Teaching Students to Become Self-Determined Learners

Children are born learning machines who want to learn and can organize and manage their own learning. Unfortunately, today children have little choice over what they do in school and how and when they do it. Children prepared in this "other-determined" manner will be poorly equipped to navigate an adult world requiring that they act autonomously and self-direct learning to acquire skills in rapidly changing environments.

In Teaching Students to Become Self-Determined Learners, Michael Wehmeyer and Yong Zhao explore the how and why of self-determined learning--which emphasizes autonomy and choice, turning over ownership for learning to students by supporting them in engaging in activities that are of personal value to them, thus enabling them to act volitionally. You'll learn

* How to promote self-determined learning in your classroom or school
* The importance of autonomy supports, competence supports, and relatedness supports
* Conditions that enable self-determined learning
* Teaching strategies for self-determined learning
* Assessment strategies in self-determined learning
* The role of technology in self-determined living

The practical strategies, case studies, advice, and resources here will help you help your students to motivate themselves and become self-determined learners.

Michael Wehmeyer, PhD, is the Ross and Marianna Beach distinguished professor and chairperson, Department of Special Education, at the University of Kansas. His scholarly work has focused on understanding and promoting self-determination and self-determined learning, creating and evaluating autonomy supportive interventions, and the application of positive psychology to the disability context. He has published extensively in these areas and is an author or editor of more than 40 books and more than 400 scholarly articles and book chapters. Wehmeyer is a member of the Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars and an honorary alumni inductee of the Phi Beta Kappa Arts and Sciences Honor Society. He has held numerous leadership and editorial positions in the field and has been recognized for his research and service with awards from numerous associations and organizations, including the American Psychological Association Distinguished Contributions to the Advancement of Disability Issues in Psychology Award. Wehmeyer holds graduate degrees in special education and experimental psychology from the University of Tulsa and the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, respectively, and earned his PhD in Human Development and Communication Sciences from the University of Texas at Dallas, where he received a 2014 Distinguished Alumni Award.

Yong Zhao is foundation distinguished professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas. Prior to joining the University of Kansas, he served as the presidential chair, director of the Institute for Global and Online Education, and associate dean in the College of Education, University of Oregon, where he was also a professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership. Until December 2010, Zhao was a University Distinguished Professor at the College of Education, Michigan State University, where he also served as the founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology, executive director of the Confucius Institute and the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. Zhao has published more than100 articles and 30 books. He has received numerous awards, including the Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association, Outstanding Public Educator from Horace Mann League of USA, and Distinguished Achievement Award in Professional Development from the Association of Education Publishers. He is an elected fellow of the International Academy for Education and is recognized as one of the most influential education scholars.