What is independent learning?

Independent learning does not have a universally agreed definition (Broad, Reference Broad2006). Accordingly there are problems with implementing independent learning into lessons as there is no set guideline for what an independent learning lesson should look like. Independent learning is often given many similar names, such as ‘personalisation’, ‘self-directed learning’, ‘self-regulated learning’ or ‘student-centred learning’ (Meyer et al., Reference Meyer, Haywood, Sachdev and Faraday2008). The aims of all of these approaches, though the practices may differ, focus on teaching students to learn for themselves, and in turn empower them in their learning whatever the context. Therefore, independent learning can be taken to be a concept that empowers students over time to learn by themselves (Broad, Reference Broad2006, p. 121). This empowerment of students is sometimes referred to as ‘learner autonomy’. Broad's definition of autonomy describes an ability to learn in a logical and appropriate manner that suits the topic matter (Reference Broad2006, p. 120). In doing so, the learner should recognise the need to organise their own learning around the topic they wish to learn. Learners therefore need to have the skills in place before they can take part in independent learning effectively. Knight and Tait (Reference Knight and Tait1996, p. 6) suggest that the image that independent learning evokes is that of a solitary student. This, they say, is misleading. Actually the independence lies in the choices that a student makes. These choices include the topic which they will focus on in their work and their methods of enquiry. This is a key idea that I kept in mind as I observed the students working through the CLC ILM. I was curious as to how far the ILM seemed to encourage students to work on their own or whether it also allowed for pair- or group-work.

As mentioned above, it is widely agreed that students must first learn certain skills in order for independent learning to be successful (Broad, Reference Broad2006; Knight and Tate, Reference Knight and Tait1996; Meyer et al., Reference Meyer, Haywood, Sachdev and Faraday2008; Rogers, Reference Rogers2013). These may involve some or all of the following:

• – Research: to ascertain what information and what quality of information they should use.

• – Problem solving: to tackle a task or to decide which method is best for approaching a task.

• – Technological: if using technology, to be familiar with which sites or apps are appropriate for a task.

• – Group work: to gain and share ideas with their peers.

• – Resilience: to keep trying beyond a first attempt at a task.

• – Motivation: for themselves and to support other learners around them.

• – Initiative: to make a decision about a task, whether it is how to perform it or whether to tackle it in the first place.

• – Responsibility: to be accountable for the depth or quality of their learning.

• – Evaluation: to demonstrate an understanding of what works and what does not.

Most practitioners of independent learning are agreed that for any sort of self-directed learning to occur, a student must have an end point or target in mind (Knight and Tait, Reference Knight and Tait1996). This sort of goal-orientation means that a student will be more motivated to learn and to take responsibility for the way in which they learn. Setting a target enables students to develop their evaluative skills too, as it encourages them to reflect on their work or progress and consider what made their learning successful.

Meyer et al. (Reference Meyer, Haywood, Sachdev and Faraday2008) claim that a key factor in independent learning is the shift of responsibility for learning from the teacher to the student. Again, it is emphasised that independent learning does not mean that a student necessarily needs to be working alone, but that teachers play a central role in enabling and supporting students in their independent learning. Meyer et al. put forward that there are several phases that students must complete for effective learning so that they develop processes of self-regulation. Firstly, the ‘planning’ phase involves setting a target or goal. Secondly, the ‘pace and direction’ phase describes how the student works towards the target they have set for themselves. The final phase, ‘evaluation’, involves the student reflecting on their work or on the methods they have employed in order to judge how effective the learning was after a set time. This essentially means that students consider whether or not they have met their target and what helped them to or hindered them from achieving what they had set out to do in the first place. Meyer et al. go on to state that an ‘enabling environment’ is necessary for independent learning to be successful. This ‘enabling environment’ does not just include readily-available resources for students to use as and when they need them, but also that the teacher should be ‘knowledgeable about the work being done’.

The benefits of independent learning

There has been more of a move towards independent learning across the curriculum in recent years in order to prepare students more effectively for the expectations of higher education. Independent learning is a concept that promises to enhance students' learning experiences and is encouraged by the universities themselves (Higher Education Academy, 2014). Meyer et al. present a plethora of benefits of independent learning. Among these are ‘improved academic achievement; increased motivation and confidence; greater student awareness of their limitations and their ability to manage them; enabling teachers to provide differentiated tasks for students’ (2008, pp. 1-2). The article goes on to describe another study which suggests that students who learn independently are more motivated to learn and enjoy the material more as they are actively involved in it compared to students who study in ‘more restrictive environments’. Independent learning may also raise students' self-esteem because they are able to see their progress as a direct result of their own decision making and effort. Teachers may also play a role in the ‘evaluation’ phase of the lesson by giving feedback to students about their progress.

The problems with independent learning

One of the main concerns with independent learning is resource management for the teacher. It can be difficult to keep on top of the resources that students may need in a lesson as well as the range of topics they might be working on, especially if they are given a free choice. It is also demanding for one teacher, regardless of their experience, to demonstrate ‘on the spot’ knowledge to cater to different students' different learning needs all in the same class. Independent learning may also be problematic in terms of the material that students employ to learn or explore a topic. Students may need to be directed towards material that contains accurate information that is pitched at the level of their understanding and that it is readily available. Time spent on fruitless research or on the incorrect completion of tasks is a wasted learning opportunity. Therefore, rather than setting the students a completely open-ended task to carry out, I used the ILM as the main resource. It was suitably pitched to their age group and was backed up with other resources as required – the CLC text book and online digital materials which students could access through their personal iPads.

Research questions

My overall research question was to investigate how the students responded to independent learning approaches to learning Latin using the CLC ILM. There were three sub-questions, as detailed below.

Findings

I carried out my investigation by using a questionnaire, classroom observation notes and interviews with some of the students. All of the students' names have been changed to retain anonymity. In the class of 16 students I focused on two individuals – a boy Terry and a girl Izzy - and a group of students comprising two boys and two girls.

Terry

In the first lesson, Terry worked in a group with David, James and Jerry. The students were mostly working together in a group of four or sometimes independently. There was very little pair work. Although there was some off-topic conversation, the students refocused themselves quickly. Where they were unsure, the students were confident using their exercise books to clarify grammar points as well as resources made by the teacher for noun endings. All four students were happy to ask the teacher and each other for help. There was no real leader in the group as all students worked well together and supported each other in different areas. For example, Terry tended to ask for help with grammar and James for vocabulary; these problems were resolved either through asking others in the group or asking the teacher for help. All of the students, except James, set themselves a target that was based around improving their grammar. James' target was set around improving vocabulary and he aimed to do this through looking up as few words as possible when reading through a Latin story. In the lessons that followed, Terry worked alone and used a variety of resources to help him achieve his ongoing target of understanding participles. These resources included his iPad, CLC textbook, exercise book, CSCP website and resources made by the teacher. Terry had no interaction with any other students during these lessons. He was completely on task for the full duration of the lesson and spent the majority of his time working on grammar exercises from the online e-CLC. Where he was unsure, he was very comfortable approaching the teacher for an explanation or direction to the appropriate resources. His target for all four lessons remained the same: to understand participles. In the final lesson Terry reviewed his target, writing: ‘I now understand and can recognise the present participle, perfect passive participle and the perfect active participle’. He had written his own grammar note in the booklet even though he had not completed any of the questions that the booklet had presented on the Latin. Terry demonstrated an interesting approach to setting targets: he set himself a target which continued over the course of the independent learning lessons instead of one for each lesson. In his questionnaire, Terry stated that he had set himself one or two targets over the course of the independent learning lessons, spending between 45-60 minutes to achieve them. I would say, having seen him work, that he was accurate in describing his work in this way. He identified that he had used the CLC textbook, his exercise book and iPad in the lessons but did not seem to view the teacher as a resource for his learning. He said that he liked how the booklet enabled him to learn at his own pace and ‘focus on the things you choose’. On the other hand, he felt that the ILM ‘could be quite boring and tedious’. Terry reiterated his feelings in the interview. He felt that the ILM could be boring at times and so made it ‘hard to keep on target…but it was useful for clearing out gaps in your knowledge’. Terry clearly utilised his time in the independent learning lessons to revise grammar that he felt he needed more work on. When asked further about his choice of materials in the lesson, Terry said that he did not really enjoy using the ILM. He felt that in using just the booklet, ‘the teacher was not needed and could be replaced by the iPad and textbook.’ He stated that he had ‘no real preference either way but [preferred] the teaching experience of an actual human being!’ Terry valued having a teacher present and participating in the lesson as much as he was and seemed to express the view that learning is ‘sequential’, possibly meaning that he preferred to be shown an example or taught a skill before practising it himself.

Izzy

For all four lessons, Izzy worked on her own. As she was working alone, I could not observe any conversations she had. When I quizzed her on her approach, she said that she preferred the comprehension questions in English on the Latin story instead of a written translation of the story from Latin into English as it gave her more of an overview of the story. She also reported that the comprehension also drew her attention to Latin grammar points. The booklet seemed to match the methodical approach to Latin that she has previously displayed in normal lessons. For the duration of the lessons, Izzy was on task from very beginning but had no interaction with other students. She used the CLC textbook, her exercise book and, briefly, her iPad for grammar exercises to help her meet her targets. These included understanding participles, translating using less vocabulary and producing accurate translations. In a brief conversation before the lesson, Izzy said that she felt the ILM was something different to a teacher but no better or worse. She said that while her teacher focused more on the plot of a story or translating Latin for meaning, the ILM concentrated more on grammar. In her opinion, both should be used to complement each other rather than using one completely instead of the other. In her questionnaire, Izzy identified that she had had set herself three to four targets over the course of the independent learning lessons and had spent between 30-45 minutes on working towards them. It was interesting that despite the accessibility of their iPads and how much students are encouraged to use them in their normal lessons, Izzy did not use it at all to explore the stories in Latin. She did not even use it to help her consolidate her grammar, as her peers did. Izzy felt that the booklet ‘was in an order that made sense and helped to cement [her] newfound understanding of topics’. As previously mentioned, Izzy is consistently exacting in the standard of work that she produces. Because she is accustomed to working alone in normal lessons too, she found that the ILM suited her learning style. When interviewed, Izzy stated that she enjoyed the pace at which she was able to work and that she didn't ‘have to wait for others or go through things too quickly’. In her opinion it was easy to lose concentration towards the end of the lesson especially as there were too many questions in the ILM. Izzy felt that the teacher could have a more proactive role in lessons ‘to help if you were struggling’ but during my observations of her work, she did not ask for help with anything she was unsure of.

Group – Timothy, Nate, Teresa and Poppy

In the first lesson, the group worked well together and soon split into pairs (Teresa and Poppy; Timothy and Nate). After some time working on-task, there was more off-topic conversation. Both pairs refocused themselves before long and worked well together both in their pairs as well as in a group of four. Teresa was leading the on-topic conversation in her pair and Nate in his. All of the students had written a target to meet by the end of the lesson. Teresa, Poppy and Nate had similar targets: to complete a certain number of questions which explored a Latin story in the accompanying textbook. Timothy's target was to understand the story and to take vocabulary from it. On looking through their booklets, I noticed that only Teresa had evaluated her target at the end of the lesson and had identified an area to work on next lesson. The other students had answered their questions correctly but only Nate had managed to meet his target. Over the course of the lessons that followed, the group collectively made a more obvious note of their targets at the start and a review of these at the end of the lessons. The dynamic in the group remained the same as the students split into pairs. They did continue to interact with each other, often conversing about the meaning of a word or discussing the answer to a question.

In their questionnaires, all students (except Nate, whose questionnaire was not handed in) stated that they had set three to four targets each over all of the lessons. They said that they had spent between 30-45 minutes on working towards achieving their targets, which I would agree with from seeing them work and listening to the amount of productive conversation they had. All students used the CLC textbook, the ILM, their iPads, friends and teachers in the lessons, and Poppy included that she had used her exercise book too. When answering the question to do with what they liked about the booklet, the students' answers included that they liked working at their ‘own speed and with friends’; not having to ‘listen to the teacher the whole [time]’; always having ‘something to do’ and always being ‘sure of what the task was’. The problems they encountered with the booklet seemed to be generally the same. The students felt that the booklet provided little explanation and they did not always understand the questions. Timothy said that he could not know if his work was actually correct. Their sentiments were repeated in their interview, where Nate said that the independent learning was ‘good because you could go through at your own pace and set what you wanted to do’; Teresa added that ‘there was less pressure’ in independent learning, perhaps implying that she found it difficult to keep up with the pace of the teacher or other students during normal Latin lessons. When asked about their group dynamic and why they had worked that way, Teresa said that they had chosen to work in pairs ‘because it's easier and working in small groups helps you concentrate’ implying that it is more distracting to work in a group of four because ‘Nate is better than me at Latin so he would have got more frustrated’. The students generally agreed that they formed their targets by going through the book and ‘if [they] didn't want to work on that particular bit [they would] do something else’. The students expressed that they would like the teacher to be involved in the lesson in some way so that students remained on task. The girls did not like the idea of the teacher coming round to review their targets with them and felt that it would be more useful if they reviewed each other's targets; Poppy felt that this was necessary because ‘a teacher might not understand that you've done something to the best of your ability, not theirs’. They felt that it would have been useful had I marked their booklets in between lessons but they said that they would have liked teacher input ‘every few lessons or every other lesson’ and were not entirely comfortable with the idea of learning without a teacher for an extended period of time. The students used their iPads to either read the Latin story using the explorer tool on the CSCP website or to practise grammar and vocabulary exercises. This suggests that they are actively employing a skill that independent learners should have: to use appropriate websites and apps in order to carry out a task.

How well do students set their own targets and evaluate their progress?

In the first instance, most of the students were constructing simple targets, such as to reach a certain number of questions in the booklet. Their evaluations at the end of the early lessons read along the lines of ‘I reached my target’ or ‘I finished the questions’. Perhaps this was because they were new to the idea of target setting and self-evaluating in this form.

During their interviews at the end of the sequence of lessons, however, some students expressed that having targets could be valuable in promoting their own learning. In particular, they noticed that their concentration levels remained high when they were focusing on something they themselves had identified as a task to work on. Towards the end of the sequence of independent learning lessons, I noticed that some students' evaluations or reviews were more reflective on what had been learnt instead of on how much they had completed.

As a result of this, I have realised that the right sort of target setting is essential for students to get the most out of independent learning. In future practice I would alter the way in which this target setting was presented to students. The Stripling Model of Inquiry also gives ideas on what to include at each stage of an effective independent learning lesson. Perhaps for younger students, it would be more valuable for them to have a scaffolded way of setting targets as this would help them form the right sort of targets for their area of learning.

What do the students think should be was the role of the teacher in the independent learning lesson?

The interviews at the end of the sequence of independent learning lessons were very revealing. The students felt that the teacher should have a more proactive role in independent learning lessons, almost as if it were a taught lesson instead.

The primary job that they felt a teacher should do in these lessons was to identify any common errors that students were making in their independent learning and stop the class to explain to everyone. Although this can be difficult to do in a lesson where everyone is doing a different activity, it would be useful from a student's point of view so that they did not continue going about something in the wrong way.

The students were divided on whether a teacher should come round and check the targets they had set themselves at the start of the lesson. While some acknowledged that this would probably help them maintain their concentration, others said that the teacher might not understand that a pupil was working to the best of his or her ability. From this study, I feel that it would be useful for a teacher to go round and check on students' progress not least for the benefit of the students but so that the teacher could get involved in the learning process. This could be as simple as providing verbal feedback and direction towards different resources that students could use to achieve their desired outcomes.

Overall the CLC ILM seems to have been only partly successful at helping students learn independently. The CSCP website says that the ILM is suitable for students who are learning alone, require additional material, are catching up after illness or transfer; are working ahead of the rest of the class, whose teacher is absent or classes with varying ability levels. The ILM presents material meant for students working solitarily and not independently in the sense that I have come to understand. It did not give the students in my study the opportunity for the sort of autonomy that I had expected. The comprehension questions to the Latin stories are designed to test students' understanding of the story and their knowledge of grammar but do not direct students to appropriate resources if they are unsure of how to get to an answer.