What Is Self Directed Learning?
Updated: Jun 15
What is Self Directed Learning?
The answer is in the title of this piece.
Self directed learning is led by the child, who informs the direction of where they want to explore with their learning.
Learning is all about the passions and interests of the child and what they desire to spend thier time pursuing.
Self directed learning is about trust!
Trusting a child to know what they need to nourish their own curiosity in this world.
A child is always learning from the moment they are born.
A child does not need to be taught to learn.
A child may need guidance with learning, but they always have a strong knowing of what it is they need.
If you think about the fierce independence a baby craves to explore their space, you will know that a baby doesn't need instruction to to learn how to crawl, they instinctively figure out how to move thier body to take that first step.
Fast forward some years and a self directed learning child will take that same inner child energy and carrying on exploring their environment and passions.
Without our interference as adults, a child can be in charge of their own learning journey.
This is the complete opposite to mainstream school which leads from a top down system, where what a child learns has been decided in a government office, with no real influence from a childs needs at all.
So when your child comes into our community, we help support them in learning something new, hands on and relevent for life.
A child who travels, like our children do, may look to socialise, they may need to feed a hunger to be creative or use some tools which when travelling you do not have the opportunity to do.
A child who comes to our hub is in a safe space to explore with no expectations.
We provide "offerings" which we call "themes" which we will underpin the overall time during that session.
Our hands on sessions are for all ages to enjoy, so they can be fun, messy, creative and contribute to our community environment, which will give the children a sense of achievement for their time with our community.
The learning landscape is important for self directed learners, so we give the children freedom to explore and move around, access to learning tools and responsibility roles where they can exercise their leadership skills and take responsibility for the environment they are learning in.
