The BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants are available to support primary research in the humanities and social sciences. These awards, up to £10,000 in value and tenable for up to 24 months, are provided to cover the cost of the expenses arising from a defined research project. The project titled "The driving and restraining forces for students’ self-directed learning adoption in higher education: A force field analysis approach" was awarded: £7,330.00. Learning is acknowledged by many as a lifelong process and self-directed learning (SDL) plays a key role in this step as they take the responsibility in controlling what they learn to reach their goals and objectives. Despite the transformation of global education from a teacher-centric to a student-centric approach, especially with the pandemic situation, emerging contexts have seen a reduced impact. The study aims to explore this phenomenon in the emerging context of India and Sri Lanka to first identify the present context of SDL and identify the key drivers and challenges associated with the learning transformation. The study aims to capture both the learners' and educators' perspectives in this regard to build a stronger foundation and deepen the knowledge on more context-specific factors that are yet to be explored in the emerging nations' perspective.
