Facilitating Student Empowerment and Agency Through the “Scaffolded Autonomy” Approach to Curriculum Design

In this chapter, the authors introduce, define, and describe an approach to designing and implementing learning activities. This approach involves learners in the collaborative design of curriculum and assessment and allows them to apply their background knowledge and interests to course content. Through intentional course design and implementation by course instructors and designers, the “Scaffolded Autonomy” model the authors present allows learners to choose when and how they demonstrate content-knowledge construction. In this nontraditional approach, the authors focus on the “what, how, and why” of instructional design in order to provide relevant and meaningful instruction that serves adult learners in a variety of institutional contexts. This chapter includes the theoretical foundations of the scaffolded autonomy approach, a description of the design and implementation of the scaffolded autonomy approach, and examples of how the scaffolded autonomy can be applied in a competency-based classroom.