Videos:
What Is Self-Directed Education? An introductory illustration from Peter Gray and the Alliance for Self-Directed Education
Do Schools Kill Creativity? Famous talk from Ken Robinson (a must watch and the inspiration to launch Wildwood)
Books:
Free to Learn, Peter Gray
Well-built and researched study of history of compulsory education, and a persuasive call to arms for a self-directed education revolution.
Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature
Describes Coyote mentoring, which is what we use at Wildwood, in detail
Unschooling Rules, Clark Aldrich
“The most powerful new ideas in education are coming from the families that have given up on schools. From his experience with homeschoolers and unschoolers, education guru Clark Aldrich distills a revolutionary manifesto of 55 core ''rules'' that reboots our vision of childhood education and the role of schools.” This is a very quick read and gives a good summary of unschooling.
David Sobel for all nature education information, benefits of nature education
At Wildwood, we use both his design principles for nature education as well as his book on map making with children.
Articles:
The Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE)
“The Six Optimizing Conditions” (which describes the environment we aim to create at Wildwood),
Difference between Progressive Education and Self Directed Education
Comparing Self Directed Education to Waldorf/Montessori type schools
The Natural Environment for Children’s Self-Education
A review of Sudbury Valley School and the optimizing conditions for SDE