Page 80 - Issue 112 May-June 2021

Self-directed learning In charge of their own lives Naomi Fisher looks how children with SEND can thrive with self-directed learning. 80 Alice wasn’t happy. She was meant to do remote learning, but her difficulties with reading made the worksheets sent home impossible without help, and her parents had little time between their work and caring for her 3-year-old brother. Everyone seemed to be pressured all the time, and Alice felt like there was no fun in her life anymore. ‘I can’t learn anything’ she sobbed one evening to her mother. ‘I’m so stupid’. Her mother wasn’t sure what to do. Even with lots of help, Alice found the worksheets unexciting and difficult, and she never did them well. She seemed to have lost her zest for life. Juggling different needs in lockdown Lockdown hasn’t been easy for anyone, but it’s been particularly hard for families with children with SEND. With children at home, their parents have been expected to support remote learning. For many families this has been a constant struggle. Parents are left juggling the needs of different children with ever-increasing amounts of schoolwork. That’s before taking into account how many parents are also trying to keep their own jobs whilst helping and caring for their children. It’s not surprising that surveys show that a high percentage of children with SEND are not completing the work sent home and many are completely disengaged – and a high percentage of parents are feeling burnt out. “Learn to think of themselves as autonomous and capable people” When this happens, no one is happy. Parents feel frustrated and children feel like failures. Each day is a battleground, and relationships in the family become focused on getting that home-school work done, before anything else. Parents become worried that their children don’t seem to enjoy anything they do, and that the curiosity they had when they were younger is ebbing away. There is another way Dismayed by the impact that trying to make children complete school work has on their family, some are taking the brave decision to take an unconventional route to learning. Based on decades of research into motivation, self-directed learning puts a child’s autonomy at the centre of their education. This means that the child, not the teacher, decides what they will learn. The idea is that motivation and engagement is more important than any specific content. For when a child is interested, learning flows. SEN112 senmagazine.co.uk