Changing & Learning

Module 1: Learning is Learnable

"Some philosophers have given their moral approval to the deplorable verdict that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, one which cannot be augmented. We must protest and act against this brutal pessimism... it has no foundation whatsoever ... [learners] should be given lessons of will, of attention, of discipline; ... in a word they must learn how to learn." Alfred Binet (1909)

Key Focus: INTELLIGENCE: HABITS OF MIND Q1: An individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity. Is that still the "verdict" today? A1: "Intelligence is the habit of persistently trying to understand things and make them function better. Intelligence is working to figure things out, varying strategies until a workable solution is found. Intelligence is knowing what one does (and doesn't) know, seeking information and organizing that information so that it makes sense and can be remembered. In short, one's intelligence is the sum of one's habits of mind." And these habits can be developed.

<OPEN AND READ THIS ARTICLE IN ITS ENTIRETY> Lauren B. Resnick. "Making America Smarter.” Education Week 18.40 (1999): 38-40 Education Full Text (H.W.Wilson) Web 19 Aug.2013.

<SUMMARY EXCERPT for REVIEW> Making America Smarter

Key Focus: LEARNING TO LEARN

Q2: What is Learning to Learn? Is there an introductory article on the subject?

A2: Yes. It's by Guy Claxton, the Co-Director of the Centre for Real-World Learning and Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Winchester, UK. Guy is the originator of the Building Learning Power program now widely used in schools across the world.

<OPEN AND READ THIS ARTICLE IN ITS ENTIRETY>

Guy Claxton. "Learning is Learnable (and We Ought To Teach It)."." In the National Commission for Education report Ten Years On, edited by Sir John Cassell, 2004.

<SUMMARY EXCERPT for REVIEW> "Learning is Learnable"

Key Focus: THE AIM OF LEARNING POWER Q3: What is the purpose of building Learning Power? A3: The purpose of this endeavor is to help students think, act, and feel smarter --- to build their intelligence.

Guy Claxton, "The Idea Of Building Learning Power"

<SUMMARY EXCERPT of VIDEO for REVIEW> The Idea of Building Learning Power

Key Focus: DIMENSIONS OF LEARNING POWER

Q4: What qualities do powerful, confident, real life learners possess? Or, stated another way, what are the dimensions of learning power?

A4: There are 7 Dimensions of Learning Power. Each contributes to a learner's capabilities in the following ways

• Growth orientation (changing and learning) establishes the extent to which learners regard the process of learning as itself learnable;

• Critical curiosity demonstrates learner’s desire to find out new things;

• Meaning-making affirms the extent to which learners are on the lookout for links between what they are learning and what they already know;

• Dependence and fragility finds out how easily learners are disheartened when they get stuck or make mistakes;

• Creativity establishes the learners’ ability to look at things in different ways;

• Relationship/interdependence (learning relationships) establishes the learners’ ability to manage the balance between sociable and individual approaches to learning;

• Strategic awareness finds out learners’ awareness of their own learning processes.

Bryony Hoskins and Ulf Fredriksson. Learning to Learn: What it is and Can it be Measured? Luxemberg: European Communities, 2008. 27

Key Focus: THE LEARNING POWER PERSPECTIVE Q5: How does Learning Power address learning, changing, and growing? A5: By defining learning, changing, and growing in terms of the whole human being. Effective and lasting change requires that all the separate selves be brought into alignment: what you want, what you feel, what you think, and what you’ll actually do.

<OPEN AND READ THIS EXCERPT> Learning Journey

Ruth Deakin Crick."Learning How To Learn: The Dynamic Power of Assessing Learning," The Curriculum Journal 18:2 2007.135-153.

Key Focus: CHANGING & LEARNING Q6: How can we help students develop a sense of themselves as people who learn and change over time? A6: By engaging them in significant learning experiences aimed at reshaping their habits of wanting, thinking, feeling, and doing.

"For a beginning sense of direction, let us suppose that educating has to do with shaping human dispositions (beliefs, behaviors, actions) through the use of meaningful materials chosen according to a criteria of excellence. Beliefs and behaviors of human beings can be shaped in a large variety of ways -- indoctrination, conditioning, socialization, and so forth. These ways can be educative or miseducative. A street-corner sense of education is to "get smart." In everyday living there are hundreds of ways of getting smart, of developing savvy, of knowing what is coming down. Human beings do get smart from formal education as well, but this seems to be a well-kept secret. Formal education is not only a deliberate intervention in the lives of people, but an intervention with a highly selected and refined set of materials. These materials must be tailored for their meaningfulness and they must embody a criteria of excellence. Furthermore, we believe that repeated events of deliberate intervention gradually shape habits such that persons are liberated and freed both from the intervention and the materials. As durable and reliable as educational activities are, they are also short-lived and ephemeral; no single characterization will capture completely the whole scene. So recognizing that we are not trying to define the ineffable, let us begin with a statement to serve as a working sense of direction.

Educating, as an eventful process, changes the meaning of human experience by intervention in the lives of people with meaningful materials to develop thinking, feeling, and acting as habitual dispositions in order to make sense of human experience.

D. Bob Gowin. Educating. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.

Key Focus: CONVERSATIONS THAT BUILD THE MIND Q7: Are there examples of significant learning experiences that build intelligence? A7: We'll be exploring the answer to this question throughout the remaining three modules.

"Students who, over an extended period of time are treated as if they are intelligent, actually become more so. If they are taught demanding content, and Let the journey continue... are expected to explain and find connections ... they learn more and learn more quickly." Lauren Resnick

"When they do think about intelligence, many people believe that a person is either born smart, average, or dumb - and stays that way for life. But new research shows that the brain is more like a muscle - it changes and gets stronger when you use it." Lisa Blackwell

"Becoming is better than being." Carol Dweck

Changing & Learning

Module 1: Learning is Learnable

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