Key Skills That are Critical for Self-Directed Learners

Principle #7: To become self-directed learners, students must learn to assess the demands of the task, evaluate their own knowledge and skills, plan their approach, monitor their progress, and adjust their strategies as needed

This principle outlines the key metacognitive skills that are critical to becoming a self-directed learner. Metacognition refers to the “process of reflecting on and directing one’s own thinking.” (National Research Council, 2001, p 78). As students progress through university and eventually their careers, they will take on more complex tasks and bear greater responsibility for their own learning, and so reflecting on and directing one’s own thinking will be very important.

The Cycle of Self Directed Learning

Researchers have proposed various models to describe how students would ideally apply metacognitive skills to learn and perform well (see, for example, Brown et al, 1983; Butler, 1997; Pintrich, 2000; Winnie & Hadwin, 1998). These models all share the idea that learners need to engage in a variety of processes to monitor and control their learning (Zimmerman, 2001). These models often take the form of the following cycle. Please click on the red plus signs in each stage of the cycle to learn more about each stage in the cycle.