Developing Student-Driven Learning

Posted on December 13, 2019

Talking about student agency in the Enhanced PYP reminds me of a Javanese proverb coined  by Ki Hadjar Dewantara (the founding father of Indonesian education) – Tut Wuri Handayani  – which literally means ‘giving constructive support from behind‘. The proverb means that teachers as educators have a role to advise and support, but let students direct their own learning experience. This type of self-directed learning comes with challenges, as students have their own independent voice and choices, as well as different overall levels of ownership. Teachers must understand those nuances and strive to provide the base level of support needed to facilitate each student’s growth through their own self direction.  This involves a mindset change at both the educator and pupil levels, because the responsibility for examination has shifted while also introducing new self direction concepts. Teachers must assist in building this new habit of inquiry learning, so that it can be repeated by the students as they progress.

How to Build the Inquiry Learning Habit?

To develop student-driven learning, my teaching partners, Wijati Meru, Tatik Rahayu and I teach and expose our PYP 3 students to Approaches to Learning. We implemented a personal learning plan in the classroom on a weekly basis so each student becomes accustomed to learning how to develop and utilize the skills to do their own inquiry. The personal plan scaffolds the learning strategy such as recalling their prior knowledge about a topic, how they would deepen their understanding about a concept, arrange the procedure of recording and presenting the information, conferencing with teachers and doing the self and peer reflection. It starts by asking each student to develop some questions about the unit of inquiry and sets up a personal strategy to find the answers to their own questions. Students must relate their questions to the central idea, the guiding concept, the lines of inquiry and the success criteria. An example of a student’s thinking process can be seen on the personal plan below. 

                                                   Where We Are in Place and Time

Central Idea:

Exploring places leads to discoveries, opportunities and new understanding of local and global perspectives  

Guiding Concept: Exploration and Discoveries

Key Concepts: Change, Perspective, Causation

Related Concepts:  migration, impact, adaptation, settlement, diversity

Lines of Inquiry:

• Reasons for exploration (historical and personal
• Exploration throughout history
• The consequences of exploration

Learner Profiles:  Risk-taker, Knowledgeable, Open-minded

Skills: Self-management, Social, Thinking

How does the Personal Learning Plan Influence the Learning?

Through the consistent implementation of the personal learning plan, students start to develop a habit of how to plan for their learning and achieve the goals using the plan. Teachers have to be aware of the significance of provocations as it leads students’ critical thinking to the unit of inquiry.  In the following unit – Sharing the Planet, we provoked our students with a fishing simulation based on the Tragedy of the Commons. Students self-discovered the issue from the activity and related it to the unit of inquiry. Students applied their critical thinking to identify the problems and develop solutions. They also observed the amount of unused items around them and through creativity as well as planning, they identified, collected and recycled those unused items into their own artwork. ​

Therefore, developing student learning comes with challenges, but with the right approach by teachers, they can support students with a repeatable structure of identifying and resolving problems.  As students demonstrate their understanding of a concept in their own way, their learning becomes personalized for each individual.

Julie Ikayanti-PYP 3 Team Leader

julieikayanti@sekolahciputra.sch.id