6.  Provide skills for life-long learning.

Comment:

This skill of life-long self-directed assessment and learning is, in my opinion, one of the most important products of the current educational reform movement.  This skill is fed as we learn to view students as individuals.  As we allow students more and more control of their own learning, the easier our jobs become, and the more prepared the young people are to continue to find their own ways in an increasingly complex and diverse world.  More than ever, we simply do not know the jobs and world our students will face in 2030.  Students need to learn to be self-directed, always reflecting, adapting, and learning from changing environments.
 

One of the best real-life examples I know of "self-directed learning" is from one of the most satisfying years of my elementary school teaching (Moule, 1990).  I had 15 readers in grades 4, 5, and 6.  They had come to me because their teachers from the year before felt they needed more challenge in their reading class.  Within the group, the reading level varied from 6th to 12th grade.  I had to individualize or I would have the same struggle as their former teachers.  I found a reading program based on literature by Hagen and Mickelson, A Literature Based Reading Program  The students chose their own books with help from me and then took charge of their own reading time, led conferences with me, and chose options for sharing their reading with others.  The children were delighted with their range of choices and surprised when I asked them to rate their own work.  Individuals read everything from poetry books to Moby Dick   We read together both Treasure Island and Swiss Family Robinson, and wrote critical comparisons of the two books.  Despite the sophistication of the readings, one student confided to his mother that he thought he was getting away with too little work and the class was a reward for reading well the last year.  "It's so easy," he said.  The learner-centered approach simply fed his own interests to the extent that the learning became "fun" and "easy".

ED419 Parallel:

As members of the university learning community, we already use many skills of life-long learning.  Particular aspects of this rule are practiced in the completion of a synthesis paper that reflects on the journey of this coursework and how the material will fit into the life and profession of those taking the course.  Details for this paper are also found on the syllabus and in the scoring guide.  The scoring guide itself is designed to further self-reflective evaluation and learning.