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Have a
question or comment?
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| What are the essential questions relating to this topic?
How does that relate to goals and measurements? |
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Continuum of Self-Directed Learning
According
to Knowles (1984), children are naturally curious and can be more
self-directing in schools. What is important is not the age, but the
learner’s situation. In fact, the learner’s “need to know” and
self-directing capacity increases steadily during childhood and
rapidly during adolescence (Knowles, 1984). Schools can foster the
development of learners’ skills of self-directed learning through
inquiry-based learning (Day & Baskett, 1982). Encouraging
self-direction does not mean giving learners total control and
responsibility but rather providing incremental opportunities on a
continuum towards increasing independence for lifelong learning.
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Discussion: How to handle the design process at different grade
levels.
Pre-K-grade 1:
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Learn vocabulary: design,
engineer, tools. …
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Children brainstorm, choose
theme, plan and
set up dramatic play
area with science and math
themes.
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Practice observation,
classification skills and decision making.
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Plan, create, and refine
structures with blocks and other manipulatives.
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Discuss stories from the view
point of solving problems for the characters.
Grades 2/3
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Practice brainstorming.
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Begin to use design process in
simplified form. Teacher models the process of morphological
analysis. Teacher and students do the process together.
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Teacher presents a design
challenge and a solution from a story that is familiar to the
children. Invite the children to come up with another
solution. (Choose a problem that will really engage the class.)
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Write to engineers, scientists,
mathematicians. Invite some to visit the classroom to do a
presentation/demonstration.
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Work with familiar tools used
around the house and in school.
Fourth Grade
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Interview engineers.
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Engage in the whole process of
finding design challenges in stories and deciding on solutions
that involve science and or math concepts as a class, with the
guidance of the teacher. Use creative ideation skills.
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Possibly complete part of the
process working in teams after beginning it as a class.
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Using drawings to describe
things.
Fifth Grade
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Class reads a book together.
Teams each choose a challenge from the book and decide on a
solution that incorporates science concepts /math skills.
 Possibly
teams choose their own books and complete the design process.
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