In 2019, Taiwan launched a new curriculum that mandates high school students to participate in a Self-Directed Learning (SDL) course for a minimum of 18 hours prior to graduation. However, integrating SDL into the rigid curriculum structure of high schools may cause many problems. We carried out a three-pronged study to get to the bottom of these problems. First, we held comprehensive interviews with 25 students and six educators to explore the nature of the issues. The findings revealed that most of the problems stem from conflicts in 8 dialectic duals, including Self-development vs. Professional prospects, Blooming diversity versus the Matthew effect, etc. Secondly, to address the ineffectiveness of teachers’ guidance due to the mismatch between their areas of expertise and the students’ areas of interest, we developed a program and trained 15 preservice teachers from various academic backgrounds to assist teachers in four SDL classes to guide students in conducting SDL. Interviews and questionnaires revealed that such a university-high school alliance enhances the effectiveness and satisfaction of students' SDL. Thirdly, we classified SDL learners into four types based on their SDL abilities (high/low) and identity commitment (high/low): Go-getters, Procrastinators, Experimenters, and Idlers. A questionnaire has been developed and distributed to students. Once the data is collected, confirmatory factor analysis and cluster analyses will be performed to validate these four types. Follow-up interviews will be conducted with each type of SDL learner to paint a detailed portrait of them and identify the most effective facilitation strategies for each type.

Authors:
Jeng-Yi Tzeng, National TsingHua University, Taiwan
Cheng Te Chen, National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan

About the Presenter(s)
Professor Jeng-Yi Tzeng is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at National TsingHua University in Taiwan

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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