Franklin West Supervisory Union – Creating Self-directed Learners with Five Transferrable Skills

To support the outcome work at our one high school all administrators from all Franklin West Supervisory Union (FWSU) schools are focused on ensuring greater self-direction through personalization using our five transferable skills: effective communication, self-direction, creative and practical problem solving, responsible and involved citizenship, and informed and integrative thinking. The goal is to move to a shared progression of demonstration of proficiency through student-led exhibitions.

By using a collaborative “self-discovery learning” process, we recommitted our focus to proficiency-based, personalized learning and came to the philosophical agreement that, to be truly student-centered in our work, students must learn the skills necessary to become self-directed learners.

We realized our efforts in personalized learning, the core of challenge-based learning and project-based learning, were lacking because we did not have this centerpiece of self-directedness.

We are developing a shared vision, a common language, and common tools for personalized learning that will enable us to better frame the teachable skills of self-direction. One of our five core transferable skills is self-direction, which again, creates more shared commitment and focus alongside the learning continuum. We have begun to look at normative practices for student-led conferences as part of the process for exhibitions of bodies of evidence for proficiency.

We found that we were not looking at personalized learning through a pedagogical lens, but rather we were in a checklist compliance mode. We were looking at the extent to which self-direction is observable in our current practices, for example, from workshop models to athletic participation. We were surprised our view was as pervasive as it was; however, it was still vaguely and loosely defined.

This is a legislated requirement, and it had been the focus of our action plan prior to legislation; our educators know this is the work do not feel there is a tradeoff. Learn more about Act 77 and its many components.

There needs to be a general understanding of the critical elements of self-direction, and those elements must be prioritized based on the readiness and progress of the organization (common knowledge, time for collaboration, committed work groups with focused direction and internal accountability).

Student-Led Conferences Focus on Learning and Presentation in Fletcher

If you are interested in learning more, please contact Ned Kirsch (nkirsch@fwsu.org) or Linda Keating (lkeating@fwsu.org).