Reflection, metacognition and self-directed learning

Cole Camplese is one of my favourite bloggers. Despite the fact I rarely comment on his posts (which is a habit I really should change), I find myself constantly challenged and inspired by the topics he writes about. One of the key reasons for this, I think, is he consciously and actively reflects on his own writing, his motives for doing so, and the trends and themes he recognises in the evolution of an idea (often times across several posts). He constantly demonstrates and models critical thinking and reflection, and an ongoing willingness to analyse and learn from his own work.

So, why is this important?

The reason I bring this up is I feel it’s a critical component to self-directed learning – both in its capacity to enlighten, but also to motivate and educate. From experience, there is a tremendous amount of value in re-reading our own blog contributions – but more than that, in reviewing our own work in general.

As I’ve said before, an annual event I engage in every year is go back through every post I’ve written during the course of the year and identify common themes and how they relate to one another. From this I’m able to uncover conceptual connections that were previously ellusive because I was busy exploring the concepts themselves at the time, rather than how they related to one another.

To do this I’ll identify the themes in each post and assign them a descriptor, and then enter them all in a concept mapping program. From here it’s a matter of identifying and analysing the commonalities that exist between topics and then exploring the progression from one to another – as well as the relationships between them.

For example…

Last year I spent a great deal of time exploring open source software. However what seemed like a whole lot of superficial, yet nonetheless interesting tinkering at the time was in fact a gradual progression from one focal point to another. Looking at the bigger picture, I realised that what began as a technical investigation lead to an examination of the culture and philosophy of the open source community. I started to explore the reasons why people would devote so much energy towards developing software they were going to give away for free. Rather than just looking at what was produced, I started to look at why it was shared.

When recognising that I had also begun to research learning theory, I realised these two threads merged to inspire an exploration of open educational resources, and in turn to greater flexibility for learning and learners.

So what had seemed like a collection of unrelated posts during the course of the year has becomes a roadmap. As the saying goes: “In order to know where you’re going you have to know where you’ve been.” Armed with an increased awareness of what I’m learning, and how, I’ve found the next indicated step becomes clearly identifiable.

In terms of reflection acting as a motivator, the fact I can now clearly recognise when a new topic relates to those I’ve already explored establishes an immediate relevance and value to me, which inspires me to devote attention and energy to exploring it fully and ultimately helps me retain the knowledge that much more effectively.

The implications

For educators I think this notion has some important implications. Firstly, that it’s less important whether a topic or activity is important to the teacher, and more important whether it’s important to the learner. When I hear students openly question “why do I need to know this,” I see a subject that has not yet established its relevance to the individual – or worse still, something that has no relevance to the individual. In both cases the likelihood for long term retention is pretty slim.

This also highlights the notion that learning is subjective, and that – at most – a curriculum can only establish a beginning framework upon which the learners themselves begin to build, adapt and make meaning. The topics that are introduced in the classroom are only one part of the equation – the perspectives and previous experiences of the learner are of equal importance, if not more so.

Therefore it seems to me that helping students explore and identify how they personally learn the most effectively is the greatest role that education can play – it’s cross-disciplinary, personally relevant and perhaps most importantly, it emphasises the notion that the capacity to learn and the right to learn is inherent to the individual. It’s independent of any insitution, requires no degree or pre-requisites, and can never be taken away.