1. Helping students take responsibility for their own academic performance

2. DEFINITION:

3.  Student motivation  Goal orientation  Self-efficacy  Internal locus of control  Meta-cognition  Self-regulation

4.  Extrinsic vs Intrinsic  Cultural factors  Attitudes toward education  Role of the teacher  Personal interest in a task  Perception of utility and value of the task  Increases student achievement

5.  Ability to make plans and set goals  High levels of commitment  Overcoming obstacles and challenges  Works in conjunction with self-efficacy to increase motivation

6.  Personal judgment of competency  Specific to a task  Builds on success

8.  Tendency to ascribe achievement and failure to either internal factors that can be controlled or external factors that are beyond control  Internal factors: effort, ability, motivation  External factors: luck, other’s actions, chance

9.  The ability to analyze, reflect on and understand our individual learning processes  Students who are aware of their own cognitive strengths and weaknesses are more likely to adjust and compensate for them.

10.  Ability of the learner to control interest, attitude and effort toward a task or goal

11.  Learning is perceived as a task, a demand or requirement that is a necessary imposition to achieve a goal.  Learners see aspects of parts as discrete and unrelated to each other or to other learning goals.  Learners avoid personal or other meanings the learning activities may have.  Learners rely on memorization, attempting to reproduce the surface of the learning task, repeating words, diagrams, etc. rather than rephrasing or elaborating as means of understanding.

12. Self-directed learners develop by a continuing process. It is unreasonable to expect people to become instantaneous self-directed learners when they have matured in an environment that:  challenged their personal integrity  that spoon fed them with information  that required conforming thought Environments that nurture, sustain, and develop personality and cognitive attributes are important in the development of self-directed learners.

13. It is difficult to implement inquiry with surface learners Implementing inquiry will help develop self- directed learners

14.  Carefully sequence inquiry activities to build from teacher-guided inquiry to student- directed inquiry over the school year.  Teach benchmark skills: measuring, graphing, graph interpretation, data collection, technology, etc… as the need arises.  Ask probing and leading questions.  Present assessment guidelines before the activity.  Allow students to revise and improve work.

15.  Allow time for students to present findings to the class for peer review.  Promote debate with evidence  Push students to develop and defend their own interpretations  Use models to mediate between experience and concepts  Give students time to reflect and make meaning from inquiry experience

16.  Encourage students to raise questions, to ask whether the information they have is valid and useful  Encourage self evaluation and reflection  Encourage them to pursue areas that interest them  Identify resources that students can use to help them learn  Encourage peer teaching formally or informally through group assignments and projects

17. 1. the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to be acquired by the learner (learning objectives); 2. how these objectives are to be accomplished (learning resources and strategies); 3. the target date for their accomplishment; 4. what evidence will be presented to demonstrate that the objectives have been accomplished; and 5. how this evidence will be judged or validated. In academic settings the contract also specifies how much credit is to be awarded and what grade is to be given

18. Learning Contract Form Learner: ______________________ Course: _______ Instructor: _____________ Contract Grade: _____  What are you going to learn (objectives)  How are you going to learn it (resources/strategies)  Target date for completion  How are you going to know that you learned it (evidence)  How are you going to prove you learned (verification)

19.  Permits a teacher to seize upon powerful motivating forces within individual students  Shifts responsibility for learning from the teacher to the student  Offers an incentive by insuring success under known conditions  Students are challenged without being threatened

20. Using given resources, create a general science class learning contract for your students. Create a learning contract for yourself as an instructor. Could this be used as a first week of school activity?