For me student driven learning means that students are the main source of figuring out the how, when, and where learning will occur.  What we don’t have full control over is what students are going to learn because this is what the curriculum is for, it tells us what content or competencies students need to learn and develop.  However, the how, when, and where is what we have control over and for students to decide this is student driven learning.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that students have all the control and all the autonomy.  Depending on the maturity level and grade, student driven learning could mean providing students with some choice.  Therefore, it is not only important for teachers to provide those choices, but use choices as an opportunity to facilitate learning.

 

         During my undergrad, I took a course called Integrated Movement Analysis.  The way the class was structured was very much like inquiry based learning.  This was the very first time I experienced and learned about the idea of scaffolding. At the first day of class my professor described the idea of scaffolding like a puzzle where the teacher completes the outside pieces but it was up to the students to fill all the middle part.  Throughout the term, she would allow us to figure out on our own how to complete the assignment with the goal in mind of using a pre-existing knowledge and integrate it into the scaffold to form new knowledge.  Each step to of the quantitative movement diagnosis we brought a complete draft to class, we then formed groups where we would share our work with.  Within these groups, we would explain and show what we did, how we structured our learning, and collaborated with potential ideas to make our design better.  We would then have a week to recreate, or make our design better followed by a final submission.  One of the struggles that many had was the openness of the assignment.  There was a lot of people who struggled at the very beginning due to the autonomy of how one can face the assignment and creating their design.  However, students eventually started to understand and develop their ability to be self-directed and got more creative. 

 

         The role of the teacher is really to get to know your students to understand how much autonomy to provide your students so that they are still able to achieve conceptual understanding of the content and curricular competencies.  Secondly, provide the opportunity for students to become leaders in the classroom and for collaboration.  Let students teach each other and time give each other feedback to take their learning even further.  Lastly trust the process and trust your students.  Just like the TEDxTalk by Shelly Wright on the Power of Student Driven, even though their goal or idea may seem unattainable just trust the student driven learning will provide students with the intrinsic motivation to get to the goal and provide them with creative ideas on how to achieve their goal. 

 

         Along with the teacher, the students’ role is to also trust the process.  As I stated earlier in my experience I saw a lot of students struggling due to the non-standard way of learning where suddenly it was up to the students to construct their own knowledge rather than the teacher being the giver and students just simply accepting and agreeing.  Secondly, students must start to think critically and learn how to reflect.  I found that student driven learning will naturally lead students to look at other resources to construct their initial concepts and learning therefore, students must learn how to critically analyze the information they find or given.  Lastly, be invested and rejoice during the times of failures because great success does not come without failures.  This is very like being in the “rut” we talked about in class.  For us to be better and develop as education we must go through and experience the “rut”.