The Relationship between Self-directed Learning Habit and

Academic Achievement

Introduction

Self-directed learning (SDL) is a key to seek for new knowledge, skills, and gaining
information through independent learning. Even though studying at school is one of the most
important components of academic life, SDL is an essential tool for all learners. The more a person
tries to learn independently, the more knowledge he/she acquires; then, it will become a strategy to
gain success in the educational field. Self-directed learning is any increase in knowledge, skills,
accomplishments and development, which an individual selects and brings about his or her own
efforts using any method in any circumstance and anytime (Gibbon M., 2002). Indeed, SDL is
associated with critical thinking as well as improved understanding and decision making (Candy,
1991) – characteristics which are frequently emphasized within the higher education curriculum
(e.g. Hambur, Rowe, & Tu Luc, 2002; The Association of American Colleges and Universities,
2011). There are many studies investigating and proving that a good self-directed learning can
improve students’ academic achievement (Francis & Flanigan, 2012). Although these earlier studies
have been very well conducted and stipulated convincing results, they have not found out the
relationship between self-directed learning habit and academic achievement in a society where
educational system, literacy rate, and standard of living are just increasing like Cambodia. Hence,
this study will look into relationship between self-directed learning and academic achievement
influenced by English proficiency and study strategies of undergraduate students in a Cambodian
university.

Research Problem

From kindergarten until high school, Cambodian students usually, if not always, depend on
their teachers to guide and tell them what to do or learn; this teaching model is called teacher-
centered model. They rarely do further research related to the subjects they are studying, let alone
reading other materials which are unrelated. However, studying in university is much more difficult
due to the fact that students are required to do more research and reading in order to broaden their
knowledge as well as to further understand about their current lessons. That is why most of the
freshmen find it very hard to adapt to the new environment in the university and therefore, cannot
catch up with the lessons which results in poor performance. Similarly, at the English Department
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of Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL) in Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), students might
meet difficulties in self-studying. But after two years, they probably can be familiar with the
teaching model, student-centered model. If they still cannot be accustomed, there will be many
problems arisen to both the students and their lecturers as they cannot succeed in their career.

Literature Reviews

Self-directed Learning (Overview)

Improving your learning skills is the best investment that you should venture into
(Northedge, 2005). There are many ways that students can access to education such as online-
learning, teacher-directed, Self-learning and other related learning. Dates back to 1960s, much of
the time was spent scrutinizing how adult learnt (Svedberg, 2010). According to Knowles (1984),
adult self-concept moves from dependent personality toward self-directed personality when he or
she matures. All his assumption about adult’s learning are related to the college education,
concerning self-directed learning which is the main focus of this study. Self-directed learning is not
a new idea (Broad, 2006). It is very popular topic to be studied on especially in the university
context (Broad, 2006) since many students have troubles in making transformation from teacher-
directed learning to self-directed learning that is required at college comparing to their previous
study (high school) (Welkikala & Watkns, 2008). Students at university are required to be an
independent-learner (Northedge, 2005; Cottrell, 2003; Gow & Kember, 1990), yet according to
recent report highlighting the fact that under graduated students are struggling to remedy with
independent or self-directed learning, expected by well-educated tutors (Wilde et al., 2006).

Characteristics of Self-directed Learning

According to Alpha Omega Academy (2012), there are 7 characteristics of independent

learning: curiosity, readiness, self-examination, autonomous, critical thinking, comprehension with
little or no instruction, and persistence.
Curiosity refers to when independent learners feel curious and want to know more about the
global environment. They explore and search for something new. Moreover, they are active to seek
out the information related to their lesson on their own.
Another characteristic is readiness. It refers to the level of learner’s desire to learn.
Normally, in order to be independent learner, people have to motivate themselves. Having highly
motivated behavior, learners can set their goal clearer and find out the ways to deal with that even

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faster. Being highly-motivated is the encouragement to study. It is a long process which can make
student become a lifelong learner (Carus, 2011).
What is more, self-examination is also one of the important points. By doing the self-
directed learning, learners will be able to examine themselves. They can know their good and bad
points, and they will be able to seek out the ways to strengthen themselves for the good result.
Autonomous is one of the most important characteristics. By practicing self-directed
learning style, students will be able to be responsible for their own duty. They know what to do and
start doing it on their own.
Apart from this, because improving critical thinking is what the learners want, people
increasingly choosing self-directed learning as their study method. Self-directed learners always
think clearly before they do something because they know that they have to depend on their own.
So in order to do something or to solve any problem, they examine all the possibilities and multiple
ways to help them finish that thing. They usually answer their own question by trying to understand
the world on their own.
Another important characteristic of self-directed learning is comprehension with little or no
instruction. It means that among the comprehension skills: reading, listening, writing, and speaking,
independent learners will seek out for their own ways to finish the exercise or to improve the skills
without any instruction no matter how hard the work is.
Persistence is the last characteristic that Alpha Omega Academy has mentioned. It refers to
when the learners let the study continue no matter what. They keep practicing what they do until
they can do it perfectly (Cobb, 2011). They will struggle and try their best effort to understand the
concept of the lesson without asking for any help. They also set their own self-discipline in which
they will punish themselves if they fail to solve the problem.

Reasons for Being a Self-directed Learner

One reason is that there is convincing evidence that people who take the initiative in
learning, learn more things and learn better than people who sit at the feet of teachers passively
waiting to be taught. The second reason is that self-directed learning is more in tune with our
natural processes of psychological development; an essential aspect of maturing is developing the
ability to take increasing responsibility of our own lives to become increasingly self-directed. The
third reason is that many of the new developments in education put a heavy responsibility on the
learners to take a good deal of initiative in their own learning (Ramnarayan & Shyamala, 2012).
Another study indicates that the reason of being self-directed learner is to be ownership of
learning since students can set learning target for him/herself, articulate learning gap and identify
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learning task to achieve their studies. What is more, another reason is that it can be management
and monitoring of own learning. Students will know which parts he/she does not understand before
studying, look for more information to help themselves understand the lesson better, complete their
homework on time, and reflect on their learning and use feedback to improve their schoolwork. Last
but not least, Extension of own learning is also the reason of being self-directed learner. Students
find out more than what their teacher teach them in school. What is more, they find the way in order
to improve their learning by using computer to go online to ask people outside their school for ideas
on their lesson and get ideas from different websites and people to learn more about their lesson.

Advantages of Self-directed Learning

Learner are required to be self-directed and self-motivated for them to greately benefit from
higher education (Maung, Abdullah, Abas, n.d). Self-directed learning provides substaintial benefits
to learner. Students are motivated to learn and try to seek required knowledge and skills to solve the
problem for their own sake. Learning will becomes an integral part of their life (Gerhard, Masanori,
n.d).
Williams (2003) claims that being an independent learner, UK children enjoys wide-ranging
benefits—they are more motivated and have higher self-esteem than other children. Rather than
passive learners, children are active and energetic to improve their skills that can assist them in
solving problems using a range of strategies, taking responsibility for their actions, and making
independent judgments. Students who successfully take part in self-directed learning are more
creative and curious; thus, it enables them to think on their own and motivates them to explore more
about their environment and learning. Furthermore, self-directed learning can prepare students for
their professions in the future by having an idea of what they want to do after graduation
(Edmondson, Boyer, Artis, n.d).

Self-directed Learning and Academic Achievement

Edmondson, Boyer, and Artis had proved that higher levels of self-directed learning are
associated with higher levels of academic performance, future aspiration, and life satisfaction for
students. Self-directed learners show greater performance in the classroom and are more satisfied in
their life. Similarly wide-reaching benefits of independent learning are summed up by the Dutch
researchers Van Grinsven and Tillema (2006, p87):

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 Students in self-regulated learning environments are more motivated to learn, report
more enjoyment of the material and are more actively involved in their learning than
those who study in more restrictive environments.

In a journal written by Chou & Chen (2008), six cases were conducted related to the effect
of SDL on academic success in web-based learning environments. The results showed that the
impact is not always positive. However, they did mention that many studies about this relationship
have shown optimistic results. Thus, he would not renounce the previous studies. Instead, they
suggested that many ‘empirical’ studies should be conducted more about this matter.

Research Purpose

This study aims to examine the students’ strategies of self-directed learning, how often they
read or do more research about the lessons, and the relationship between self-directed learning and
academic achievement.

Research Questions

1) How much time do students spend on SDL?

2) What kind of activities do students usually do in their SDL habit?
3) What skills are required for effective independent learning?
4) To what degree is self-directed learning related to academic achievement?

Operational Definitions

- Self-Directed Learning: is a way of studying done by the students themselves, either

individually or in a group of people, outside class.
- Self-Directed Learning Habit: is defined as how often, how long and what the students do
in their independent learning activities.
- Junior Students of English Department: refers to the year three students majoring in
Bachelor of Art in English at Institute of Foreign Languages, Royal University of Phnom
Penh.
- Academic Achievement: refers to the success of student’s performance. It can be measured
by the final scores students received in semester 1 of junior year.
- The Relationship between SDL and Academic Achievement: describes the effects on
student’s performance by doing self-directed learning.
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Significance of Study

This study is aimed at assessing to what degree self-directed learning is related to academic
achievement. If it is found that there is indeed a close relationship between SDL and better
performance, both the students and lecturers will benefit from this finding in a way that students
will increase their self-determination to do more self-study in order to improve their performance.
Lecturers will find it useful as they know what to do to encourage students in studying. Together,
they will bring greater success to their career.

Method

On accounts that the main purpose of this research is to know the relationship between self-
study and academic achievement, we decide to use cross-sectional design (test only once) and use
mainly Likert scale as measurement scale.

Participants

Again, our intention is to find out whether they can adjust to the new environment (self-
directed learning). Hence, the participants involved in the research will be year three students of
English Department at IFL, both male and female, due to the fact that they have already gone
through university life for two years; they might have enough experience to answer whether they
can adapt with the new environment of self-directed learning and how much SDL helps them in
their academic life. Because they are third year students, their age might be range from 19 to 22
years old. Besides, as our resource is limited, we cannot conduct the research on so many people.
Thus, we plan to choose only 150 students to make sure that our research is valid and reliable.

Sampling

Currently, there are 617 juniors who are studying in 19 classes of the three shifts at IFL.
Since 617 people is such a huge number of people, and our time and resource are limited, we will
pick up only 150 people among them as a sample to conduct the research. Each sampling unit will
be selected through the process of random sampling.
To select a sample of 150 out of the population of 617, we plan to use tables of random
numbers in order to avoid bias. In the process of selecting sample, we will visit all the year 3 classes

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of Department of English to ask for their name list. After we get the name lists, we will rank the
name of those students starting from the first name of M3.1’s list to the last name of E3.8’s list.
Next, we will do a lottery to pick up one of our group members to close his/her eyes and point at a
number on the first table, and we will start to count from column to column upside down. Having
counted to the 150th, we will stop and then match the number in the table to the name lists which we
will have ranked. If there is a double of numbers, we will continue counting from the last stopping
point and replace them.

Instruments

We intend to collect data from the 150 participants using a questionnaire. The questionnaire
consists of 20 questions which mainly talk about the study habit and the result of their study. The
questionnaire is grouped into four sections: background information, self-directed learning practice,
academic achievement, and relationship between independent learning and outcomes. The first
section includes 5 questions asking about their age, gender, study shift at IFL, other universities and
part-time job(s). There are 7 questions in the second section regarding respondents’ self-directed
learning practices. The third section involves 2 items talking about the academic achievement of the
respondents in the previous semester (semester 1 of year 3). The last 6 items are a Likert scale
regarding the relationship between independent learning and their outcomes.
The survey questionnaire has been created by our own effort and revised 3 times already so
as to make sure that it is clear, valid, reliable and verifiable. We used various types of questions,
including Likert-type questions, multiple-choice questions, and closed-ended questions.

Plan for data analysis

Since we use questionnaire as a method of data collection, some data are ordinal, some
interval and some ratio. To analyze them, we will use a computer program called Statistical
Program for Social Sciences (SPSS) to process the data.
The questionnaire will be used to investigate how students felt about self-directed learning
and the relationship between self-directed learning and academic achievement. The questionnaire
consists of four parts. The first part asks the respondents for their personal information—gender,
age, study shift, employment, and so on. The second part of the questionnaire is related to
respondents’ self-directed learning strategies. The data collected from this part will be used to
analyze how they self-study by calculating the percentage of participants’ choosing each item. The
five-point rating scale (1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4= agree,

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and 5 = strongly agree) is used in the second part and the fourth part. The third part focuses only on
participants’ academic achievement. The fourth part is about the relationship between self-directed
learning and academic achievement. Once the data is collected, it will let us know whether self-
directed learning can help improve student academic performance or not.
All in all, after processing data, we plan to use many descriptive statistics to analyze the
findings. They are percentage, average/mean, median, mode and standard deviation. Percentage will
detail our findings of each question, whereas mean will summarize the overall findings of the
respondent’s attitude over each section.

Ethical Considerations

All of the respondents’ information will be kept anonymous and used for the purpose of the
study only. We plan to inform all the participants that all of their responses will be treated as strictly
confidential. There are no questions asking the respondent’s name or class, so no one would know
who the respondent is. At the beginning of the questionnaire, we will attach the purpose of the
study, significant of the study, confidentiality. In addition, to make sure that every respondent is
informed about the confidentiality of their answers, we are going to read aloud the ethical
considerations part to them before they participate in our research. Plus, we will let them know that
they can quit at any time without any punishment or distraction if they feel uncomfortable with the
research.

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Broad, J. (2006). Interpretations of independent learning in further education. Journal of Further

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