Ann-Merete Iversen

Learning, Leading, and Letting Go of Control: Learner-Led Approaches in Education

The article introduces a new term in higher education: learner-led approaches in education (LED). This does not represent a single approach or dogma to replace existing dogmas, but a way of approaching learning and education that mirrors the complexity of society as it develops. LED is based on the assumption that all students have their own unique approach to learning and therefore have the potential to design learning processes that are meaningful for them. This removes focus from the teacher and the teaching to the learner and the learning. It builds on the student’s motivation and experienced meaningfulness as a driving force, and hence the term learner led. The methods applied in LED change over time, as different learners and teachers together co-create and design methods and approaches appropriate at that particular time, in that particular context and for that particular student or group of students.

Co-Creating Knowledge

The modern school, at its best, is a satisfying extension of the unreality of societal perception. As we enter the conclusion of an industrializing age, I recognize that, within its walls, lectures are concerned with an abstract dream of future usefulness, while life is happening between classes. Half of the time, and half asleep, teachers and students keep each other caught in a fiction of relevance: Relevance of knowledge to our lives, relevance of the relationships to each other, and relevance to the questions of our time and to the society in which we live.