Independency

The program is designed to enable the student to become relatively independent in terms of his ability to work on his own. Functionally, this means that the student invests energy, sets goals for himself, and completes them independent of teacher validation, pressure, or threat of negative consequences.

In terms of operational objectives, when the student is having some level of conceptual difficulty, he puts forth energy to try to understand before he asks for help. Then he asks for help, not simply give up. The student is also able to complete longer and more difficult projects on his own. Finally, the student is of his own choice, involved in the Independent Studies Program. In this program he completes work outside of the classroom, which averages to more than four hours per week.

The foundation upon which the independency continuum is constructed is the premise that the child has his nurturance and security needs met. The student, over a period of time, changes from being heavily dependent on the teacher and program structure to becoming more independent. Independency occurs because of the accumulation of successful learning experiences, the development of learning skills, and the developing awareness of his own competency and self-sufficiency. The program defines a path from dependency to independency, which the child travels at his own speed. The program becomes less structured as the child is able to impose increasing amounts of self-structure. The progressive degrees of freedom increase, as the child is able to make and act upon his own choice within the educational objectives. At bottom, with the accumulation of positive affective learning experiences, the child's feeling of success and competency as a learner enables him to become more independent.

The dependency to independency continuum begins with Project Learning- Level 1, characterized by considerable child dependency. Through each affective progressive level, the design of the program is developed to enable the child to become increasingly more independent. By the fifth level of the program, almost every student has become substantially independent, i.e. able to work on his own throughout most of the day with much less attention from the teacher. The Independency Continuum can also be seen as a measure of frequency of teacher contact and reinforcement. At level 1 contact is after every work unit, which is 3 to 4 times per lab, at level 5 the frequency once to twice per day.