Preparing Students for Lifelong Learning: A Review of Instructional Methodologies.

In a climate of rapid change, increasing innovation, and proliferating knowledge, lifelong learning is an important educational objective. Lifelong learning skills need to be developed if educators intend for their students to stay current in their fields. Staying abreast of new innovations, research, techniques, and information is a prerequisite for successful decision-making and problem-solving on the job. This paper provides an overview of instructional methodologies--problem-based learning, intentional learning, reciprocal teaching, and cognitive apprenticeship--that prepare students for lifelong learning. Using collaboration, reflection, student autonomy, and intrinsically-motivating activities, these instructional methodologies help students develop the metacognitive and self-directed learning skills needed to remain competitive in an ever changing professional climate. (Contains 46 references.) (SWC) ******************************************************************************4;* Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** Preparing Students for Lifelong Learning: A Review of Instructional Methodologies Joanna C. Dunlap Regis University U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. o Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent Statement of Problem official OERI position or policy. In a climate of rapid change, increasing innovation, and proliferating knowledge, lifelong learning is an important educational objective. In order to keep current in their fields, people have to be willing and able to continually "retool" their knowledge and skill base. The need to be a continuous learner is especially apparent in the domains of medicine, law, business, engineering, and information technology because of the overwhelming explosion of information and technological advances in those fields. Nash (1994) reports: More than 6,000 scientific journal articles are written every day; Scientific and technical information currently increases 13 percent a year which means that this information doubles every 5.5 years; The rate of increase will soon jump to 40 percent per year due to the increasingly powerful information systems and the increasing population of scientists; and These increases will cause the scientific database to double every 20 months. Because of the exponential growth rate of information, knowledge and skills become obsolete before acquisition, let alone mastery, is possible. To effectively address the impact of the information explosion on the preparation of students for the future, professional schools and educators need to utilize instructional methodologies that not only help students acquire content knowledge and develop problem-solving and reasoning skills, but also develop lifelong learning skills. Importance of Lifelong Learning The knowledge explosion requires professionals to engage in lifelong learning if they intend to stay current let alone evolve, advance, and remain competitive in their profession. Therefore, lifelonglearning skill development is imperative if practitioners are expected to learn over the full expanse of their professional lives. Unfortunately, some of the practitioners that most need lifelong learning skills those with careers in illstructured, complex professions are not developing them during their formal education. Regarding the lack of lifelong-learning skill development in schools, Walton and Matthews (1989, p. 551) state, "Some doctors from medical schools with the usual type of curriculum behave as if they had been immunized against further learning, and many doctors often do not continue to learn sufficiently." Supporting this, a study examining doctors' performance on a recertification examination over a number of years found that their performance on questions related to changes and innovations in their fields declined with each passing year; this decline was attributed to the doctors' inability to acquire new knowledge, not as a result of forgetting previously acquired knowledge (Day, Norcini, Webster, Viner, & Chirico, 1988). "We teach most effectively when we help our students learn how to learn...not what to think and make and do in [the current year]; but how to think and how to learn for those years of life and profession than lie ahead" (Nash, 1994, p. 789). To achieve this requires moving away from a view of learning that is controlled outside the individual to a view of learning that is internally controlled by the individual (Overly, McQuigg, Silvernail, & Coppedge, 1980). Specifically, the ability to engage in lifelong learning is based on the development, and subsequent successful application, of two skill areas: metacognition and self-directedness. Metacognition Von Wright (1992, p. 64) defines metacognitive skills as "the steps that people take to regulate and modify the progress of their cognitive activity: to learn such skills is to acquire procedures which regulate cognitive rD processes." Glaser (1984) describes metacognitive or self-regulatory skills as knowing what one knows and does not know, predicting outcomes, planning ahead, efficiently apportioning time and cognitive resources, and monitoring one's efforts to solve a problem or learn. Metacognitive skills include taking conscious control of learning, "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY