One strong message came out of the interviews and literature review: self-direction is critical to the learning process. Learners, practitioners, and researchers, academics, and employers all seem to agree on the importance of this link.

However, I found many different perspectives on:

• what is involved in self-management and self-direction

• what approaches literacy programs should take to support this area

• whether it is useful to think about self-management and self-direction as a set of skills

The project raised many questions that made it important to explore broader research. What I found was that there is a whole movement of research in a broad range of fields challenging the idea that skills can be taught in isolation and easily applied to other situations. This research describes, instead, a social view of knowledge, literacy and learning that depends on context, meaning, and relationships.

The research provided a foundation for understanding the complexity and scope of self-direction in learning. I identified the key ideas and principles from the research and combined them in a model, called Building Self-Awareness and Self-Direction. This model sets out new directions for practice in the area of self-direction in learning (see model).