THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING VS. TEACHER-LED LEARNING OF ADVANCED SUBJECT MATTER ON GIFTED AND TALENTED STUDENTS

Abstract

The rapid expansion of online resources and the emergence of self-directed learning (SDL) opportunities have transformed traditional education methods. This raises the question of how well people can learn on their own without the aid of a human teacher. In our previous work (Leddo et al., 2017), we found that gifted and talented (GT) students learned basic computer programming equally well on their own or when taught by a human teacher while non-GT students learned better when taught by a human teacher than on their own. This raises the question of how well students can continue to learn on their own as the subject matter becomes more advanced. Nittala et al. (2022) found an interaction effect when students were learning advanced material, specifically GT students did better on their own than with a teacher while non-GT students still learned better with a teacher. The present study investigates whether GT students can reach a “breaking point” when trying to learn very advanced material on their own compared to learning with a teacher. 24 GT middle and high school students learned a very advanced topic in biology, taught either by a teacher or by reading a scientific publication (self-directed learning-SDL). The results showed that GT students performed significantly better when learning on their own than when learning with a teacher. Future research should focus on what knowledge-building mechanisms are mediating this trend in which the more difficult the subject matter, the better GT students learn on their own than with a teacher.