The Self-directed Learning And Its Significance To The Learning Society

The learning society is a new pattern for social development, a new stage of historic development marking the human civilization and progress. Establishing the lifelong learning system and the learning society is one of the hot problems concerning today's education and social development discussed throughout the world. Most methods taken by each country to establish the lifelong learning system and the learning society are focused on providing more learning opportunities and enlarging the people's participation in the lifelong learning, while neglecting the important internal factor that influences the process, that is, the capability of lifelong learning of the social members. The learning opportunities offered by the society such as education and trainings can only work effectively when the social members possess the motivation and capability of lifelong learning. The self-directed learning is the main way of learning for the adults. Due to its flexibility and universality, to cultivate adults' capability for the self-directed learning is the effective approach to improve adults' learning capability. This thesis proceeds from the self-directed learning research, exploring how our country can take the route of the learning society better and faster against the background of the national situation of "the relative insufficiency of per-capita education resources". In the learning society, neither individuals nor the organizations want to have their learning off their posts, so the idealist learning form is to upgrade and master the new knowledge by making use of the learning resources whenever and wherever they have access to so as to adapt themselves to the ever-changing society. Thus, the self-directed learning caters to the need of the learning society. This thesis mainly conducts its research by analyzing the great amount of first-hand literature. There are many relevant articles in this regard both home and abroad, but some of them are lacking in-depth analysis which is largely caused, according to the author, by the severe insufficiency of valuable literature. As for the data, this thesis provides some new literature which on the one hand, helps the author have a deeper understanding of the self-directed learning theory and evolution of the learning society, and on the other hand, adds the reliable information for reference to the research in this regard in our country. The body of this thesis is made up of three parts. The first part makes a systemic introduction of the research trends of the self-directed study theory both home and abroad and their representative self-directed learning patterns. The whole part focuses on exploring the meaning of the self-directed learning and summarizing its main characteristics. The second part searches for the internal relationship between the self-directed learning and the learning society on the basis of researching the evolution of the learning society and its characteristics. It comes to a conclusion that the self-directed learning is nothing but the key to open the learning society. Seeking for the intersection of the self-directed and the learning society doesn't mean the end of the research. On the contrary, it just breaks a new horizon for the learning society. The third part proceeds from the software and hardware that influences the establishment of the learning society, questing for the means and strategies to improve the capability of lifelong learning of the social members. This thesis makes a try to explore the establishment of the learning society in our country from the point of view of improving the lifelong learning capability of the social members. It is a new breakthrough to put the research on the microcosmic perspective and start the thoughts on the establishment of the learning society from the learning patterns, striving to provide the feasible proposal for the early establishment of the learning society in our country.