Resources

Videos

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• What Is Self-Directed Education? An introductory illustration from Peter Gray and the Alliance for Self-Directed Education

• Overview of Agile Learning Centers

• Peter Gray: Mother Nature's Pedagogy: Insights from Evolutionary Psychology- Excellent summary of Evolutionary Psychologist Peter Gray's research on children’s ability to educate themselves.

• The Crisis of an Outdated Paradigm Tomis, ALC Facilitator, on the crisis created by our outdated educational paradigm.

• The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us An articulate RSA Animate of Dan Pink’s famous talk.

• Hackschooling Makes Me Happy A 13 year old homeschooler, Logan LaPlante, describes how he hacks his own education to create the life he wants for himself.

• What If We Trusted You? A great talk by Jerry Michalski about how traditional schools are set up around the belief that children do not want to learn.

• Do Schools Kill Creativity? Famous talk from Ken Robinson.

• Exploring the Realm of Self-Directed Education Akilah S. Richards and Laura Kriegel from the Alliance for Self-Directed Education explain how free/democratic schools, learning centers, co-ops and more relate.

• Changing Education Paradigms An RSA Animate of another excellent Ken Robinson talk on Education.

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Articles

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• The Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE)

  • ASDE’s main website, self-directed.org contains a primer on Self-Directed Education (SDE), as well other videos and resources to better understand SDE. For the must-read primer on SDE, start with “What is Self-Directed Education?” and click on the bottom of each page to continue to “The Four Educative Drives,” “The Six Optimizing Conditions”, “Why Do People Choose Self-Directed Education?,” and “How Do People Practice Self-Directed Education?”.

  • ASDE’s online magazine, Tipping Points is full of stories and first-hand experiences from the diverse perspectives that make up the SDE movement.

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• A Thousand Rivers by Carol Black. This essay really makes self-directed learning real. "How did you learn to use a computer? Did a friend help you? Did you read the manual? Did you just sit down and start playing around with it? Did you do a little bit of all of those things? Do you even remember? You just learned it, right?"

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• Freedom to Learn: Dr. Peter Gray's blog. Peter Gray is a professor in psychology, renowned child development expert, self-directed learning advocate.

 

• Some recommended articles by Peter Gray:

  • The Value of Play

  • Survey of Grown Unschoolers (research on the long-term outcomes of self-directed education)

  • Children Teach Themselves to Read 

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Books

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• Free to Learn by Peter Gray A well-built and researched study of history of compulsory education, and a persuasive call to arms for a self-directed education revolution. Formative in Wildwood’s founders' thinking.

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• How Children Learn by John Holt

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• Instead of Education by John Holt

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• Free at Last by Daniel Greenberg Overview of Sudbury Valley school by founder and former physics teacher. Provides slice-of-life as well as applied philosophy and history of school. Free E-book here.

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• Legacy of Trust by Greenberg and Sadofsky. A Comprehensive study with in-depth interviews of the first generations of Sudbury Valley alumni.

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Academic Articles

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PLAY AND LEARNING

• Sugata Mitra. Minimally invasive education: A progress report on the ‘hole-in-the-wall’ experiments.

• P. Gray. The special value of age-mixed play.

• P. Gray. Playing in the Zone of Proximal Development: Qualities of Self-Directed Age Mixing Between Adolescents and Young Children at a Democratic School.

 

STUDENT INTEREST AND LEARNING

• Ainley, Mary. 2012. “Students’ Interest and Engagement in Classroom Activities.” In Handbook of Research on Student Engagement, edited by S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, and C. Wylie, 283–302. New York: Springer.

• Engel, Susan. 2011. “Children’s Need to Know: Curiosity in Schools.” Harvard Educational Review 81 (4). Harvard Education Publishing Group: 625–45.

• Harackiewicz, Judith M., and Chris S. Hulleman. 2010. “The Importance of Interest: The Role of Achievement Goals and Task Values in Promoting the Development of Interest.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 4 (1). Blackwell Publishing Ltd: 42–52.

• Schiefele, Ulrich, Andreas Krapp, and Adolf Winteler. 1992. “Interest as a Predictor of Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Research.” Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

• Seel, Norbert M. 2012. Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning. Boston, MA: Springer US.

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SOCIAL LEARNING

• Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning : Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press.

• Tenenberg, Josh, and Maria Knobelsdorf. 2014. “Out of Our Minds: A Review of Sociocultural Cognition Theory.” Computer Science Education 24 (1). Routledge: 1–24.

• Thomas, Douglas, and John Seely Brown. 2011. A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. Vol. 219. CreateSpace Lexington, KY.

• Vygotskii, L. S., and Michael Cole. 1978. Mind in Society : The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

• Weinberger, David. 2014. Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room. Basic Books.

• Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice : Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge, U.K.; New York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press.

• Wertsch, James V. 1985. Vygotsky and the Social Formation of Mind. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

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AUTONOMY AND LEARNING

• Black, Aaron E., and Edward L. Deci. 2000. “The Effects of Instructors’ Autonomy Support and Students' Autonomous Motivation on Learning Organic Chemistry: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective.” Science Education 84 (6): 740.

• Dickinson, Leslie. 1995. “Autonomy and Motivation a Literature Review.” System 23 (2): 165–74.

• Evans, Miriam, and Alyssa R. Boucher. 2015. “Optimizing the Power of Choice: Supporting Student Autonomy to Foster Motivation and Engagement in Learning.” Mind, Brain and Education: The Official Journal of the International Mind, Brain, and Education Society 9 (2): 87–91.

• León, Jaime, Juan L. Núñez, and Jeffrey Liew. 2015. “Self-Determination and STEM Education: Effects of Autonomy, Motivation, and Self-Regulated Learning on High School Math Achievement.” Learning and Individual Differences 43 (October): 156–63.

• Passe, Jeff. 1996. When Students Choose Content: A Guide to Increasing Motivation, Autonomy, and Achievement.Thousand Oaks: CA: Corwin Press, Inc.

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ALUMNI STUDIES

• P. Gray and D. Chanoff. Democratic schooling: What happens to young people who have charge of their own education?

• D. Greenberg, M. Sadofsky, and J. Lempka. The Pursuit of Happiness: The Lives of Sudbury Valley Alumni.

• P. Gray.  A Survey of Grown Unschoolers I: Overview of Findings.

• Idzie Desmarais.  Blogs, Interviews, & Other Writing by Grown Unschoolers.

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