is often a response to an adverse, rather than propitious contingency “informants perceived learning as a very real means to solve very real problems, and that hostile conditions only seemed to strengthen their resolve to succeed”

The individuals' self-perceived characteristics intersect with their need for professional development. Because of environmental pressures and opportunities, the “autodidactic leap” is made. The learners, rather than engage in a carefully planned learning program, instead identify opportunities to learn within their environment. In this sense, self-directed learning as a process is more akin to creative entrepreneurship than to programmed learning.

Conflicting - confident about self-learning, not confident about own success in formal system. Many ideas about educational philosophy, but saw themselves as “different” - would not necessarily recommend SDL to others. (Critique of formal schooling was because “they did not fit”, not because “school is not the best way of learning for most people”).

Most of the factors could just as well have gone the other way - like time crunch, or unhappy formal schooling experience