Self Managed Learning and self directed learning: what’s the difference?

By Dr Ian Cunningham

Self Managed Learning and self directed learning share an important commitment: people should have a meaningful say in what they learn and how they learn it. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but they do not necessarily describe the same approach.

Self directed learning is a broad term, used in different ways across different settings. Self Managed Learning describes a specific approach that combines learner autonomy with learning agreements and small learning groups, where people support and challenge one another.

Having developed the Self Managed Learning approach and worked with it for more than half a century, I believe this distinction is useful. It helps explain why we use particular structures and what those structures are intended to achieve.

A central lesson from my work is that asking for structure and support does not necessarily mean asking someone else to take control. People can take charge of their learning while benefiting from relationships, constructive feedback and opportunities to question their assumptions.

Freedom to learn, with support

My starting point is learning: the process through which people develop skills, explore ideas, understand themselves and make changes in their lives. Learning happens throughout life, in many places and through many experiences. It is much wider than what happens in classrooms or through an imposed curriculum.

This matters when we work with young people. We need to recognise them as people with their own interests, perspectives and aspirations, rather than assuming that adults should always decide what they need to learn.

Giving young people a meaningful say does not mean leaving them to work everything out alone. Freedom to learn can be strengthened by thoughtful support. The question is how to provide that support without taking ownership of the learning away from the learner.

In Self Managed Learning, we describe this as providing structures for autonomy.

Why “managed” rather than “directed”?

We often use the word “manage” to describe how we deal with the circumstances of our lives. We manage relationships, work through problems and find ways to achieve things within a wider context.

That is the sense in which I use it here. Managing your learning involves considering what matters to you, deciding how to proceed, finding support and resources, and reviewing what happens. It also involves recognising that you live and learn alongside other people.

My thinking was influenced by work with organisations and self-managing teams. These teams had considerable freedom to decide how to organise their work, while remaining part of a wider organisation. However they were not self directing. The teams had to work to the direction of the business.

Learning has a similar social dimension. We may make our own decisions, but the opportunities available to us, the help we receive and the consequences of our actions involve other people. Autonomy and interdependence can work together. In running programmes in schools we have been clear that we are helping students manage their relationship  with the school – but they could not necessarily self direct.

The word “managed” captures this combination of personal responsibility and attention to context.. It means helping people develop the ability to manage their own learning while accepting the realities of their context.

How the approach developed

In 1973, I was part of the team that created the School for Independent Study at North East London Polytechnic. Students could propose their own programmes of study, provided they could justify their work through a learning agreement that set out their goals and how their achievement would be assessed. They could undertake a degree through this route.

This gave students considerable freedom. However, some wanted more support. They found it difficult to get constructive feedback, felt isolated or missed the peer relationships that could develop within a more conventional degree programme.

An important distinction emerged: they were not asking for more control; they were asking for more structure and support.

At the same time, I was working with action learning in organisations. Managers met in small groups to help one another learn and make changes in their workplaces. I saw the potential to bring this group process together with learning agreements.

I began developing learning groups in which students could discuss their plans, support one another and receive help from me. This combination became central to the Self Managed Learning approach I have used ever since.

What happens in Self Managed Learning?

Two connected structures are central: the learning agreement and the learning group.

The learning agreement

A learning agreement helps someone make their intentions explicit. It sets out what they want to achieve, how they might approach it and how they will recognise progress.

The learner develops the agreement through discussion with their learning group. Rather than receiving a plan written for them, they shape their own learning. However it is important that they agree this document with their learning group.

The agreement provides a basis for reflection and review. It makes it possible to discuss whether an approach is working, what help is needed and whether the learner’s goals should change.

The learning group

The learning group provides continuing support through regular meetings. It is a place to discuss goals, explore difficulties, ask for help and learn from other people’s experiences.

Support includes constructive challenge. Group members can help one another examine assumptions, consider alternatives and see a problem differently. This is particularly valuable when someone is stuck or has become narrowly focused on one way of thinking.

Through this process, learners also practise listening, communicating and taking other people seriously. They take responsibility for their learning while contributing to the learning of others. This interdependent is important – learning should go beyond individualistic needs.

Learning to question the starting point

Sometimes effective learning means improving how we do something. At other times, we need to reconsider what we are trying to do in the first place.

Chris Argyris described this distinction through the ideas of single-loop and double-loop learning. In everyday terms, we can ask both “How can I do this better?” and “Are my underlying assumptions right?” Single loop learning is about doing things right. However double loop learning is about challenging – am I doing the right thing? I may be learning knowledge that, when we step back or are challenged by others, I realise is taking me down the wrong track.

Matthew Syed explores a related difficulty in Black Box Thinking: our reluctance to learn from mistakes when doing so would challenge beliefs or judgements in which we have invested heavily. Drawing on Leon Festinger’s work on cognitive dissonance, he explains how we find ways to defend our existing position rather than reconsider it. In this case it’s a way of avoiding double-loop learning.

Taking responsibility for our learning does not automatically protect us from this tendency. We can choose sources that reinforce what we already believe, particularly online, where recommendations may repeatedly present similar perspectives.

A learning group can help by bringing other people’s questions and experiences into the discussion. Its value depends on members being willing to challenge one another constructively and reconsider their own assumptions.

For example, in a Self Managed Learning programme for school heads, one participant initially wanted to improve student voice. He was exploring ways of gathering students’ views.

Through discussion and challenge in his learning group, he began to consider a deeper question: where did power lie in the school, and what would it mean for students to have genuine influence?

The learning group helped him move beyond improving a consultation process to examining the assumptions behind it. And changing what he did.

This capacity to question a starting point matters for young people too. Being able to choose a topic is valuable; being helped to examine evidence, consider different perspectives and rethink a plan can deepen the learning.

How does this differ from self directed learning?

There is no single version of self directed learning. Some approaches place greater weight on individual independence, while others emphasise a balance between independence and interdependence, with community, democratic participation and mutual support at their centre.

In my experience, individualistic interpretations have been particularly prominent in some American discussions, while many European approaches have placed greater emphasis on learning within a community. However, the distinction cannot be drawn simply along geographical lines: there are also American schools and communities with strong democratic and collaborative traditions.

Perhaps the most important American theory underpinning self-directed learning is Ryan and Deci’s self-determination theory emphasising psychological wellness. They emphasise three key factors underpinning such psychological wellness as autonomy, competence and relatedness. To quote their own words:

• autonomy concerns a sense of initiative and ownership in one’s actions
• competence concerns the feeling of mastery, a sense that one can succeed and grow
• relatedness concerns a sense of belonging and connection

In their discussion of these three factors they emphasise that they are basic psychological needs that must be met in education.

As with many psychologists (and Duckworth owns up to having made this error) they emphasise the individual as the focus of attention and neglect for instance socio-economic and political factors. If we take self-determination theory some of the groups that would do well in meeting such basic psychological needs would include the Mafia, who meet these three criteria extremely well especially a clear competence in murder and extortion and the value of family; gangs such as drug dealing gangs; and Internet scammers.

Less dramatic examples include the psychologically well going to work for tobacco manufacturers or makers of unhealthy foods. The producers of dangerous pharmaceuticals such as opioids could also meet criteria for psychological wellness. When I was doing my chemistry degree back in the early 1960s despite the absence of the Internet all of us knew that Porton Down was involved in chemical and biological warfare and none of my friends would have gone to work there. However chemists and biologists did do - and continue to do.

What’s missing from this and other psychological theories is the social context. Morality and ethics need to be part of focus on working with young people and helping their development. Learning communities address these kind of social issues through daily practice where the notion of caring about others and kindness to others is central. 

Also I would argue that learning communities help young people to think more systemically and more about their place in nature and about connections to the wider issues affecting humanity. A further factor is the notion of learning to learn through the development of oneself through connections to others and to these wider frameworks. Most people recognise the value of learning to learn throughout life and that learning is more than just being competent but also includes learning about oneself and about one’s relationships to nature and the planet.

The international community committed to democratic education illustrates the importance of interdependence. The International Democratic Education Conference brings together people from democratic schools and learning communitiesto exchange ideas and learn from one another.

Within these settings, freedom to pursue individual interests sits alongside shared decision-making and responsibility towards others. Many learning communities working with young people in Britain take this combination seriously.

Many supporters of democratic education also describe their approach as self directed learning. I recognise the substantial overlap between Self Managed Learning and approaches that give learners real autonomy within supportive communities. I am not suggesting that self directed learning necessarily means learning alone.

Elsewhere, the same term can describe something more limited: students choosing between activities selected and organised by staff. That offers a degree of choice, but it is different from learners helping to decide what they want to learn, why it matters to them and how they will approach it.

An analogy is choosing a ready meal in a supermarket. You make the choice yourself, but the shop has already decided what is available, and someone else has determined the ingredients and how they are combined.

Cooking a meal involves a different kind of participation. You can decide what to make, choose the ingredients, develop your skills and adapt the result. If you are cooking for others, you also consider their needs and what they might enjoy.

Both involve choice, but they offer different opportunities to learn and take responsibility. We need to look at what learners can actually influence, rather than relying on the name given to an approach.

Beyond individual perseverance

The importance of interdependence is also highlighted by psychologist Angela Duckworth, author of Grit, which explores passion and perseverance in achieving long-term goals.

In a New York Times essay, she challenges the image of the solitary individual overcoming every difficulty through determination alone. She emphasises that the high performers she has studied credit other people with helping them succeed.

Personal effort needs to be understood alongside the relationships and support that make achievement possible. Asking for help is an important part of learning. She explicitly rejects the case that she made in ‘Grit’ saying that she now hates the book. A beautiful example of someone having the courage to undertake double-loop learning.

Syed’s discussion of David Beckham provides another useful example. He highlights Beckham’s commitment to practising particular techniques and learning from mistakes. That individual effort clearly matters, but I would place equal emphasis on the relationships that helped make it productive.

Beckham developed with support from his parents, alongside Manchester United’s Class of ’92, and under Sir Alex Ferguson, who gave young players opportunities to develop. Learning alongside peers and experienced professionals formed part of that environment.

For me, the lesson is that sustained practice and interdependent learning work together. We need to consider both what someone does for themselves and how other people help them develop.

This resonates with my experience of Self Managed Learning. Learning groups provide a structure through which people can offer encouragement, challenge assumptions and help each other move forward.

Listening to what learners want to learn

Support is most useful when it takes the learner’s own perspective seriously.

In work with a professional football club’s academy, I encountered individual learning plans written by coaches. Some included broad advice, such as a player needing to concentrate more during a match, without clearly explaining what the player could do to develop that ability.

When I asked the young players about their own learning priorities, they identified improving their weaker foot. This had not appeared in the plans I reviewed.

The example illustrates why it matters to ask learners what they think they need to learn, and to turn goals into actions they can understand and pursue. Adults may have valuable expertise, but they also need to listen.

Learning within a community

Taking charge of your learning also involves considering how your actions affect others. In a learning community, freedom needs to sit alongside care, kindness and shared responsibility.

For me, this means looking beyond an individual’s achievement. We should also ask how learning helps people understand their relationships, contribute to their communities and respond thoughtfully to wider social and environmental questions.

These are matters to explore through everyday practice: listening to others, discussing disagreements, offering help and considering the consequences of decisions. A learning group can provide a setting for this, while allowing each person to develop their own interests and aspirations.

Looking beyond the label

Self Managed Learning names a methodology in which learning agreements and learning groups work together to support autonomy, reflection and interdependent learning.

To understand any approach, we need to ask what learners can decide, what support they receive and whether they have opportunities to question the goals presented to them. We should also consider how they learn to work with others and contribute to their community.

Those questions tell us more than terminology alone.

Preparing for what comes next

Self Managed Learning is intended to help people beyond a particular programme. The ability to set goals, find resources, seek support, reflect on experience and change course can be useful throughout life.

At Self Managed Learning College, supporting young people’s next steps was an important part of our work. We were committed to helping every young person leaving at 16 or 17 move into something productive, whether further education, an apprenticeship or employment. Our aim was that no-one should leave without a route into education, employment or training. A goal that we achieved over 24 years of operating.

For me, the value of Self Managed Learning lies in people taking ownership of their learning while receiving support and challenge, and developing the capacity to learn with and from others.

Freedom to learn and supportive structure can reinforce one another. That is the principle behind Self Managed Learning, and why I believe it is useful to be clear about what the name means.

Explore Self Managed Learning in practice

Our three-part ebook series explores how adults can support young people to manage their own learning, decide what they want to learn and find ways to learn it.

Together, the books explain how to turn ideas and aspirations into a learning agreement, with questions, examples and practical guidance to help you get started.

Explore the Self Managed Learning ebook series

References

Ian Cunningham, Self Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm (2021), Routledge.

Ian Cunningham, The Wisdom of Strategic Learning: The Self Managed Learning Solution, second edition (1999), Gower.

Ian Cunningham, Ben Bennett and Graham Dawes, editors, Self Managed Learning in Action: Putting SML into Practice (2017), Routledge.

Matthew Syed, Black Box Thinking (2025), John Murray

Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (2016), Scribner