Self-Directed Growth

Self-Directed Growth is a valuable map to the no-man’s land where education, philosophy, adult-development, and counseling meet. This is the trackless waste that we usually encounter when we try to explore the relation between learning and personal meaning. The book helps the student wrestle with issues of identity, knowledge, change, and purpose. Betteryet, it does so in a clear sequence of steps that keep the student on track. With the average” student today being more and more likely to be beyond the traditional college age, this map of the territory of self-directed learning is long overdue. Too many of its would-be competitors err either by being about adult education,” while leaving out anything for learners themselves, or by being cookbooks full of recipes for how to throw off the past or dive into the future, while leaving out the critical process of learning. Robertson’s book will be used in many ways. Self-directed learners, either inside an educational institution or outside, will use it to launch themselves on journeys of self-discovery. Groups of them, working under the guidance of a mentor, will use it as a text for exciting new kinds of courses. And teachers will use it as a guide to reorienting their own efforts away from implanting content and toward developing students.