The purpose of this study was to investigate the tenability of a proposed path-analytic model relating resourcefulness and persistence in the context of adult autonomous learning. Data collected from a nonprobability sample of 492 American adults using valid and reliable measures for resourcefulness and persistence were analyzed. Results suggest that although adults intend to persist in valued learning activities, they often do not choose to engage in such activities. Methods are discussed that may help educators foster autonomous learning tendencies in their students, thereby supporting their development as lifelong learners.
The need to understand contemporary adult learners and the methods that promote continual, sustained learning is of paramount importance particularly for doctoral programs, but more specifically for online doctoral programs. The online format is viewed as an alternative way to learn in a technologically driven society that focuses on time, opportunity, and convenience as critical considerations for learning endeavors. An examination of the factors associated with attrition in doctoral programs includes understanding and confronting personal and institutional barriers to successful matriculation.
Researchers have identified general characteristics of effective graduate students such as motivation, attitude, collegiality, writing/communication skills, values and integrity (Walpole, Burton, Kanyi, & Jackenthal, 2002) but have not established a clear understanding of the specific characteristics that facilitate or obstruct enduring and sustained learning.
This paper proposes a conceptual model that includes attributes of learner autonomy (desire, resourcefulness, initiative, and persistence in learning) as influential mediators of self‐efficacy and motivation for learning and may improve retention and completion rates in higher education.
Confessore (1992) proposed that desire, initiative, resourcefulness and persistence are critical factors for understanding why adults engage in independent and self‐directed learning endeavors. A series of four studies identified the conative factors associated with each construct through the development of a conceptual model that provides a framework for understanding autonomous learning. It is proposed that these constructs are embedded in the larger construct of learner autonomy. A learner who can exhibit personal autonomy will exhibit all of the identified behaviors identified as characteristic behaviors of autonomous learning. The series of four studies (desire, resourcefulness, initiative, and persistence) individually produced valid and reliable instruments, and ultimately produced a single instrument, The Learner Autonomy Profile, that quantifies an individual's intentions to engage in autonomous learning endeavors.
The purpose of this qualitative study was to determine the degree to which the tutorial method used with bachelor’s and master’s students at the University of Oxford promotes constructs (e.g., desire, resourcefulness, initiative, persistence, and self-efficacy) associated with learner autonomy. As learner autonomy—subsumed under the general field of self-directed learning—has been studied and posited as being an important goal of higher education that can support personally-chosen trajectories long after graduation, instructional methods that promote this psychological undergirding of human agency are needed. The findings reveal a development of actual learning and study skills; however, in support of learner autonomy, the findings reveal a development of self-efficacy in these same skills as well as in learner independence, which is critical to engaging in autonomous learning activities.
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