Self-directed Learning in Pre-service Teacher Education

Enabling Self-Directed Academic and Personal Wellbeing Through Cognitive Education

“…Nevertheless, there still seems to be little emphasis on how to support school learners in developing strengths concerning the thinking skills and dispositions they require to become self-directed ( Booyse, 2016 ; Harrington, 2018 ). Besides, Kazachikhina (2019) confirms that little attention is paid to explicitly encouraging self-directed learning. Learners for example lack metacognitive skills to self-regulate learning and find it difficult to reflect on and direct their learning to ensure progress ( Fashant et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Feelings of self-efficacy prompt one to persist (Tompkins, 2013), and can magnify accomplishment, as well as personal wellbeing (Bandura, 1994). Suldo et al (2006) posit that teaching environments need to be modified to support academic and personal wellbeing, intending to transform learners from being dependent and self-regulated (Ryan and Deci, 2011;Fomina et al, 2020), to self-directed (Kazachikhina, 2019). The application of Cognitive Education demonstrated that the classroom environment indeed mediates a positive link for enabling self-directed academic and personal wellbeing (Ryan and Deci, 2001;Rüppel et al, 2015;Gräbel, 2017;Rimpelä et al, 2020), by shaping positive cognitions and positive emotions for academic and personal wellbeing that contribute to the flourishing of character strengths associated with autonomous learning, namely, self-efficacy, self-confidence, and self-esteem (Seligman et al, 2009;Macaskill and Denovan, 2013).…”

“…Fostering the ability to self-regulate cognition, metacognition, motivation, emotion/affect, and the context/environment in the context of classroom learning requires support and supervision from teachers. Teachers need to model desirable strategies to self-regulate behavior to learners and create conditions for learners to practice self-regulation, that eventually would lay the foundation for a more autonomous, self-directed, and unsupervised ability ( Herlo, 2017 ; Kazachikhina, 2019 ; Oates, 2019 ) to self-manage cognition, metacognition, motivation, emotion/affect, and the context/environment during learning ( Hammond and Collins, 1991 ; Brookfield, 1993 ; Caffarella, 1993 ; Zimmerman, 2000 ; Du Toit-Brits, 2018 ; Sandhu and Zarabi, 2018 ).…”

“…It is important for teachers, as role models to learners, to be knowledgeable about teaching approaches that are effective to transform learners from dependent to self-directed ( Taylor, 2011 ; Booyse, 2016 ; Herlo, 2017 ; Kazachikhina, 2019 ), as the authors believe it is unlikely that learners will automatically become self-directed. Teachers are obliged to embrace the urgency to reform their teaching approaches to purposefully foreground intellectual and emotional learning (the development of thinking skills and dispositions) that would support the enabling of self-directed academic and personal wellbeing ( Klaus, 2015 ; Bailey, 2016 ; Obied and Gad, 2017 ; Uribe-Enciso et al, 2017 ; Coberley-Holt and Elufiede, 2019 ).…”

Positive Educational Approaches to Teaching Effectiveness and Student Well-being

“…Nevertheless, there still seems to be little emphasis on how to support school learners in developing strengths concerning the thinking skills and dispositions they require to become self-directed (Booyse, 2016;Harrington, 2018). Besides, Kazachikhina (2019) confirms that little attention is paid to explicitly encouraging self-directed learning. Learners for example lack metacognitive skills to self-regulate learning and find it difficult to reflect on and direct their learning to ensure progress (Fashant et al, 2020).…”