Pre-School Teachers’ Understanding about Children's Self-Directed Learning

Abstract

As society evolves, the need for a paradigm shift from teaching-centred to learning-centred education has become stronger. The learning processes focus on how children learn instead of how teachers teach, and it requires children to take responsibility for their own learning, thus promoting self-affirmation and self-directed learning. Implementation of a competency-based learning approach requires improving transversal skills, including self-directed learning. Unfortunately, preschool teachers lack a common understanding about children's self-directed learning. It is still a habit to set the goal of lessons to provide ready knowledge to lead and control the learning process. Observations in preschool classes show that teachers often do not have sufficient understanding on how to organize and process self-directed learning. In various studies self-directed learning is mainly based on the experience of schools and universities, associating preschools with school practice and researches. Schools and teachers are challenged to promote children’s self-directed learning. The aim of the paper is to identify the understanding of preschool teachers about self-directed learning in preschool and to find out the criteria for self-directed learning. Research methods used was content analysis of scientific literature and sources and survey of teachers. The research results indicate that preschool teachers relatively understand the essence of self-directed learning and determine the need for preschool teachers to promote children's self-directed learning in preschools.