Freedom of Students to Learn: A Case Study at Feres Bet General Secondary School in West Gojjam
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Date
2007-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study attempted to examine freedom of students to leam by taking
the case of Feres Bet General Secondary School. The purposes of the
study are to understand students' and teachers' perceptions toward
freedom to leam and the factors that impede to implementation of freedom
to leam.
A qualitative case study method was used to undertake the research and
understand the phenomenon deeply. Primary data were collected from
teachers and students of the school through in-depth interviews . To
extract the data, which are not visible to participants, and to give
meanings to what has been interviewed; participant observation had been
employed for more than three months. The participants were chosen
purposely based on the criteria of their concem, cooperativeness,
willingness, responsibilities, and roles they played.
To get valuable data twenty-four participants were interviewed using semistructured
and unstructured questions. The data obtained through
interview, observation and document analysis were presented in a
narrative form on the bases of informants' perceptions and interpretation
of the phenomenon supported by the researcher's reflective analysis.
The results of the research indicated that participants had high interest for
leaming to be freely and they viewed freedom as to be protected with
laws, pedagogical rules and regulations and implemented with humanity
and rationality. However, the practice of freedom to leam was inhibited
because of the prevalence of human and non-human factors . Lacle of
willing ness and initiation to promote lea mer freedom were the major
problems of teachers obtained from the research. The research results
indicate that lacle of the necessary instructional materials and lack of
qualified teachers were setbacks to freedom to leam. Therefore, the
research suggested that instead of rushing to feed students simplified
information it is better to leave leaming to the personal manipulation of the
leamer and it is better to teachers to play the role of facilitating the
situation for independent leaming.
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Keywords
Freedom of Students to Learn