Are you considering homeschooling? Most of us feel nervous as we made the decision. Can I do this? Do I have enough education? Will I be able to work with my child? Can I balance work or family demands with homeschooling?

Aaron Eden is a seasoned facilitator of self-directed education, and a sought-after trainer of school and parent educators. He works with teachers and parents around the world to build a deep understanding of the principles that support self-directed learning, and a comfort with acting on them consistently.

The creator of innovative education programs such as iLead+Design and LEAP Academy, Aaron is also co-founder of the education transformation consulting firm Eliad Group.

Self-directed education is often misunderstood. It does not mean bringing the classroom into your home. It is an effort to direct one’s energy to learning to identify on your own what is important to you ! 

The standard kind of efforts put into learning is measured in number of hours spent; in the amount of predetermined information memorized and repeated. It involves being handed problems and showing you can follow prescribed pathways to solve them. It involves following orders. The message to students is: “Put your head down and slog through it. One day it will pay off.” This is not the rigor that leads to a sustainable world. We need so much more.

But Aaron has come up with a novel idea. What about being able to identify opportunities no one else has seen? Efforts, yes—but towards the goal of creating advanced learners, not just advanced remembers; towards fostering advanced creators, not just advanced imitators.

Aaron calls it Edunautics and has built standalone programme. Even though the concept of self-study in not new to India, it has not developed as a system or a package which would benefit students.

When you’re learning a new concept, you consolidate it by actively recalling it or explaining it to yourself or making connections between disparate things or solving problems (in case of numerical-based subjects). In this phase, you’re likely to struggle.

It’s hard to learn this way in a group because people learn at different paces and with different styles, and if you try to keep pace with others, you may either waste time or compromise on your learning.

Also, when you group-study too often, you tend to quit on the difficult stuff early, thinking that you’ll get it resolved in the group. That’s bad for learning.

Aaron says;” Evolution occurs through mutation and iteration. This is true of learning people and learning organizations. I strive to co-create the necessary conditions and networks for rapid-prototyping of ideas, exploration, and growth in individuals, in classrooms, and in communities.

Critical to the above is to help re-think all of the relationships involved in learning, between:

• Student and teacher
• Student and learning
• Student and peers
• Student and self
• School and community”

The effort is to bring in novel methods and education systems that would go a long way in boosting learning abilities of students. In another words,--It’s thinking outside the box!