With reference to the demands of the knowledge society and a flexiblised economy, educational policies increasingly propagate self-directed forms of learning in individualised settings. These reforms privilege “learning” over teaching of subject knowledge and promises to adapt learning to individual learning needs of the individual student (Dumont, Istance, & Benavides, 2010). They aim at preparing students to the demands of life-long learning and the need to adapt to constantly changing circumstances. The related cognitive-psychological model of self-regulated learning focuses on “learning how to learn” and is concerned with the metacognitive abilities to autonomously plan and optimise one’s own learning. An important skill for the metacognitive direction of learning is reflection (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2011). Reflection is identified as a kind of "transmitter" that transforms self-observation into the modification of one’s learning strategies. Thereby, looking back means also looking forward: reflection is needed to evaluate, monitor and adapt one's own learning process and to optimise one’s learning pathway. Such cognitive psychological models locate self-directed learning in individual mental processes. They suggest that the metacognitive strategies of learning can be improved by pedagogical interventions. In accordance with this expectation, models of self-directed learning are accompanied by various tools that are intended to guide learners to observe, evaluate and reorient their learning. “Learning journals”, portfolios or coaching usually contain elements of self-reflection in addition to planning and organisational formats. These instruments shall guide the learner to improve the effectivity of her or his learning and its outcomes.

In contrast, a sociological perspective views learning not as an individual mental process but as an intersubjective, social activity. With a practice theoretical lens, we approach learning as a discursively framed, practically produced social order that is situated in particular tempo-spatial locations.  Instead of presupposing the individual student as the subject of learning, this approach analyses the logic of observable social practices. With Foucault (1991) we analyse self-directed learning as a self-governing imperative that is guided by specific governmental technologies and we ask about its subjectifying effects (Foucault, 1991).  Following Butler (1997), subjectivation is understood here as an effect of performative practices by which (student) identities are created. The self-governing imperative to plan, reflect, evaluate and monitor one’s learning activities addresses pupils in specific ways and positions them as subjects (Ricken & Balzer, 2012). Thereby, the norms invoked are performatively put into order and at the same time incorporated.

Based on these theoretical approaches, we examine the tools used for reflection of self-directed learning and the practices that these instruments initiate with regard to the following questions:

How and as whom are students addressed by the tools? By which normative framework are students positioned through specific technologies of self-direction? And how do students position themselves in relation to the normative addressing and positionings? With a practice-theoretical perspective, we distinguish between a structural logic that is unfolded by the tool and the practical logic that emerges by its appropriation.  

The analysis is based on empirical material from an ethnographic study on self-directed learning that is conducted in Switzerland (2017-2021, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation). The research project analyses practices of (self-)guidance generated by the dispositive of self-directed learning from a governmentality perspective. The field studies have been carried out in five schools of the lower secondary level that implement conceptually and organizationally distinct forms of self-directed learning. The empirical data consists of detailed protocols of extensive participant observation (supported by audio and video recordings) in the classroom and in teacher meetings during a period of one to two years; furthermore, the analysis encompasses transcripts of ethnographic interviews with teachers and students and relevant documents. The school, from which the material is taken, assigns groups of 60 students of different ages and performance levels to open-space learning environments. The classroom organisation is oriented towards a decentralised, individualised and competence-oriented understanding of learning (Simons & Masschelein, 2008). Around a quarter of the time that the students spend in school is dedicated to individual work in the open-plan office, where they sit at their personalised workstations. The school implemented a myriad of instruments to guide the self-direction of students, such as (bi)weekly plans with small-step tasks (called “learning jobs”), tools for self-correction, a learning journal, coaching interactions at regular intervals or heterogeneous “learning groups” to instigate joint reflection. Our analysis focuses on an instrument called “Green Booklet”. This instrument is dedicated to individual reflection and was introduced after the students criticised the learning groups as a waste of time. The new reflection instrument was installed at the end of the week and students were demanded to wrote their answers (to questions provided by the teacher) into the booklet. The questions are concerned with planning and timing, the choice of classmates for joint work, as well as emotions and motivations. Our data corpus includes the guidelines with the questionnaire and the instructions for the students as well as five copies of students’ booklets, mirroring the written traces of the students over a period of four months. The data are completed by short interviews in which students commented on the tool. The documents were analysed in a combined procedure of coding and in-depth sequence-analytical reconstruction. While coding was used to search for relevant topics, the sequence-analytical procedure served to detect the logic and patterns of teachers’ and students’ practices (Breidenstein, 2006, p.30).

The structural logic of the guidelines approaches reflection in a multidimensional and comprehensive way as self-inspection of the learning and working behaviour of students. It scrutinises also intimate feelings, motivations and the students’ “will to learn” (Fejes & Dahlstedt, 2013) - while hardly examining the relation to subject matters. However, already the limited time provided for answering the question indicates that in fact there is no room for an in-depth examination of the self. This impression is confirmed by the analysis of the students’ writings, which reveal a logic of getting things done. The answers remain short and formulaic; self-critique of omitted planning and time shortage are used as a placeholder for different problems that cannot be localised by the writers. And where so-called "personal" goals are to be formulated, ubiquitous school goals are mentioned. The reflective pupil subject turns out to be one who responds to the call for self-reflection with a habitus of “working off”. The point of reference for reflection is not the students’ self, but the school norms that are to be fulfilled. Guided reflection, as it is proposed by this example, is not an exploration by which a student subject is engaging with and interpreting its self, but rather a step on a self-optimising trajectory. Instead of the subject becoming aware of its own interests and dispositions, but also of its unwillingness and discomfort, it is subjected to a cybernetic governing logic, which is demanded to evaluate itself against what it ideally should be to derive behavioural modifications. However, the question remains open whether the students’ strategy to perform themselves in socially desirable ways and their willingness to work off the demanded reflection as tasks can, or rather should be, interpreted as practices of resistance, by which the students protect their selves from encroachment.

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