Developing Confident Lifelong Learners

The second outcome named in the new GSL mission statement is to develop confident lifelong learners. Seems to me this has many separate parts:

How does one develop confidence?

How do we engender learning for one's whole life?

How does one learn to learn?

How does one instruct the skills of learning?

Then, there are the institutional issues:

How do I develop a lifelong learner in my classroom? in our division? at our school?


If each individual, each division, and the school are to perform on this mission promise, it will be by paying attention and acting with intention. So, what are the steps in that?

Confidence, Efficacy, and Self-Reliance

Confidence is a sense of knowing you can prevail over a challenge or a struggle. One develops this sense of knowing (one's confidence) by having positive experiences of overcoming challenge, difficulty, and struggle. One becomes confident as one connects effort to mastery. Confidence is a mindset.

How does a child develop confidence at various ages?

What is a parent's role in challenge and confidence?

What is a teacher's role in challenge and confidence?

Are our assessments effective in creating confidence, efficacy, and learning motivation?

How can school best be structured and design to offer a variety of challenge learning?


Pitfalls to avoid:

Criticism, which is different from guidance

Cynicism

Overprotection and rescuing

Lack of feedback and reflection

Confidence builders:

an awareness of strengths, personality, and other self-knowledge

ability to analyze a situation and develop a sense of where to start

knowing how to learn and develop, deliberative practice

honest support of a community

praise of effort and process

willingness and ability to see mistakes as necessary part of learning process

Some related reading:

Psychological Resilience
Positive Psychology 
Maslow and Esteem
Self-Efficacy

Learning about Learning

Education psychologist J. H. Flavell first used the word metacognition.  He describes it in these words:

"Metacognition refers to one’s knowledge concerning one’s own cognitive processes or anything related to them, e.g., the learning-relevant properties of information or data. For example, I am engaging in metacognition if I notice that I am having more trouble learning A than B; if it strikes me that I should double check C before accepting it as fact."

 

In plainer words, metacognition is knowing about how you learn, having reliable learning strategies and skills, and knowing when to use each for maximum performance. 

 

For one to be a lifelong learner, he or she must be a knowledgeable and expert learner, and he or she must be motivated to learn i.e. curious.

How do I learn best, most effectively?

What are my learning tools?

Am I curious and motivated to learn?

Does my environment support my individual learning style and needs as well as my curiosity?

What is in the way of my learning?

What do I need to learn? Why?

Metacognition:  An Overview

About Metacognition

Curiosity

The important thing is not to stop questioning… Never lose a holy curiosity.                                            - Albert Einstein

Curiosity, imagination, and creativity are often cited as qualities of genius. These are qualities of active and inquiring minds. These are qualities of wonder, which children are born with, not in limited form, but in a driving and motivating form that helps them develop and learn, on their own.  Buckminster Fuller shared the idea that all children were born geniuses, and that it was the process of schooling that de-geniused them.  Picasso described his aim in life as trying to recover his childlike wonder and vision, that unbridled curiosity that drives young children's chorus: why? why? tell me why? Curiosity is a trait of a growth mindset.

Curious people ask questions.
Curious people believe they have the ability to listen, understand, make connections, and learn.
Curious people are open and attentive.
Curious people are driven by wonder and intellectual yearning.
Curious people are good observers and good at connecting ideas.
Curious people are more likely to be optimistic and feel empowered to contribute.
Curious people are lifelong learners.

Is school set up to engender and develop curiosity?
Can you learn without being curious - i.e. "doing school"?
Can you lose and regain curiosity?
Can an non-curious teacher create a learning environment that fosters curiosity?
What are we curious about and how are we developing that curiosity?




Related reading:
Life Hack and Why Curiosity is Important
The Power of Curiosity

Assessing Lifelong Learning

 How will we measure and assess confident lifelong learning?

How will we determine, create, and model the right inputs?

How will we talk about developing lifelong learning and the proof in ourselves, our students, our institution, and our community as a result of our efforts?

What does confident lifelong learning look like? What are the attitudes and behaviors manifested?

What must be existence and true on a daily basis for our vision of what lifelong learning looks like to come true?

How do we shift from where we are today to making that vision come true?