The Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction
The Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI) was designed to enable educators to teach students to become causal agents in their own lives and to teach them to self-direct learning. Through implementation of the model, teachers can enable students to become self-regulated problem solvers and learn to set their own transition goals, take action on those goals, and self-evaluate and adjust their goals or plans as needed; in effect, to assume primary responsibility for transition and content area choices, decisions, and actions. The Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction provides teachers with a teaching model that supports them in their efforts to promote their students’ self-determination. Instruction using the model provides students with a goal-setting and problem-solving strategy to achieve student-directed outcomes.
Implementation of the model consists of a three-phase instructional process: (a) set a goal, (b) take action, and (c) adjust the goal or plan. The model revolves around a set of four student questions in each phase which students’ learn, modify to make their own, and apply to reach self-selected goals. There are teacher objectives linked to each student question, and educational supports identified for each instructional phase that teachers can use to enable students to self-direct learning. The model is based on a universal problem-solving strategy and can be used across multiple content areas. In each instructional phase, the student is the primary agent for choices, decisions, and actions, even when eventual actions are teacher-directed.
Students who are taught using the SDLMI have shown enhanced self-determination and tended to achieve, or exceed, their individually set outcomes. In addition, students, themselves, have reported that the model allows them to take an active part in their school work and that they enjoyed meeting and talking about their work with their teachers
The Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction was developed under the auspices of a Field-Initiated Project awarded to The Arc of the United States (Research in Self-Determination, PR #HO23C40126, Michael Wehmeyer, Ph.D. Principal Investigator, Susan Palmer, Ph.D., Project Director; Martin Agran, Ph.D., Utah State University, Dennis Mithaug, Ph.D., Columbia University Teachers College and James Martin, Ph.D., University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Project Consultants).
Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 8/23/06 from http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/sped/tri/selfdeterminedmodel.htm