What’s learning power and why does it matter?

Unrecognised talents and unrealised potential

Most of us dislike being pigeon-holed or labelled. When I meet someone new I always end up becoming amazed by how complex and multifaceted people are. Occasionally it takes working with a person in different projects or environments, but whatever impression I might have formed at first is soon challenged [1]. Hidden talents, unusual abilities, previously unacknowledged skills begin to surface.

We all have natural strengths and weaknesses. Putting purely physical capabilities to one side, it’s important not to confuse these with study or working competences. Almost all study and work requires us to combine a range of cognitive abilities, along with emotional intelligences and perceptual good judgement. The person who comes up with a great strategy for one task, may conceive a terrible plan another time. Equally, somebody may be linguistically strong but that doesn’t mean they are always the best communicators.

There is a danger in seeking to identify ‘talents’. Reviewing past experiences can provide clues to what a person is capable of. But even here, it’s impossible to separate the influences of context on performance. How about putting someone through a battery of psychometric tests? These cannot be dismissed as totally without value in terms of recruitment, albeit used with considerable caution. There is also no harm to experimenting with them as a prompt to self-reflection. But using them to identify the career direction someone should go in or how much they are likely to develop is problematic. This is because to do so is to ignore the human potential to learn. And I mean LEARN – truly engage in processes which enable us to do things and respond to stimuli in ways we could never have done before.

Fitness checks and building capabilities

Just as physical power depends on several components – toned muscles, cardiovascular strength, flexibility, and mental responsiveness – so too does an individual’s ability to respond to their full potential in work and study require learning power.

 Imagine a person has decided to attempt a difficult physical challenge for charity, climb the three highest peaks in Scotland, Wales and England, for example. They talk to a fitness coach at their local gym 3 months before the planned activity. He or she puts them through some fitness tests and basic medical checks. They then discuss present strengths and weaknesses: leg stamina needs improving, blood pressure and heart rate are good, upper body muscles strong, knees and ankles need a short physiotherapy course because of a previous strained tendon. The week before the three peaks are attempted, our friend returns to the fitness coach. This last test reveals that the knees and ankles have increased flexibility and leg muscles have developed. Upper body muscle strength has deteriorated slightly but this won’t affect performance on the challenge and is understandable given the focus on other areas.

The fitness test is a snap-shot picture of a person’s physical capabilities at that moment in time. It is always developmental, used as the basis for planning to help a person achieve their full potential. Depending on the context, a coach would prioritise the training focus on particular areas for improvement. Many factors might affect a person’s physical power at any one time: everything from a string of parties and too much eating to a particular injury which has prevented the usual evening exercises. Reviewing the fitness test, the coach will discuss these factors with their protégée, helping them to reflect and grow in their understanding of themselves and how they can maintain their physical strength and well-being. Over time the person will be able to self-evaluate more effectively and regulate their behaviour, planning their training with greater independence.

Learning power profiling

The approach described above is typical within the context of sports. In fact, sports history is filled with examples of individuals whose tireless effort, determination and deep understanding of their capabilities have led to incredible achievements. No athlete would trust a one-off profiling of their abilities. Focusing exclusively on present strengths is liable to lead people down blind alleys. Carol Dweck’s book ‘Mindset’ is filled with examples of people whom at first sight appeared unsuited for particular careers or ill-endued for specific sports. She describes how their determination, effort, and zeal to learn enabled them to reach the top. In education the examples of unnoticed talents are legendary, one of my favourites is the Noble prize winner for Physiology or Medicine Sir John Gurdon, pioneer scientist in nuclear transplantation and cloning, whose school science teacher thought his abilities totally mediocre.

Researchers at the University of Bristol, Professors Patricia Broadfoot and Guy Claxton, initiated a research programme to discover, measure and help individuals develop their learning power. With significant contribution from Dr Ruth Deakin Crick, this led to the creation of the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI), a reliable measurement instrument with which to track learning empowerment over time. ELLI has now been used in scores of academic studies and case studies across every level of education across the world, as well as within organisations in the corporate and public sectors. It is the most robust and versatile learning power tool available [2], providing concepts and language to identify and understand what is at the heart of a person’s capabilities to respond to challenges and grow as effective learners.

ELLI encourages autonomy and self-efficacy, embedded within it are measures of growth mindset, grit and metacognitive dispositions, creativity and openness to collaboration (team work).

Engaging with the Seven Dimensions of Learning in ELLI and using the ELLI tool allows individuals, whether at school or work, to understand and build their learning power. ELLI takes a context-responsive snap shot of a person’s learning power. It helps a person to reflect on the seven dispositions which each of us need strong in order to realise our potential. ELLI also prompts thinking about the contextual factors which might be affecting a person’s ability to learn, face challenges, and perform at their peak. In this way, using ELLI is like having a fitness test with a coach for our minds. The more a person starts to understand these learning dimensions, reflect on their current learning power, the more they are able to develop their capabilities and thrive at work or in study. ELLI also helps people and their organisations understand and address the factors which might be inhibiting development.

Extensive research has shown that when people are enabled to build their learning power using ELLI they perform better, are more engaged, creative and resilient. Too many methods and strategies can lead to pigeonholing, they attempt to identify our talents or assign us this or that personality type or learning style. But often these unwittingly create restrictions and impediments on our potential. Other approaches use motivational techniques which don’t take into account the contexts we find ourselves in. After an initial rush of interest the value to our long-term development evaporates. This isn’t the case when we focus on learning power.

Our world in highly complex. Wonderfully people are highly complex too [3]. At our best, we’re all capable of much more than even we can imagine. Key to our ability to realise all our talents, strengths of character, skills and qualities of good judgement is our ability to learn powerfully. Thankfully we can learn to learn. Effective learning allows us to harness our complexity to respond positively to complicated world emerging around us.

Thanks for reading. If you’ve appreciated the post please ‘like’ and share with your network. More of my posts can be found at https://www.dhirubhai.net/today/author/nigel-newton-76992624 

Nigel Newton is a consultant and educational researcher working to help organisations and individuals realise their potential - ww.elli.global/elli

Footnotes

1) The same is the case when teaching. I resist the idea of setting targets for students at the beginning of the year based on their prior attainment. I always wanted all my pupils to out-perform every measure set against them, to gain the top marks, to exceed their expectations of themselves. Part of my job as a teacher is to build that belief, to develop the dispositions and skills necessary to succeed. It’s not just about having ‘high expectations’, it’s about unlocking them from the way the system has already marked them, fixed their understanding of their strengths and weaknesses. What I found was that students always have previously unidentified talents and are always capable of more than is initially expected of them.

 2) There are different approaches to measuring learning power and several academics have posited alternative lists of relevant dispositions (some initiating form the ELLI research itself). However, the dimension scales within ELLI (Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory) have been shown to be reliable in peer reviewed studies across more contexts and within large samples of populations than any other learning power measurement tool. These studies have produced deep insights and created rich sets of baseline data. Research is on-going and the research history of ELLI provides a deep source of stimulus. Furthermore, researchers have found that the language and concepts of ELLI have high face validity across ages and contexts.

 3) Learning dimension are seen as interwoven capacities. Different tasks and contexts tend to create different kinds of relationships between the seven dimensions. On-going research is beginning to help us use this finding to understand more deeply what it takes to succeed and grow in different environments.

A very short bibliography for learning power

Carr, M.; Claxton, G. (2004) A framework for teaching learning: The dynamics of disposition. Early Years, 24.

Broadfoot, P.; Claxton, G.; Deakin Crick, R. (2004) Developing an effective lifelong learning inventory: The Elli project. Assessment in Education, 11, 248-272

Buckingham Shum, Simon; Deakin Crick, R. (2012b) Learning Dispositions and Transferable Competencies: Pedagogy, Modelling and Learning Analytics. Proc. 2nd International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge. Vancouver, BC: ACM Press: NY

Deakin Crick, R. (2007b) Learning how to learn: The dynamic assessment of learning power. Curriculum Journal, 18, 135 – 153

Deakin Crick, R.; Yu, G. (2008) Assessing learning dispositions: is the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory valid and reliable as a measurement tool? Educational Research. 50 (4) pp. 387-402.

Deakin Crick, Ruth; Haigney, Diane; Huang, Shaofu; Coburn, Tim; Goldspink, Chris (2013) Learning power in the workplace: the effective lifelong learning inventory and its reliability and validity and implications for learning and development. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24:11, 2255-2272

Higgins, S.; Baumfield, V.; Hall, E. (2007) Learning skills and the development of learning capabilities, technical report. Research evidence in education library. London, EPPI Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London.

Ren, Kai; Deakin Crick, Ruth (2013) Empowering underachieving adolescents: an emancipatory learning perspective on underachievement. Pedagogies: An International Journal 8:3, pages 235-254.

Shaffer, Suzanne C. Building Student Capacity for Reflective Thinking. The Common Good: A SUNY Plattsburgh Journal on Teaching and Learning 3 (2015), https://digitalcommons.plattsburgh.edu/commongood/vol3/iss1/3