Self-Directed Learning

Self-directed learning is a theory describing a learning process in which individuals take the primary initiative and responsibility for their own learning, diagnosing their own learning needs, formulating goals, identifying the human and material resources needed to pursue them, choosing and carrying out appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating the outcomes for themselves, largely without dependence on a teacher or formal instructional program. The theory grew out of adult-education research beginning with the American educator Cyril Houle's 1961 book The Inquiring Mind, which studied why adults choose to continue learning throughout life, and was substantially extended by Houle's student Allen Tough, whose 1971 study The Adult's Learning Projects found that the great majority of adults undertake numerous deliberate, self-planned learning efforts each year, most of them organized and carried out entirely outside any classroom or formal course. The theory was later linked closely to Malcolm Knowles' concept of andragogy, which treats a learner's growing capacity and preference for self-direction as one of the defining features that distinguishes adult learning from childhood pedagogy. Self-directed learning is now used both as a description of how adults naturally learn outside formal institutions and as a design principle for adult-education and workplace-training programs that deliberately build in learner choice, self-assessment and self-paced structure.