Interesting point you made last, James.  In the years in and after my PhD program at Florida State some 40 years ago now, I watched with fascination how names of important concepts seemed to change overnight -- either professors borrowing from their students' insights and questions or giving us grad students the chance to invent something new ourselves.  

What I think happens is profs over the years expand their research agendas in direct proportion to the creativity and curiosity of their grad students.  They get a following or not and I've seen the prices that were paid when we got the ire of a struggling assistant or associate prof on his or her way to full professor.

Getting the traction needed for practice and policy in my opinion is political and happens through strategic relationships and deals made at cocktail parties or conferences -- with publishers, the media, political figures, etc.  My prof organizations wine and dine these folks to push through new applications of social science research to critical issues of the times like bullying, mental health issues, etc.

The autonomous or SDL learning issue is raising its head higher these days for several reasons.  I believe the most important is the movement toward child-centered, whole child, personalized and learner-centered education models.  Blended learning, open source quality resources for teachers and students are beginning to change the paradigm.

Would you agree?

It hasn't totally disappeared. The International Society for Self-Directed Learning is still active cf. http://www.sdlglobal.com

Yes, there is an International Society for Self-Directed Learning, but, from my experience, it really has zero visibility in the scholarly world.  Very few universities offer any course on SDL, the topic rarely appears in mainstream scholarly journals... It is gone from the radar screen, at a time when Internet offers so many opportunities for individuals to learn on their own just about any possible topic... Could it be that all the powers-that-be, including universities, are afraid of that power that individuals now have to educate themselves?

Perhaps SDL researchers have made their point. Their research has contributed to a change in perspective from teaching to learning. It has promoted learner centered approaches; has brought adult learning to the agenda; has taken interest in learner dispositions; has shone the light for a paradigmatic shift, exemplified in concepts such as the one mentioned by Nicos Souleles of lifelong learning.

The research has not disappeared. It is still in the archives. Here is some recent stuff:

http://scholar.google.co.za/scholar?as_ylo=2013&q=self-directed+learning

However, your are right that it is no longer a "hot topic" as this graph shows:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%22self-directed%20learning%22

This is a good question, Philippe. 

"because of the inherent difficulty of the topic"- yes, because students at college level are suddenly expected to learn SDL when they have not met anything like it in all their schooling, then many find it hard, even reduced to tears. Hard to generate their own questions; hard to express their own opinions; hard to research in libraries or wherever. Some of the skills required for SDL must be rehearsed/practised at Primary and Secondary levels first. The potential is enormous but I believe the constraints on teachers today is blocking this sort of creative approach. There has been very little research into one important aspect of SDL, that is, into the skill of question asking by the learner.

See my paper "important Questions". 

I agree that SDL has reduced in focus in education research generally. I think this is because research topics reach a point of diminishing returns for researchers. There is an initial period where there is a great deal of research and then this decreases as research is seen to have dealt with most of the basic issues. Also research issues often changes its name and I note that there is still an active interest in "academic self-regulation" which highlights self-directed learning issues. Also it seems that researchers from outside the domain are picking up SDL issues. In my field of Organization Behaviour SDL is being applied to Human Resource Development and especially to Leader Self-Development.

Picking up on Paul Nesbit's remark, the change of names is the result of new orientations being taken up by researchers, such as when certain dimensions related to some theory attract researchers' attention after initially exploring an encompassing or related theory. In the case of SDL, a concern with the more practical aspects of managing one's learning led me to research Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) and to coin the notion of co-regulation of learning --again orienting attention to a related area. The example of my own trajectory illustrates this movement of shifting interest.

I understand your perspective, even though my impression from reading the literature is that self-directed and self-regulated learning are very different things., and the contexts in which they happen are very distinct. But even if I accept your argument, why are neither self-directed learning nor self-regulated learning taught as regular fields of study in most schools of education around the world, except for a handful of them? Why also is it that in most universities (at least the ones where I have taught) students graduate without having mastered any skill related to either SDL or SRL? The students to whom I teach these days are generally as incapable of self-direction in learning as students a generation or two ago... Of course, there are always exceptions, as there were then, but they exist in spite of university education, not because of it...

I don't know about the medical field, but in the information literacy field, there are a few of us still beating the drum. I am doing research in the field of intrinsic motivation for information seeking. Ruth V. Small, Marilyn Arnone, and Jenny Robbins are also.

It is alive and well in the perceptual and cognitive sciences where we have taken lessons from the Gibsons (James and Eleanor) on Dewey's wisdom regarding the role of intentional actions on the uptake of sensory information. Perhaps this version sounds too abstract, but it has some fairly practical applications explored by the motor learning research on "autonomy."

When I mentioned this question to my teacher partner, she said. "Do we really need more research on this? and what will happen to the research? Log-jams of journal articles?

What is needed is more teachers sympathetic to SDL and politics to back it up with training. 

The college she worked for triumphantly announced one year that it supported "Learner Lead Education" and everything had to be learner lead, but without understanding the implications! It was like sending the students to go fishing without giving them any hooks. The next year the management of the college just thought up another fashionable logo and LLE was dropped!

One problem, as I see it, is that there is almost no movement downwards of staff to learn what and how their students have been learning in school. There is no real understanding in schools about what Colleges would like their students to be able to do. Consequently there is a huge rift in learning styles.

Years ago, Primary children were producing some excellent SDL called Projects. When I moved up to teach in a Secondary school the staff had no concept of "Projects", it was something the top class did! But when you looked at those Secondary students work it had no aspects of originality. No genuine student contributions. No SDL.

I have just read the article that Sherry Crow wrote ("What Motivates a Lifelong Learner?"). It is available on her ResearchGate page. It is a great paper...  And it brings me back to my original question... I wonder why there aren't tons of articles like Sherry"s, why we don't pay much more attention to motivation when we teach students, why all of these topics, including teaching students so that they remain motivated and eager to learn new stuff even if it is on their own, are so absent from the curriculum of most schools and universities. Who benefits from this intellectual desert we are creating?

SDL is quite an effective method and is gaining momentum in today's world. This is basically because there is a lot of realisation that the actual learning occurs outside the classroom and there's lot more to explore out there in the ever dynamic world within a short span of time. The online education programs like Mooc and coursera are the best instances of the same. 

I think it's been there from the time immemorial. The traditional system of education was more in terms of sdl wherein the guru used to discuss things with the disciple was more or less 

You might consider exploring the related field of heutagogy.

Research on SDL & SRL hasn't disappeared.  I have written up a paper on SDL and sent it to a journal.  Now I am working on another paper, in my bits of available time.  To some of you, SDL research has vanished; maybe because people like me, with our many students, can't work fast enough :)

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_anyone_interested_in_doing_a_research_in_self-directed_learning_or_independent_learning_of_first_year-college_or_K12_students

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Based_on_current_research_in_self-directed_learning_SDL_and_SRL_what_activities_have_you_been_implementing_among_your_students

Indeed the field is still very active and some of us are calling it autonomous learning under the Self-Determination theory banner.  Other are linking it to the importance of positive relationships in classrooms and schools, and still others in a variety of cognitive and motivational fields are linking it to developmentally appropriate lifelong learning skills and social-emotional development.  Neuroscientists also have important things to say and are collaborating with others in multi-disciplinary fields and with international colleagues to talk about learning to learn skills and dispositions that can lead to educational transformation and personalization.  Our work has resulted in a book on the topic from an international perspective (see Deakin-Crick, R., Stringher, C., & Ren, K. (Eds, 2014). Learning to Learn (L2L): International perspectives from theory and practice. New York: Routledge or this link:  Deakin-Crick, R. (2014, June 14). Learning to learn: An international perspective – Author notes. Downloaded on 6-14-14 from http://learningemergence.net/author/redeakincrick/ 

     Thanks for all the responses... So, if I understand well, several of you consider  that self-directed learning continues to be a very active area of research, but under a multiplicity of labels (self-regulated learning, heutagogy, L2L, self-determined learning...). Does any of you have a feel for why this multiplicity of labels exists? Why does someone at some point decide that "self-directed learning", even though it is well-known and recognized in the literature, is no longer a good terminology, and that something like "heutagogy" (and why not "autogogy"??) is far better??? It would seem to me that each new term dilutes the field a little more, and gives it less recognition, hence my impression that SDL has disappeared from the radar screen...

To answer your question, Phillippe, from my perspective -- I would have to honestly say that terms change for reasons that are not very logical and often quite egotistical from an academic perspective.  We often can see folks building their careers on a term (self-directed learning I believe started in the 70's as part of control theory) and competing with others studying the next generation of terms (like autonomous learning or social-emotional learning).  Newer collaborative research seems to recognize this at least in part and tries to look at the whole learner and his/her needs in a personalized way -- thereby arguing for collaborative research methods that build upon prior findings and systematically coming to new conclusions and higher order processes that connect to earlier research. This is clearly true in the field of computer-based learning (smile) ...

SDL is important for innovations to happen. In India where I teach, there cannot be a question of SDL, as everything is organised to a system, where students are guided by a curriculum, where there is no room for  knowledge creation. Students start school, then college, careers pre-defined. The education is time bound. So if we need SDL when will it end and what will be the outcome is a question to be answered. 

If one assumes (which many SDL researchers and theorists now do) that learning is natural and being autonomous is part of what makes us human and not robots, then the answer to your question, Dekson, is a very important one for a national debate in India.

Students are naturally exercising whatever level of self-control they can in an overly prescribed system.  It may not be the control they want to have, but, it would be unnatural for them to be totally passive.  

The question for me becomes different in this situation:  Web links to programs that students can do on their own or with their families or children is one good option -- getting it endorsed by educational system officials is another issue.  

There is no end to SDL as a self-pursuit -- as a system it is up to those whose hearts and minds need to change.  Relationships matter and this can happen if others persist in sharing the quality research, findings, and expected outcomes in terms of better jobs and job satisfaction, more engaged learning, development of lifelong learning dispositions, etc.  Our responsibility is to facilitate the conversation as much as possible -- like the one we are having here.

Barbara, you have a good point. I wonder if ego ultimately prevents a researcher from considering bias in their own ideas, especially as it concerns the movement he or she may have aligned their ideas. I have read researchers getting swept up in 'a cause' that may benefit their prestige (workshop fees), but maybe prevents considering multiple perspectives. 

We must also consider there are many facets to potentially complex concepts. Hence, different terms. The multiplicity of labels that Phillipe highlighted as problematic might be sorted if we can consider how each concept of self-directed learning is differentiated. 

A separate but interesting question is what factors influence a concept to gain traction in policy and practice. 

Interesting point you made last, James.  In the years in and after my PhD program at Florida State some 40 years ago now, I watched with fascination how names of important concepts seemed to change overnight -- either professors borrowing from their students' insights and questions or giving us grad students the chance to invent something new ourselves.  

What I think happens is profs over the years expand their research agendas in direct proportion to the creativity and curiosity of their grad students.  They get a following or not and I've seen the prices that were paid when we got the ire of a struggling assistant or associate prof on his or her way to full professor.

Getting the traction needed for practice and policy in my opinion is political and happens through strategic relationships and deals made at cocktail parties or conferences -- with publishers, the media, political figures, etc.  My prof organizations wine and dine these folks to push through new applications of social science research to critical issues of the times like bullying, mental health issues, etc.

The autonomous or SDL learning issue is raising its head higher these days for several reasons.  I believe the most important is the movement toward child-centered, whole child, personalized and learner-centered education models.  Blended learning, open source quality resources for teachers and students are beginning to change the paradigm.

Would you agree?

I don't think that SDL has taken a back seat and I think it depends on what journal you look at. For example, Nurse Education today have many publications around the issue. My thesis is about SDL within undergraduate nurse education. SDL is not organised very well within the nursing curriculum, furthermore until educators understand what its' concepts and purposes are it will not work. 

Maxine,

    Yes, I agree with you. What I meant in my original question was related to why SDL, as a field of study in education, has taken a back seat. For the last 50 years, there has been a lot of interest in SDL in medical and nursing journals, and that interest does not seem to decrease, but somehow that interest has not really translate into research in the broader field of education, for example on new methods to study SDL in a wide range of fields. In the sixties and until the eighties, research on SDL was carried out in some of the best schools of education or psychology in the US (Chicago with Houle, Columbia with Brookfield). Nowadays, I would be hard pressed to come up with one university among the top 100 universities in the US, where SDL is taught as a field of study in education.... Indeed, as you say, 

Thank you Phillppe for clarifying that for me, it is similar here in the UK too. I think it is a crying shame because from my experience this generation will need to be able to develop the skills of SDL as they have a completely different way of learning and I experience this with my own daughter. Fortunately she is attuned to SDL as it has been rammed down her throat by me and she has just started university and has finally realised its relevance

i've read most of your comments and just would like to add that there's a new (at least for me) research field called heutagogy which is related with the self determined learning issues and i believe that there's a lot of interesting things that are being said in that area, i would recommend you all to check some research about it, they might give you some interesting ideas and insights about the self determined learning issues.

How does "heutagogy" (why not "autogogy"?) differ from the traditional fields of self-directed learning and self-regulated learning? In other words, what is new with heutagogy? I am not sure I see it clearly.

that's an interesting question philippe and i don't know to much about heutagogy since i'm no expert in the field, and as i said, is kind of new for me. As i see it, is kind of a "new" name given by a researcher in Australia to the self determined learning. Also can say that it pretends to explain some issues related to self determined learning with adults and in elearning environments. Here's a great presentation that talks about it http://www.slideshare.net/fredgarnett/selfdetermined-learning-the-craft-of-heutagogy finally as i told you i'm not an expert in the field but i think that reading a bit about it might give you some interesting ideas. Also this is the heutagogy community of practice http://heutagogycop.wordpress.com/ that might help you understand this new field. regards.

Not sure that new term with catch on -- the ideas and extensions re good but I would question whether we need a new term versus whether we would be better served to expand the existing model and keep the name that pins it to its theoretical base.  Self-determined learning is what it is, meaning it is both autonomous and self-directed.

Phillippe, 

The following resource is helpful to clarify each position. 

Hase, S & Kenyon, C 2001, 'Moving from andragogy to heutagogy: implications for VET', Proceedings of Research to Reality: Putting VET Research to Work: Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association (AVETRA), Adelaide, SA, 28-30 March, AVETRA, Crows Nest, NSW. Published version available from: http://www.avetra.org.au/Conference_Archives/2001/proceedings.shtml

Barbara, 

Your insights from 40 years of experience are invaluable.

It is my opinion that self-directed learning manifest as 'heutagogy' have been inspired by an increase in on-line learning environments. The format naturally lends itself to self-directed learners. 

I am personally interested in SDL theory because some of the greatest thinkers whom I find inspiration, taught themselves. I don't think they simply benefited from a high I.Q. but from dispositions toward inquiry. The fact that the influence of their curiosity and family was not drown out by schooling models played a role. Additionally, creative individuals I query, do not often mention they were inspired by a traditional curriculum, but their ability to find inspiration in the world. 

I think the shift might be an acknowledgment that educators are not arbiters of knowledge, and the problems of our world have not been solved by the status quo, so a new paradigm is necessary.

In a similar vein, education was not much concerned with the concept of culture until differences amongst culture confronted us. A critical component of this awareness was 'the other' was empowered to take part in the conversation. 

Insightful comments, James.  What research are you or others doing now to help extend this concept of what empowers us to be aware of 'the other'?  

I am doing a review for another project focused on teacher self-development for teaching the whole learner.  So far, it looks like a big part of this is genetic predispositions and another part is teachable but not so natural for some.

Here are some interesting sources:

McCaslin, M. (2009). Co-Regulation of student motivation and emergent identity. Educational Psychologist, 44(2), Special Issue: Motivation and Identity. Published online April 21, 2009, downloaded on 8-12/14 from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00461520902832384#.VDMNR_ldXtA

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2013). Toward a social psychology of assimilation: Self-determination theory in cognitive development and education. In B. W. Sokol, F. M. E. Grouzet, U. Muller (Eds.), Self-regulation and autonomy: Social and developmental dimensions of human conduct (pp. 191-207). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Weinstein, N. & DeHaan, C. (2014). On the mutuality of human motivation and relationships. In Weinstein, N. (Ed., 2014). Human Motivation and Interpersonal Relationships Theory, Research, and Applications (p. 3-25), Springer ebooks. Downloaded 8-19-14 from http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-8542-6_1

I came across an additional link, with an expert researcher, on a thread concerning heutagogy: 

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_anyone_knowledgeablewith_the_concept_of_Heutagogy_and_usingit_in_your_courses

Barbara, 

As you are aware, the concept of the Other or Otherness can be found in literature of many philosophers and in social science. I am not certain where the field is headed as of late. Also, I imagine the concept of the Other can be found in circles of critical theory where the notion of power is questioned. If this is true, recent developments of SDL question notions of power in teaching and learning. Although, I imagine this is not an overt concept in many studies, but one that is embedded in the values of individual researchers. 

"genetic predisposition vs. teachable" Your research seems to add to the age old debate on nature vs. nurture. I look forward to learning more on the topic. Perhaps a new thread?

In the present days educational institutions have become profit oriented, money making and hence look out for large number of enrollments. SDL finds no way in such a scenario and a proposal of SDL would be discouraged. 

This is one of the best questions in Research Gate. I really wish that I have seen it before because I have been interested in this subject since 1976 & before my postgraduate chemistry studies.

Malcolm Shepherd Knowles (1913 – 1997) was the champion of innovation, in US & then the whole world, with respect to adult education in the second half of the twentieth century.

In 1975, he published the book entitled (Self Directed Learning), which was revolutionary in trying to reorient adult educators, from ‘educating people’ to ‘helping them learn by themselves’.

In his "wise" analysis, adult learning should produce at least these outcomes: Adults should-

i) Acquire a mature understanding of themselves. 

ii) Develop an attitude of acceptance, love, and respect toward others.

iii) Develop a dynamic attitude toward life.

iv) Learn to react to the causes, not the symptoms, of behavior.

v) Understand the essential values in the capital of human experience. 

vi) Understand their society and should be skillful in directing social change.

Self-directed learning will proceed in 3 levels:

1) Primary: Self-learning about a topic with significant outside help.

2) Secondary: Self-acquiring of the skills needed to do the things that ought to be done with little help.

3) Tertiary: Self-earning about learning, making, doing, and sharing (meta-learning) without any help.

When one looks thoroughly at this innovative way of dealing with education, a witty outcome will ensue: Different human beings from what the systems or establishments were keen on bringing up or "troublesome citizens". Therefore, elaborations or research in this area has to be shelved or neglected. Those who have the monetary power to support research in this area will not do that.

I'll just tell a simple story: When an open university started, a compulsory course "entitled as: Learn How to Learn" was given to all the students. A foreign assessment committee came to that university & "ordered" cancelling that course…and that was done.

     Dear Nizar,

     Thank you very much for you very nice comment! I totally agree with your comment about Malcolm Knowles. Years ago, a few years after I wrote my first paper on self-directed learning (as a hobby, since it was never taught at any of the universities where I worded, and none of my colleagues approved of my interest), Dr. Knowles encouraged me to keep working on it, in a very nice letter that has since become one of my prized possessions...

     I would love to know more about this open university you mention in your last paragraph... It is so symbolic that this one course, probably the most useful any student could take, was dropped... If this event is recorded or commented on anywhere, I would love to have the reference!!!

    Thanks again.

 Dear Dr.Philippe Baveye, Thanks for your compliment. Sorry that I cannot reveal the name of that university because it is in the Middle East & if I do so, they will take me to court with a possible accusation "defaming the university". Since they have done something wrong, the whole matter was not documented in a reference. Be sure, that my story is real. My regards.

Hugh B Long edited a number of editions onSDL  they were often compilations of presentations at the annual conference on SDL held in the  1980,s and 1990's.  Phil Candy wrote a book on SDL, summarizing much of the research.  I think it was published in the 1990,s.  Lost my copy.  Foucher and Baskett did research on SDL in the workplace. 

I don't know how the concept has evolved over the past decade.  Good luck.  Would be interested in your results. 

H. K. Morris  Baskett 

I would like to respond to your comment "It is as if SDL has almost entirely disappeared from the radar screen". and "why SDL research seems to have receded into oblivion"

It has not disappeared, I would say, its just been renamed - self determined learning/heutagogy and lifelong learning. 

i think the challenge with SDL/heutagogy is the ease at which to perform activities but assessment using this strategies is very complex. Ironically, the complexity theory is a good fit. another challenge is adequately being able to theorise these concepts.

i attach a useful link to add to this.

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1076

I think it is not really disappeared but being implemented in other themes and fields with different 'brand'; medical and health, e-learning, volunteerism etc. I am still believe that SDL is on of the pillars of AL...

Nice to see this discussion is still alive!  You might be interested in this historical review recently published that tries to trace how SDL has evolved over the past 50 years and more:  http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/feduc.2017.00006/full 

This issue is an interesting topic to discuss. It may be receded into oblivion as you said as a result of its nature as a needed learning target, as educationally, it is usually related to the certain education approaches such as problem solving and Problem Based Education (PBL) in addition to other innovative approaches used in health schools whether medical or nursing, and how could be practiced in schools adopted them. Also, Self-directed learning is one of the basic program and courses intended learning outcomes (ILOs) of health schools regardless using the innovative approaches or the traditional one as a requirement for program and school accreditation. So, health schools focus on its achievement rather than researching it.

However, it is still a rich variable to be researched whether this research geared to assess the level of its achievement, factors interfering with it positively or negatively and how could be improved. In addition, the economical university participation isn't a determinant factor in conducting research on SDL. I believe that the researcher who wants to do this research will do, even with his/her own cost.

"Who is afraid of Self Directed Learning?"

Part of the answer to your question may be revealed by answering the question above.

Possible directions:

1) Educational institutions are: board members, program directors, quality control officers and so on; for obvious reason: (the illusion of) order, control, money.

2) Some/many educationalists are: for those raised in an educational paradigm that firmly attaches learning goals, course materials and assessment matrices, genuine learner autonomy may be a dangerous thing

3) Students are: to carry out SDL-experiments with populations of spoon-fed learners may be (too) exciting, not in the least for the students involved.

It is safe to say Self Directed Learning itself didn't catch on like wild-fire, the research wasn't going to stay, having no domain for investigating its main concepts.

Still, in our medical school we are trying to implement and study self directed learning as an integral part of life long and life wide learning. Our PhD Tamara van Woezik will finish her PhD on SDL in medical education next year (2020). I hope she will forgive me for sharing one anecdote with you from the swamps of scientific publishing. Her first paper on Open Space Technology was rejected a couple of times before we managed to publish it. One of the editors said they didn't publish a lot of papers any more on online education (sic!), whereas online education had absolutely nothing to do with it. This particular editor obviously had not read the manuscript at all. I guess what that anecdote shows is that misconceptions of SDL abound.