Why Independent Learning Is Best Done Together

The Silent Classroom Illusion

As educators, we want to reward independence, and rightly so. The ability to think and act for oneself is key to success at university, the workplace and the wider world. The question, however, is: what does true independence look like?

Take an English classroom, for example, where one student might be silently reproducing a model paragraph or copying out excessively long quotations. They quickly produce a page of work and do not ask for any additional help.

Next to this student are two others who are arguing about a character’s motivations. To defend their arguments, they pick up their copies of Macbeth and challenge each other’s assumptions with textual evidence. One of them raises their hand and asks the teacher to clarify what happens in an earlier scene.

Asking questions is not necessarily evidence of dependence. There is a big difference between a student asking “What should I write?” and a student who has identified a gap in their knowledge. In fact, knowing when another person’s knowledge is required is itself an act of independent judgement.

The mistake is not asking students to work alone; working alone is an important skill for assessments and is valuable for reflection, deep reading and sustained practice. The mistake is assuming that working alone proves independent thought, while working with others prevents it.

Independence or isolation?

Independent thought does not emerge fully formed. Our students develop it by questioning the ideas of their peers and teachers before learning to take ownership of their own.

Research by Neil Mercer, Rupert Wegerif and Lyn Dawes into ‘exploratory talk’ (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0141192990250107) shows just how productive classroom noise can be. Children taught how to question ideas, provide reasons and reach shared decisions went on to perform better on reasoning tasks completed alone. Their conversations did not replace independent thought; they allowed it to be tested and refined.

The same principle should shape online learning. Independence is easily confused with navigation in the world of educational technology; students clicking through an activity alone may be following a path in which every decision has been made for them. We should expect strong digital resources to do something more; they must leave space for young people to make connections, pursue their curiosity and form judgements. Online, an entrepreneur’s story could lead a student from calculating interest and profit to asking broader ethical questions about what businesses owe their workers, customers and the wider world. Young people today may have access to more information than ever, but access alone is rarely enough. At its best, educational technology should use other people’s knowledge as a springboard without ever allowing it to take over the learner’s thinking.

Whether learning happens through classroom conversation or digital resources, the measure of independence should remain the same. The question we should ask in schools, then, is not whether students are working alone, but whether they are thinking for themselves.

Did they challenge an assumption? Did they reconsider their own reasoning? And crucially, could they draw upon another person’s knowledge without surrendering their own judgement?

If so, our students are thinking independently.

That is the independence education should champion, whatever the volume of the room.

Author: Charlotte Doman, Education Consultant