Examination of self-education and feedback systems suggests that self-education, experience, and the science of education are closely related and of great antiquity. (SK)

Discussion of informal learning (intrinsically motivated, non-linear, and self-directed) in museums focuses on a study of museum professionals that investigated learning experiences in their lives. Highlights four types of learning: sparking an interest; delayed learning; visceral learning; and wrap-around learning. (LRW)

Describes the development and impact of a self-instruction indicated drug abuse prevention program, Project Towards No Drug Abuse. Describes the justification for the self-instruction program, keys to good programmed self-learning, and how a 12-session health-educator delivered program was converted to a self-instruction format. Presents the…

Examines the traditional liberal adult education thesis of educational externalism: that the role of the educator must be undertaken by a person other than the learner. Argues that this requirement is without defensible grounds in the management of the educational event or through singular contribution to its content. (Author/JOW)

The first part of this article gives an overview of two major paradigms that have influenced research in education: the positivist/empiricist and the interpretive. The second part presents an attempt to develop a research agenda into self-direction from a perspective that takes into account the learner's subjective interpretation of the learning…

Critically examines the general characteristics of a "discourse" of self-directed learning and considers consequences of assumptions made about adult learning and teaching. Presents and analyzes case studies of practice involving experiential teaching approaches with two groups of adult students. (JOW)

A study was undertaken to determine if identification of learning styles would assist in predicting adult students' success in an independent study program.. Results indicated that regardless of learning style, students can expect to complete the experience successfully. (JOW)

This article examines the nature of student workload and how perceptions of it are formed. Inferences are drawn from five detailed case studies, taken from a wider sample of university students who completed an hourly diary for one week. A subsample was also interviewed. Perceptions of workload are not synonymous with time spent studying, but can…

Online learning can be an effective tool in second language acquisition (SLA) because it can be an efficient and convenient way to provide accurate, understandable material to second language learners. It is crucial for instructors to have online knowledge and skills as well as the ability to choose how, when, and to whom to apply such expertise.…

This study is aimed at investigating students' annotation behaviors and their effects on learning achievement with pre-reading (reading before class) exercises and Web-based sharing mechanisms. An 8-week quasi-experiment was conducted with 125 sixth-grade elementary school students. The study shows the following results. First, a significant…

This experiment investigated orthographic learning via self-teaching in 8- and 9-year-olds learning to read English. Children were exposed to novel words, and following a 1- or 7-day delay interval, orthographic learning was assessed by asking children to select previously seen novel words from an array of visually and phonologically similar…

In this article, the author relates some problem solving work with primary schools to Department for Children, Schools, and Families (DfES) support. In four primary schools in the West Midlands, the focus was teaching mathematics through problem solving, based on materials published on the DfES "standards" website. The author noticed…

All teachers want their students to become independent learners, but even motivated students are reluctant to take responsibility for their own learning. So what every teacher needs is this book's tried-and-true method for gradually enabling students to take on more of the "work" of classroom learning. Two experienced teachers describe a…

Nursing students with second degrees have become the focus of great interest in the last two decades in terms of being an answer to the nursing shortage. They are thought to possess greater ability to critically think and engage in self directed learning behaviours, and possess greater motivation to master clinical skills. The purpose of this…

All students are entitled to a respectful and meaningful education in this decade of No Child Left Behind, and yet attention to the gifted wanes with the emphasis on standards-based education and testing. Educators of the gifted have wrestled with this dilemma for many decades, even as early as the 1920s when Leta S. Hollingsworth, noted…