Who is responsible for learning?

There is an old saying that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. It probably follows that you can get someone into the classroom but you can't make them learn. If we subscribe to the belief that for learning to occur there must be individual reflection or critical thinking about the experience or activity in which the "learner" is engaged, then it could be said that responsibility for learning rests with the learner. Is it just that simple - that the teacher can abdicate responsibility for student learning?

Perry (1990) in his work on the intellectual and ethical development of university students showed that beginning students may exhibit a "dualistic" approach to learning in that they see things as either/or and rely on the teacher to provide the answers. Students may then move through a series of developmental stages where eventually they make their own judgements and take responsibility for the making of meaning from course content. In this development process, the teacher's role is to assist a student's development towards greater individual responsibility. So how might the teacher assist in this process? Perhaps we need to look at the teaching and learning processes in the classroom.

Heron (1989) describes three different modes of facilitation which are applicable to the teaching and learning process. In hierarchical mode, the teacher takes full responsibility for all aspects of the learning process, such as setting learning objectives, interpreting and giving meaning to content, and providing structures for learning. In co-operative mode, power over the learning process is shared by the teacher and learners, with the teacher guiding and prompting students, and conferring and collaborating with them in relation to some decisions about content and processes. In autonomous mode, the teacher provides an environment conducive to learning, but students take responsibility for self-directed learning. Autonomous mode, for the teacher or facilitator, "does not mean the abdication of responsibility. It is the subtle art of creating conditions within which people can exercise full self-determination in their learning" (1989, p. 170).

Some academics might find it helpful to consider these modes as points in a continuum of teacher-student responsibility for learning and consider where they would locate themselves in terms of their overall style or approach in a unit. It might also be that within a unit a teacher will operate in different modes: taking full responsibility for some things (e.g. overall objectives, forms of assessment); negotiating other elements of a course (e.g. learning activities, weighting of different forms of assessment); and allowing the students to be responsible for other aspects of the course (e.g. problem solving, choice of essay topics).

• Heron, J. (1989). The facilitator"s handbook. London, UK: Kogan Page.
• Perry, W. G. (1990). Cognitive and ethical growth: The making of meaning. In A. W. Chickering & Associates, The modern American college (pp. 76-116). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.