Five research-based, learner-centered learning objectives for college students

In my classes, I challenge my students to work towards five learning objectives. These learning objectives are based on research results in the psychology of learning, the science of expertise development, as well as in the scholarship of antiracism and antioppression. I design these learning objectives to be learner centered so that students can create meaning from this work (rather than having me tell them what they need to learn). This work is related to both my hierarchy of learning needs and my model for the 10 categories and the 4 parts of learning. This post introduces and explores these learning objectives.

I present these learning objectives as follows:

“When I finish my learning journey in college, I will:

1. System navigation: Wield effective and efficient learning techniques, creative thinking, and productivity skills to help me thrive as I navigate school systems, economic structures, and political policies that are designed to disempower me, to exploit my labor, to extract wealth from my local economy, and to undermine democratic policies so that ultrawealthy people can use legal corruption to capture our democracy to enact policies that benefit themselves at the expense of the 99.9%.  I can successfully navigate these harmful systems to build a life I love and change my world to align with my most cherished values.
   
   To do navigate this school system, I build  and leverage the following learning skills:
   
   1A. Belief: Develop deep belief in myself, faith in my abilities to accomplish anything I set my mind to and hope for my future.
   
   1B. Purpose: Create and refine a deeply held sense of purpose for my life that reflects the values I cherish and includes my thoughts about myself, the people I love most, my communities, and my society. Moreover, I will be able to draw on this purpose and use multiple sources of intrinsic motivation to give my best effort with both grit and tenacity to overcome any obstacle I face and drive my learning far into the future.
   
   1C. Meta-Learning: Practice strategic deep learning skills so that I can teach myself anything I want to learn at any level, build teams of people around me to support my learning, and manage myself like a professional to successfully navigate my world as I work towards the goals I care most about.
   
   1D. Expertise: Cultivate and reinforce content expertise and mastery in subjects that I care about that relate to my academic, career, and personal goals, improve my capacity to grow and learn, and help me enjoy freedom in my life.
   
   
2. System Transformation: Know how effectively organize and advocate for system transformation at a local level so that I can use my hard-earned knowledge, strength, and wisdom along with every bit of democratic power I can imagine to empower future generations, create the world I want to live in, and fight for people in my communities who have the least systemic power.”

I say that the first four learning objectives (belief, purpose, meta-learning, and expertise) focus on the process of system navigation.

This is how I define system navigation for my students:

System navigation as the process of protecting yourself against harmful policies that you encounter in your formal education so that you can accomplish your academic and career goals without internalizing the harm you suffer along the way.

Some people mistake this as self-actualization. I beg to differ. The way I think about system navigation is not the same way I hear others use the term self-actualization. In fact, these two ideas are different in my mind. Perhaps I should call this anti-oppressive system navigation? I’m not sure. As I write I find that I may need more descriptive language.

In the way I think about it, system navigation is all about avoiding internalized oppression while trying to navigate a system that is harmful. This process involves healing and an explicit focus on identifying the harms within the system without internalizing the trauma. Self-actualization is usually defined as follows: “self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for them [the individual] to become actualized in what they are potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.”

To illustrate the difference, let’s run a thought experiment. Imagine someone who works as an overseer in the 1850’s on a large plantation somewhere in the southern US (say a state like Alabama or Florida). That overseer might consider themselves to be self-actualized: they might have become the best possible overseer that they can become. They keep dutiful watch over the enslaved people under their power and they successfully use violence to keep the enslaved people subservient. The overseer does all this while executing their duties with high levels of efficiency and effectiveness. However, in the process, this oversee uses brutal torture and high levels of violence on the enslaved population they oversee. Daily, this overseer must detach themselves from their humanity to execute their job. To do this, the overseer must suppress crucial features of their own humanity: their empathy, compassion, sense of justice, ability to think critically about power hierarchy, sense of moral judgment, etc. In other words, although the overseer has become self-actualized in their work, they have failed to navigate the system of slavery without internalizing the oppressive beliefs and policies required to uphold that system. In my mind, I coach my students to navigate our education system in ways that maintain their humanity and stay true to the values they hold most dear to their hearts.  

Moving on from the first four learning objectives that focus on system navigation, the fifth learning objective I challenge my students to work towards focuses on a process which I call system transformation.

I define the phrase system transformation as the process of imaging and advocating for anti-oppressive policies that more closely align with your desires for your life, your loved owns, and your society.