Leyton Schnellert recently published “Developing Self-Regulating Learners”
According to a study by the MacArthur Foundation, 65% of students will end up doing work that hasn’t been invented yet. How then, do we teach students the skills needed for jobs that don’t exist?
Leyton Schnellert, a professor in the Faculty of Education at UBC Okanagan says we need to teach students how to be life-long learners.
“The jobs that exist now will not be the same when students leave school,” he says, “so we’ve moved away from a factory model of teaching and towards a process-based model of teaching and learning.”
In his new book, Developing Self-Regulating Learners, Leyton Schnellert discusses a model that teaches students not what to think, but how to think.
“The key to a student’s success is engaging them as self-regulating learners,” says Schnellert
According to Schnellert, teachers must recognize that learning comes from within the individual. Self-regulated learning comes from a student’s ability to interpret tasks, make plans, enact them, reflect on their actions, and make adjustments.
Student Teacher Candidates in the Faculty of Education
Attention to self regulation is growing trend in Canadian schools.
“In the past, parents and teachers have been in charge of students’ learning,” he says, “However, successful life-long learners take ownership of and control over their learning.”
Schnellert says that students will be more successful if there is a focus on self-regulated learning at a young age.
“We’ve found that when you foster self-regulated learning within teaching, students are more successful in school,” says Schnellert. “Self-regulating learners leave school with better academic success and a higher level of personal and social awareness as well.”
“In British Columbia we are revising our K-12 curriculum to empower students to be life-long learners who develop adaptive expertise. In the 21st century, we need self-regulating learners who believe in themselves and have the ability to solve problems.”