[About 1200 words.]

This 20-minute TED talk by Sam Levin is worth watching: 

Sam makes a pretty good case, it seems to me, for self-directed learning, learner-driven peer-to-peer learning and collaborative projects ("Collaborative Intelligence"). I note that Sam also recently co-wrote a book with his mother, Susan Engel, about the Independent Project as a model of learning in the twenty-first century: A School of Our Own. I will draw on some of their ideas (and concepts from elsewhere) to complete this update.

When Sam first proposed The Independent Project (IP), he met with significant resistance from teachers on the high school curriculum committee. One of the vehement reactions: "[Kids] cannot be trusted to learn on their own." What the initial pilot of The Independent Project demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt was that kids could indeed be trusted to learn on their own. Clearly, the social aspect of it offered a huge array of resources and supports that other classes and programs at the school did not. Indeed, some of the participants note that the social learning part of the program was both a great support and a significant challenge. 

In the IP, part of the students' school week was devoted to peer-reviewed individual inquiries (the "weekly question" formulated by each learner, which was critiqued and reshaped according to feedback from the other learners). Learners then spent a large part of their week researching, investigating or writing in reponse to their peer-reviewed, revised weekly questions. On Fridays, each of the student student then "taught" a lesson to the others based on her or his observations, research, analyses or creative work. Additionally, students pursued an individual semester-long "Endeavor" (mastering a new skill, creating a work of art, proposing, implementing and managing a project). Again, the Endeavor was subjected to peer review (to assure that it was appropriately challenging and to define and validate goals for demonstrating "mastery" at the end of the program). Students checked in periodically with peers, then had to pubicly perform or demonstrate their results at the end of the semester.

According to Sam, with one notable exception in the first year, no student was disengaged (not even those with serious learning challenges or who were on verge of failure, quitting school or academic dismissal before agreeing to try The IP). Students did not "blow off" the intellectual work. Not the student with dyslexia, not the "dumb kid." Everyone participated, enthusiastically. By crafting questions that they felt passionate about, then agreeing to explore their individual questions and teach what they learned to their peers, the IP students demonstrated themselves to be motivated and high-performing learners. Nothing was "dumbed down." On the contrary, as a cohort and individually, they significantly improved their writing skills, their math skills, their ability to investigate the world through the scientific method and/or creative or interdisciplinary endeavors. Their intellectual performance exceeded expectations, in some cases, by a lot. All of them learned in enduring ways. The obligations to their peers (including social-learning bonds) were far stronger motivators than grades or teacher/parent feedack. The students all WANTED to shine and WANTED for others to make serious, significant, measurable progress.

I also note that they addressed mastery in some of the topics of traditional school (English/Language, Math, Natural/Social Science and Humanities). They did not do this by following traditional curricula. Instead, their goal was to help each other learn to think like a mathematician or a writer, clearly identifying a problem or an issue, then proposing hypotheses or representational frameworks to pursue, with guidance from peers and others. Learners executed their plans by testing hypotheses or producing work, talking it over with others, improving or modifying it, rather than by simply "solving the problem." The result: they all figured a multitude of ways to approach problems or to frame investigations or to do research.They fostered critical thinking in themselves and in their friends and co-learners. Furthermore, they sought to develop a meaningful, engagement with the real world by collaboratively addressing one substantive problem in the wider community. 

Sam and his eight co-learners demonstrated quite clearly that seventeen-year olds can indeed be "trusted to learn on their own." In the IP model, social learning, added to a program of self-directed learning, proved to be a powerful tool. I would suggest that this approach deserves serious consideration and ought to become the focus of objective, replicable research to test and potentially verify the claims of Sam Levin and Susan Engel. In my view, this model is worth implementing, even if traditional educators consider it -- as they indubitably will -- "too risky."

Peer critique was one of the aspects of the IP that participants found difficult to do and difficult to accept, at least initially, but it also turns out to have been one of the most important facets of learning in the IP. It had immense value for the ones doing the critique, since they honed their critical thinking skills weekly, and for the ones receiving critiques, since they benefitted from additional perspectives and "recursive feedback." The push-pull of mutual critique and mutual support were the most important parts of the program. The IP's strength resided in the joining together and in the mutual reinforcement of self-directed learning and social learning. Collaborative intelligence indeed!

More generally, I would add that there is significant evidence from anthropology, evolutionary theory, investigations of "crowdsourcing," collective intelligence and computational biology to suggest that collaborative or collective intelligences, social learning and consensus-finding are effective and impactful both for learning and in general (Bernstein, et al. 2011; Boyd, Richerson & Henrich 2011; Mason & Watts 2011; Wachter, et al. 2011; Malone 2013; Uddin, Hossain & Rasmussen 2013; Malone & Bernstein 2015; Tinkler, McGann & Tinkler 2017).

Finally, just listen to the discourse of the students enrolled in the second pilot of The Independent Project at the same school the following year (video below). Note their language, not just the content, but also their inventiveness and effectiveness in communicating. Note their enthusiasm and engagement. Pay attention to what they say about individual work and about social learning and group critique. Note instances of self-critique and self-assessment. Hear their critiques of the educational system. Listen to the principal. The entire 14-1/2-minute video report is well worth watching.

The essential ingredients for the program's success clearly include social learning, self-directed learning, peer review and mutual, communal support for each other. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the IP is built, in no small part, on "collaborative intelligence." If all high school students across the U.S. had an opportunity to work within a cohort program like the IP, pursuing genuine self-directed, peer-reviewed, collaborative, and community-engaged learning as part of their junior and/or senior year in high school, I have no doubt that the results would be measurably better, on average and in the aggregate, than a corresponding semester in a typical high-quality traditional high school curriculum.

This idea is worth investigating. Why in heck aren't we trying -- and testing -- this approach, widely, NOW?

REFERENCES

Bernstein, Joseph; Long, Joy S.; Veillette, Christian; & Ahn, Jaimo. (2011). Crowd intelligence for the classification of fractures and beyond.  PLoS ONE 6(11). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0027620

Boyd, Robert; Richerson, Peter J.; & Henrich, Joseph. (2011). The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation. PNAS 108 (supplement 2): 10918-10925. http://www.pnas.org/content/108/Supplement_2/10918.short

Levin, Samuel. (2013). Why high schoolers should be in charge: Sam Levin at TEDxOxford. Retrieved 18 July 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlql1ESio5w.

Levin, Samuel; & Engel, Susan. (2016). A School of Our Own: The Story of the First Student-Run High School and a New Vision for American Education. New York: The New Press.

Malone, Thomas. W. (2014). IdeasLabs 2013 - Thomas W. Malone - exploring the power of collective learning. [Video of a 5-1/2-minute presentation made at a forum organized by the World Economic Forum, published 19 February 2014] Retrieved 20 July 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6ZnzfkPUik.

Malone, Thomas W.; & Bernstein, Michael S. eds. (2015) Handbook of Collective Intelligence. Boston, MA: The MIT Press. https://books.google.fr/books?id=iR3iCgAAQBAJ

Mason, Winter; & Watts, Duncan J. (2012). Collaborative learning in networks. PNAS 109 (3): 764-769. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/764.short

Tinkler, Barri; McGann, Gabriel; & Tinkler, Alan. (2017). Learning from each other: using a service-learning citizenship course to promote intercultural understanding. Intercultural Education [published online, forthcoming]. Retrieved 20 July 2017 from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14675986.2017.1335861

Tsai, Charles. (2013). If students designed their own schools.... [Video report published 13 February 2013] Retrieved 20 July 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RElUmGI5gLc&t=2s.

Uddin, Shahadat; Hossain, Liaquat; & Rasmussen, Kim. (2013). Network effects on scientific collaborations. PLoS One 8(2). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0057546