The National Microschooling Center’s annual microschooling sector analysis data recently revealed that project-based learning (PBL) and self-directed education (SDE) are the top two educational approaches being considered by prospective microschool founders. As an advocate for passion-led learning, I am pleased to see that this is the direction many are heading.
Project-based and self-directed learning means supporting students to learn through real interests, personal goals, and exposure to new opportunities. Both of these methods embrace the fact that we don’t know what hard skills will be required for the jobs of the future and instead emphasize the durable skills that many employers are now seeking—including creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and adaptability.
When I first transitioned my own homeschool to a more interest-led approach, I found myself asking a central question: If we want children to be prepared for life, not just tests or college, what should learning actually look like?
American psychology researcher and scholar Peter Gray recently ran a small study where he posed these questions: What courses from your formal schooling years serve you in your real life now? Which courses do you think would have been helpful? After noting that most respondents had a much easier time listing things they wished they had learned in school, he offered this observation:
It seems strange… that we have a compulsory education system that teaches stuff quite divorced from people’s real lives and needs… If kids must go to school, we should at least be offering lessons that are likely to improve their lives in the long run.
PBL and SDE methods prepare students for real life because they look more like real life:
- Solve problems that matter to you.
- Seek information when you need it.
- Collaborate.
- Revise your work.
- Create things for real audiences.
- Manage time and resources.
- Learn new skills as you pursue interests and passions.
Preparing for Employment
From this list above, you can see how self-directed learning can develop entrepreneurs, but it also can create better employees.
As an employer, I have observed what makes a good employee, and how learning to jump through hoops or do the bare minimum to get a grade can hinder high schoolers from becoming hard workers. For example, my husband and I ran a bakery for several years before we opened our school. We were always surprised how many of our high-school-age employees seemed to have never swept a floor. You can tell your boss you “swept” and still not have a clean floor, just like you can turn in a completed worksheet but still not know the material. But in a restaurant, you will have to do the task again until it is actually clean. There is no “completed assignment” box that gets checked and then graded on a curve. A floor is either clean or it’s not, and this requires mastering a skill rather than completing an assignment.
In PBL, projects require task-list management and often require fully seeing one task through before the next one will be feasible. There is no cheat code for real-world, hands-on creating, and when a shortcut is taken, students often get to see the real results of that.
Additionally, learning environments full of kids working on crafts, cardboard builds, and robotics tend to require the students to clean up after themselves, which means that many will at least experience sweeping before their first restaurant job.
Getting to Know Your Strengths and Interests Before You Need to Choose a Career Path or Major
The goal of traditional K-12 school tends to be to prepare students to do more school. Although this may be effective for kids choosing careers that require a degree, this is not the right path for every student. Additionally, many companies are now removing their degree requirements, preferring to use skills-based hiring methods.
Hannah Maruyama of the Degree Free Foundation recommends a simple framework to help students clarify their career path, removing college as the default path for graduating high schoolers. She offers these four questions:
- Income: What take-home pay do you need in order to support the kind of life you want to live?
- Schedule: What hours, days, and level of flexibility do you prefer?
- Work Environment: What kind of work environment do you like to be in? Shop, office, the field, or remote?
- Location: Where in the world do you want to live and work?
Using this framework, teen and young adult learners can reverse-engineer their learning to work toward specific career goals, one of which may or may not include a college degree. But they can’t answer these questions without first having explored a variety of options. Schools using PBL and SDE are perfect spaces for young people to explore a variety of interests in real-world ways.
Increased Well-Being of Students (and Teachers!)
The longer I work with students in my own interest-led microschool, the more I see that the real value here is building lifelong healthy habits. Kids see that growth has ebb and flow, progress is made by consistent, even small efforts, and that rest and reflection are parts of the process.
Many of the projects that kids do will probably not turn into their career paths, but each one they finish builds their confidence and skill set. Each opportunity they explore gives them information about who they are and what lights them up. The goal is for them to become adults with a strong sense of self, a healthy work ethic, and skills to pursue their ideas and goals—including the ability to learn new skills along the way.
I am hopeful for a future filled with adults who were given space as kids to learn in these ways!
