Actually, this is an example of when we use “they / them / their” in the singular to avoid specifying the gender where it is irrelevant. In my opinion, your sentence would be the perfect opportunity to use the singular “themself.” This word is still not entirely accepted by dictionaries, although it has been in use for decades, if not centuries. In a formal essay, I recommend using a plural subject (or some other workaround) where possible, in order to avoid the issue. Here’s a thread where Su.ki., Abdullah and others discussed it: https://www.italki.com/discussion/160856

I find the rest of the sentence a struggle, if something is a first step, how can you have something that preceeds it? While "it must be preceeded by that" feels clumsy. no problem with themselves or themself When I was 20 my boss to me to one side and advised me to always use simple sentence structures, you can use complex ones but I'm not convinced that you will end up with good communication.

There is a singular "themself" but we usually use "themselves" because you are not talking about a specific person, you are talking about anyone who is in this situation (so it could be more than one person!)

If it feels too uncomfortable, you could try just not using "themselves" and instead saying something like: "Feels an urge to modify their own present learning approach" or "feels an urge to modify their present learn approach independently". Both of these convey the same meaning as your original sentence, and sound natural.