From an NALL (New Approaches to Lifelong Learning)  Working Paper entitled The Iceberg of Informal Adult Learning by Allen Tough, guru of self-directed learning:

I found his comment about people who are “content” and “don’t see any need to learn” very intriguing.  My husband and I took a different route home from the vet and “learned” all kinds of things about our growing community.  There were new homes, new hotels, new dormitories.  It’s pretty superficial learning really yet there’s an underlying theme that we are coming to understand, that of growth.  So, without trying very hard, we learned something.

I agreed with his idea that learning was often invisible because it was shown as something else: writing a report or wiring the car.  Tough writes, “They don’t think: ‘I did some learning in order to do that task,’ they just think of the task.”  There are really two questions here: What did I learn to do that task? What did I learn from doing that task.

This blog is going to take on a larger context and expand to include adult learning. While I am going to continue my independent study of media literacy throughout the fall, I am adding an adult education component as part of a course I am taking. It just makes sense, I think. I have been engaging in adult learning all summer. (BTW, I prefer “adult learning” to “adult education” to refer to this process. “Education” seems to carry institutional connotations with it.) Doing an independent study, especially an emergent one the way I have been doing, is as close to you get to self-directed learning in graduate school. (Although I should comment that I have been very satisfied with the way my profs have allowed me to customize paper topics and projects to align with my content area.)

I’ve been doing the introductory reading for the course and have also developed a competency model for my proposed documentary filmmaking project. A pdf of the inspiration is attached to this post. Just wanted to record some initial comments. I think I’ll post them as individual posts so its easier to follow threads.

Documentary Filmmaker Competency Model