Student Ownership Essay

Taking ownership of one’s learning means that someone takes on his or her shoulder the responsibility of one’s personal growth. From my perspective I play a big role in my own learning. Education is the most precious asset a person can have, so the first beneficiary it’s me. Of course, my teacher/instructor/educator plays an essential role as well. When I was at the elementary schools, my parents and school’s teachers were certainly more responsible than me, but now that I am an adult, I think that I have more responsibility on my education/learning. Might there be a continuum from childhood to adulthood with regard to learning’s ownership? That is the big debate around Andragogy versus Pedagogy (Merriam, 2001). Actually, I can see that ownership

The methods and techniques used by him/her are crucial to this end. With this in mind, I can say that the structures of Discussion Forum and Learning Journal are really useful as they foster a cooperative climate where both my instructor and my peers hugely contribute to my learning experience and outcomes. One technic used (mainly by the instructor, but I will try to do my best to use it in my turn in the Discussion Forum) is maieutic, and to me it is one of the most powerful techniques for learning. The questions you usually provide here Samara are weighted suggestions, ideas, and food for thoughts. We could choose to respond in a naïve way, just based on our experiences and current knowledge, or, we could take those points you provided and try to make connections, deepen further our knowledge, researching, discussing them with our families, colleagues etc… and then return in the Discussion Forum, or Learning Journal with a summary, a distillate of new knowledge that can generate responses or, even better, other questions. We could even come up with new insights, lessons learned, etc…. and these insights will come from minds/people/ideas/thoughts from all over the world, from all background/education/socio-historical contexts. And, that’s unique and anyone can clearly see the benefits of this process. I think that UoPeople well represents what self-directed learning is, and I love its emphasis and encouragement on collective learning, emancipation, and translation of knowledge into practice and social action. My husband and I have been working in the field of mental health and health science for almost fifteen years now, and we feel that we have gained a lot of knowledge and experience, but there’s also so much to learn yet and the international/multicultural