Self-Governance Within the Individual and the School as The Foundation of Whole Child Education

(The concept of Self-Governance in formal education sparked the interest of a friend and colleague. He asked if I would provide him a capsule version and an extended explanation of my understanding of the concept in its application to Whole Child Education. The following is the short version. A rewritten introductory paragraph is added for this post. The extended version will be posted within the next few days.)

Although trendy now, educating the Whole Child has been around for decades. It started in earnest, in my view, with accepting Howard Gardner's concept of Multiple Intelligences and then folding its particulars into the way schooling does its thing with the result that both the concept and its application changed noting of note. And that's the problem here: schooling done the way it is remains the way it is regardless of trend. Currently, educating the whole child near exclusively has taken the form of added curriculum stressing the direct instruction of social-emotional aspects of behavior, such as classes in anti-bias behavior or in cooperation or in mindfulness. Also, for some, increasing emphasis on Humanities subjects has been suggested. Regardless of the curriculum recommended and implemented, the foundation Myth of schooling continues: Direct instruction will always achieve its objectives in every student and when its objectives are within the domain of human psychology and behavior based in it, then, direct instruction is both necessary and sufficient and will definitely do the job. Of course, the Myth and its practice conveniently leave unattended the social context of instruction, which is largely constructed to induce externally regulated compliance behaviors, certainly substantially below conditions for healthy social-emotional and overall psychological development, and it could be argued that such is immensely destructive to immediate and future child mental health. Indeed, if the whole child is to be consciously served in formal education, then, the whole child needs a social context inducing the continuous maturation of mental wellness.

The principal path leading to a healthy mental state is through an ever strengthening individual Ego. A strong individual Ego builds confidence in youth's ability to deal with challenges. Also, it cultivates high levels of emotional intelligence enabling youth to successfully regulate their emotions, even in tough situations.

Ego strength is founded on and in the individual’s increasing Autonomous Self-Regulation capacities. Autonomous Self-Regulation is a system of conscious personal management guided by the feeling that the behavior, the emotion, or the cognition being regulated is affected for reasons a person values, finds meaningful, and wholly endorses.

The development of Autonomous Self-Regulation within formal schooling unfolds as a direct response to social contexts supporting student satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness. Autonomy is to be understood here as the development of the self as an independent identity from others, as the deep inner sense of empowerment, as the ability to function independently without control by others, as the capacity to make decisions independently, as the feeling of comfort acknowledging the need of and requesting help from others, and as the capacity to fully understand and freely accept interdependent relationships. Competence is to be understood as the ability to do something well or efficiently, a range of skill or ability, a specific ability or skill. Relatedness should be understood as close, affectionate relationships with others built on the reciprocity of factors like trust and empathy.

School organizations having the best chance at developing student Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness, thus, learner Autonomous Self-Regulation, and, therefore, personal psychological well-being, and, ultimately, successfully educating the whole child, share the twin characteristics of:Individual Self-Governance operationalized as self-directed, negotiated and cooperative learning, and of Collective Self-Governance operationalized as school community governance.

Self-directed, negotiated and cooperative learning is where students take individual responsibility for deciding what is to be known, the scope of knowing, when knowing is to occur, how knowing is to be undertaken, the duration, outcome and success of any learning activity and the course of learning for a school term and for an entire school residency, where students work together to achieve both individual and common learning and personal development goals, where students and teachers work cooperatively within an ecology of Constructivist learning, where students negotiate between intrinsically motivated natural inclinations and school community generated and larger community requirements for progress toward graduation, for graduation and for life after graduation, where students access the widest world of knowledge-manual concrete up the ladder of abstraction to the highest-from which to choose, and where students engage in a mentoring relationship of adult to youth where an adult school staff member and a youngster enter a process mutually respectful of the wisdom of each to work on student social-emotional, psycho-dynamic and psycho-cognitive issues and to attain a common understanding of and an agreement on knowledge goals and the action steps required to reach those goals.

School community governance is where learning community adults and students come together in meetings of the whole using a Democratic Process-adults and youth having equal rights to speak and to persuade within community forums and of one person-one vote-to manage the whole school community, where in the collective feeling of ownership, the community decides on issues such as curriculum, instruction, learning and assessment of learning, student projects and assignments, benchmarks in learning and developmental progress, graduation criteria and demonstrations satisfying the criteria, behaviors consistent with and in violation of the norms of the school as well as the means by which violating behaviors are resolved, and in management issues as in some community self-governing schools such as hiring staff, budgetary and fund raising issues, facilities maintenance and record keeping.

Schools constituted to the characteristics of Individual and Collective Self-Governance place sound psychological development within social contexts of healthy social, emotional and cognitive growth educating the Whole Child.