28 Sep

Posted at 09:06h in Uncategorized

Coco Kirkland joined Self Managed Learning (SML) College aged 13. She had been constantly in trouble in her mainstream school, because the teachers accused her of just doodling all the time. She is also diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. Having been labelled naughty, just because she sees herself as a visual learner, she decided she didn’t want to stay in mainstream school. In her first year at SML College, she did continue her doodling and cartoon drawing and other visual activities as well as chatting to fellow students. To anyone observing her, she seemed to be doing nothing else. However, she was...

15 Sep

Posted at 09:00h in Uncategorized

(Published in Education Revolution in the USA; 2010) Too often there is confusion about the difference between structure and control when talking about freedom or autonomy for learners. I want to say something about these ideas and to give examples from our practice in using Self Managed Learning. My case is that we (adults) should support young people to grow up to be autonomous human beings who can lead a good life, as created by themselves (which includes moral, social and ecological dimensions). We need to provide structures for autonomy. And good structures reduce control. The ideal of autonomy is espoused in...

02 Sep

Posted at 09:20h in News

The following is an extract from the last chapter of ‘Self Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm’ by Dr Ian Cunningham. It is 29 March 2020 and we were in the early stages in England of the coronavirus or Covid-19 crisis. Schools have been closed and many problems are occurring from this. One example is around the well-being of children. Walker, 2020, comments that even at this early stages of the crisis, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and its phone service, Childline, have been inundated with calls from worried children. For instance, she said that...

06 Aug

Posted at 08:58h in Uncategorized

(Published in LibEd journal, Summer 2014, online journal) In the summer of 2014 there was a national conference on ‘Student Voice’ held in London to which schools (teachers and students) were invited. The idea was to explore ways for young people to have more of a voice in decisions in school. There has been a longstanding interest in this with a growing literature praising the value of giving students more of a voice. I chair the Governing Body of Self Managed Learning (SML) College in Brighton. Given our role in providing a place where students manage their own learning it seemed useful...

14 Apr

Posted at 09:11h in Uncategorized

(Published in Lorimer, D. and Robinson, O. (2010) The New Renaissance, Floris Books, Edinburgh) IAN CUNNINGHAM bio. Ian Cunningham BSc, MA, PhD, FIoD, FRSA, Chartered FCIPD, FCMI is Visiting Professor at Middlesex University; chair of Strategic Developments International Ltd and chair of the Centre for Self Managed Learning. Previous positions have included Chief Executive of Roffey Park Institute; Senior Research Fellow in International Leadership at Ashridge Management College; Visiting Professor in Education Management in the Graduate School of Education, University of Utah; Visiting Fellow in Innovation in Education at the University of Sussex. He has published seven books and over one hundred...

04 Jul

Posted at 09:28h in Uncategorized

The title of this review is the title of Rose Luckin’s latest book and Rose delivered our Presidential Lecture on July 8 at SML College on this topic. Her chair at UCL Institute of Education is in Learner Centred Design. It’s in that capacity that we have worked together in the past and in her latest book she does make reference to research that she did with our students in SML College. So I can’t suggest that this review is a totally independent and unbiased piece. We have both been totally committed to the notion of learner centred design in terms...