AUTHOR=Uus Õnne , Mettis Kadri , Väljataga Terje , Ley Tobias 

TITLE=Differences in Self-Directed Learning: Middle-School Students’ Autonomous Outdoor Studying

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Education

VOLUME=Volume 6 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2021.718295

DOI=10.3389/feduc.2021.718295

ISSN=2504-284X

ABSTRACT=The use of self-directed learning (SDL) is an increasingly widespread trend in schools, although its core – the student’s attentional capability for multi-level processing – to construct relevant concepts and at the same time to keep in mind the needed sub-items, whilst also directing one's own learning, has not been thoroughly investigated. 
We examined autonomous learning outdoors in small groups with 122 school students aged 14-16 years (the period that, through the developmental peculiarities of puberty, causes variety in cognitive skills). To detect whether individual characteristics reflect in students´ SDL progress, we measured participants' pre-knowledge, their problem-solving strategies, and post-knowledge. We also asked about their prior SDL experience. The results showed (1) relations between one´s pre-and post-knowledge levels; (2) the impact of gender in the SDL efficacy; (3) the difficulty to memorize in the course of complex tasks while learning on one's own. Our work gives insight into the SDL-specific heightened cognitive demand and opens the aspects of the SDL paradigm that have been little discussed so far: school students cognitive obstacles in heavy load conditions that implicate the difficulties in their executive attention which takes prolonged development towards maturity. This indicates a need to teach metacognitive skills to young students that enable them to prevent cognitive overload in complex tasks, in that way enhancing their SDL performance and fostering the effective implementation of the educational SDL approach in schools.