Workers who are independent learners have become one of the most important characteristics of the workforce of the future. Independent learners would know how to seek whatever information on their own when they enter the workforce. They would be resourceful workers. Also according to Carol Sanford in “Myths of Organizational Effectiveness at Work”:

“The foundational element in effective work systems is self-correcting, self-managing, self-accountable, self-governing behavior. Energy spent on monitoring and attempting to affect the behavior of team members or other entities from the outside is energy wasted and energy that could be better expended on improving the business and the capability of people. The critical element is to increasingly create self-governing capability.”

The old factory line approach to teaching and learning that features the teacher doing most of the thinking and talking has to give way to students having to explore, do their own research and thinking about what they are learning. Teachers would have to craft lessons that excite their charges with that spirit of inquiry that has as its basis in the natural curiosity of children and teenagers. Part of that crafting includes the need to design appropriate activities that comes with appropriate assessment strategies because not only would the teachers need to know what goes on in the heads of their students but also the latter would also need to know if his learning is going in the right direction.

That is the new challenge for teachers everywhere, including those in Singapore, if they are serious about preparing students for the future. Students must be made to take more responsibility for their own learning. They will have eventually decide when they have left school, what is it that they have to learn or re-learn, how they will be learning, when and why. They will have to be able to monitor their own progress to see if their work skills suits whatever work they have been employed to do or that they hope to do. How do they know if they are on the right track?

Already experts are talking about workers having two or even three careers in a lifetime. overnment leaders in Singapore are echoing this same view about multiple careers ina life time too.This implies of course a lot of learning and re-learning is required of workers in the economy of the future. In fact, it is already beginning to happen. With this scenario, it becomes imperative that teachers teach students how to do their own self-directed learning and link to this, also how to do their own self-assessment of their own learning. Teachers, therefore, need to devise in schools today, assessment strategies for their students to learn to monitor their own learning. Assessment can no longer be in the sole responsibility of the teachers. Students must learn to assess their own learning.