Learning Dispositions Research Articles

The Cultivation of Learning Dispositions among First-Generation Disadvantaged Students at a South African University

This article discusses the learning dispositions of first-generation disadvantaged students at a university in South Africa’s Western Cape Province. Based on qualitative data collected over a 2-year period, it focuses on findings from 7 purposively selected students at this university. Utilizing Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and Wacquant’s conceptual elaboration of this concept, the article explores the affective, cognitive, and conative (practices) dimensions of the students’ habitus as interrelated aspects crucial to understanding how they develop their dispositions to learn. The article illustrates how the students’ learning dispositions are produced through the active and strategic exercise of each of these 3 (affective, conative, and cognitive) interrelated embodied dimensions. I argue that understanding these embodied habitus generating practices are crucial for comprehending how they establish effective learning dispositions for successful educational engagement at their university. The significance of this article lies in offering a perspective of first-generation disadvantaged students’ learning dispositions in respect of establishing their educational engagement practices at the university.

ENHANCING STUDENTS’ CORRESPONDING REASONING OF COGNITIVE PERFORMANCES BY ANIMATED CONCEPT MAPPING IN ELECTROCHEMISTRY

The use of animated concept mapping (ACM) has been linked to an innovative learning skill when conducting students’ guidance of 4 corresponding reasoning processes in electrochemistry. This research aims to establish a new perspective with ACM cognitive reasoning to broaden students’ individual developments of problem-solving skills. It is followed by a quasi-experimental approach of pre-tests, post-tests and retention-tests designed for 274 qualified college students in Taiwan. All data collected from students’ learning performances and feedback is further analyzed by means of achievement covariance, t-tests and one-way ANOVA. Analytical results reveal that ACM facilitates learning comparisons and out-performances in two groups of students in different post-test and retention-test scores. Students’ positive feedback and learning disposition also provide the predominant advantage for participants’ successful reasoning processes. Pedagogical implications suggest that ACM learning performances result in more significant collaborative reasoning. Key words: animated concept mapping, corresponding reasoning processes, electrochemistry learning performances, problem-solving

The Effect of Undergraduate Education, Gender and Department on Prospective Teachers’ Lifelong Learning Dispositions

Bu çalışmanın amacı öğretmen adaylarının lisans düzeyinde aldıkları eğitimin yaşam boyu öğrenme eğilimlerine etkisini incelemektir. Çalışma 2015-2016 öğretim yılında Bartın Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi’nde öğrenim görmekte olan son sınıf öğrencileri üzerinde gerçekleştirilmiştir. Araştırmanın verisi, araştırmacı tarafından geliştirilen Lisans Eğitimi Değerlendirme Formu ve Coşkun Diker (2009) tarafından geliştirilen “Yaşam Boyu Öğrenme Eğilimleri Ölçeği” ile elde edilmiştir. Lisans eğitimi, öğrenim görülen bölüm türü ve cinsiyetin yaşam boyu öğrenme eğilimi üzerindeki etkisi çoklu regresyon ile incelenmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda; öğretmen adaylarının lisans düzeyindeki aldıkları eğitime ilişkin görüşlerinin cinsiyet ve bölüme göre anlamlı farklılık göstermediği bulunmuştur. Lisans eğitimi değerlendirme formundan elde edilen sonuçlara göre öğretmen adaylarının kendilerini en yeterli hissettikleri alan, anadilde iletişim iken; en yetersiz hissettikleri alan ise yabancı dilde iletişim ile finansal okur yazarlık olarak saptanmıştır. Üniversite öğrencilerinin yaşam boyu öğrenme eğilimlerinin orta düzeyde olduğu görülmüştür. Yaşam boyu öğrenme eğilimi en yüksek olan Türkçe öğretmenliği, en düşük olan ise Sınıf Öğretmenliği öğrencileri olarak saptanmıştır. Yaşam boyu öğrenme eğilimi üzerinde cinsiyet değişkenin etkili olduğu sonucuna varılmıştır.

A multi-modal study into students’ timing and learning regulation: time is ticking

Purpose This empirical study aims to demonstrate how the combination of trace data derived from technology-enhanced learning environments and self-response survey data can contribute to the investigation of self-regulated learning processes. Design/methodology/approach Using a showcase based on 1,027 students’ learning in a blended introductory quantitative course, the authors analysed the learning regulation and especially the timing of learning by trace data. Next, the authors connected these learning patterns with self-reports based on multiple contemporary social-cognitive theories. Findings The authors found that several behavioural facets of maladaptive learning orientations, such as lack of regulation, self-sabotage or disengagement negatively impacted the amount of practising, as well as timely practising. On the adaptive side of learning dispositions, the picture was less clear. Where some adaptive dispositions, such as the willingness to invest efforts in learning and self-perceived planning skills, positively impacted learning regulation and timing of learning, other dispositions such as valuing school or academic buoyancy lacked the expected positive effects. Research limitations/implications Due to the blended design, there is a strong asymmetry between what one can observe on learning in both modes. Practical implications This study demonstrates that in a blended setup, one needs to distinguish the grand effect on learning from the partial effect on learning in the digital mode: the most adaptive students might be less dependent for their learning on the use of the digital learning mode. Originality/value The paper presents an application of embodied motivation in the context of blended learning.

Teaching for Mathematical Dispositions as Well as for Understanding: The Difference Between Reacting to and Advocating for Dispositional Learning

Mathematics teachers know the value of teaching for understanding and to listen for students' sense-making. However, the importance of teaching for a mathematical disposition needs to be recognized as equally valuable and we need to explore more aspects of developing it. In previous studies, the work with dispositions has focused on using rich problems to enable positive dispositions. This study, however, emphasizes the importance of teachers thinking about students as dispositional learners. More specifically, two vignettes are presented in which the teacher's role and perceptions played an equally important role in noticing and developing the students' mathematical dispositions.

Accentuating Dispositional Learning from HIPs Using ePortfolio

Accentuating Dispositional Learning from HIPs Using ePortfolio

Education in the 21 st Century: Acquisition and Application of Knowledge versus Certificate

Education has always been an important factor that brings about national development in human capital, science and technology. The central goal of education is to develop citizens to be self-reliant with a critical thinking ability, decision making and source of solution to life problems while applying the knowledge acquired. This paper examines education in the 21st Century with a specific focus on acquisition and application of knowledge versus certificate. Literature was reviewed in the area under examination and the work revealed that the world is changing as a result of emerging technological and professional trends. This has resulted in the need to down play on the celebrated certificate and encourage the application of knowledge orientation to keep abreast of the 21st century demands of the society. The paper emphasizes the importance of pragmatic knowledge over certification, the skills, abilities and learning dispositions that have been identified as being required for success by educators, business leaders, academics, and governmental agencies in organizations and society. It concludes by giving clues on the creation of niche, that is, individuals with their own brand in career and business. This will therefore relegate certificate consciousness and increase the relevance of knowledge application for creativity, innovation and invention.

Awareness and Awakening: A Narrative-Oriented Inquiry of Undergraduate Students' Development of Mindful Agency in China.

The article explores undergraduate students' experiences of developing mindful agency as a positive learning disposition, their perceived change as a learner, and the possible impact of mindful agency coaching on students' learning and personal growth, using a narrative research method. Seventy Chinese undergraduate students generated personal reflective journals and eight participants' journals were selected to enter into the narrative-oriented inquiry. Our analysis revealed a number of primary themes based on which we produced a meta-story. The supplements of the story were exacted for further critical cross-case discussion. The finding indicated that the multifaceted development of mindful agency involved learning methods, emotional regulation, strategic thinking, and awareness of planning, openness to experience, self-acceptance and self-esteem, and learning engagement, with enhanced sense of personal awareness and awakening. The coaching was supportive for students to foster positive self-identities and become more reflective, mindful, and self-determined.

Visible spatial contiguity of social information and reward affects social learning in brown capuchins (Sapajus apella) and children (Homo sapiens).

Animal social learning is typically studied experimentally by the presentation of artificial foraging tasks. Although productive, results are often variable even for the same species. We present and test the hypothesis that one cause of variation is that spatial distance between rewards and the means of reward release causes conflicts for participants' attentional focus. We investigated whether spatial contiguity between a visible reward and the means of release would affect behavioral responses that evidence social learning, testing 21 brown capuchins (Sapajus apella), a much-studied species with variant evidence for social learning, and one hundred eighty 2- to 4-year-old human children (Homo sapiens), a benchmark species known for a strong social learning disposition. Participants were presented with a novel transparent apparatus where a reward was either proximal or distal to a demonstrated means of releasing it. A distal reward location decreased attention toward the location of the demonstration and impaired subsequent success in gaining rewards. Generally, the capuchins produced the alternative method to that demonstrated, whereas children copied the method demonstrated, although a distal reward location reduced copying in younger children. We conclude that some design features in common social learning tasks may significantly degrade the evidence for social learning. We have demonstrated this for 2 different primates but suggest that it is a significant factor to control for in social learning research across all taxa. (PsycINFO Database Record

LEARNING DEMOCRACY IN THE NEW GILDED AGE

Can democracy be learned? The election of Donald Trump has reinvigorated debates about the practice and process of democratic governance. It has highlighted the ways in which political behavior and ideologies are rooted in different cultures and geographies, and, in our new Gilded Age, the effects of the increasing polarization of the wealthy few and the 99 percent. These conditions make it an opportune time to reexamine earlier social critics who pointed to an array of institutions to combat political and economic inequality. Pragmatist thinkers, John Dewey foremost among them, considered the electoral process only one facet of a democratic ideal that citizens would need to strive to realize in the economic, social, and cultural realms. “Democracy” described not only a political system, but also an egalitarian “mode of associated living.” Such a way of life did not take place exclusively in the realm of formal politics, but in any instance of communal activity. Most importantly, democracy was a learned disposition: a form of egalitarian human organization that could only emerge if individuals developed the right habits of mind and used their shared intelligence to build inclusive communities of mutual flourishing.

Student profiling in a dispositional learning analytics application using formative assessment

How learning disposition data can help us translating learning feedback from a learning analytics application into actionable learning interventions, is the main focus of this empirical study. It extends previous work (Tempelaar, Rienties, & Giesbers, 2015), where the focus was on deriving timely prediction models in a data rich context, encompassing trace data from learning management systems, formative assessment data, e-tutorial trace data as well as learning dispositions. In this same educational context, the current study investigates how the application of cluster analysis based on e-tutorial trace data allows student profiling into different at-risk groups, and how these at-risk groups can be characterized with the help of learning disposition data. It is our conjecture that establishing a chain of antecedent-consequence relationships starting from learning disposition, through student activity in e-tutorials and formative assessment performance, to course performance, adds a crucial dimension to current learning analytics studies: that of profiling students with descriptors that easily lend themselves to the design of educational interventions.

Informed Reflexivity: Enacting Epistemic Virtue

To discuss reflexive practice in relation to epistemic cognition, we posit informed reflexivity as an epistemic virtue that is informed by its particular context and purposes of knowing and action and promotes use of reliable processes to achieve epistemic aims. It involves reasoning about social relationships in which a person is embedded when acting in a specific kind of context—whether academic or real-world—that requires construction, evaluation, and application of knowledge. Informed reflexivity is the learned disposition to reason about one's knowledge-related actions, entailing context-specific epistemic characteristics. It involves an intentional stance about the need to reason about oneself and the context. Discussions of two disciplinary competencies (science and history) and two cross-disciplinary competencies (critical thinking and writing) illustrate how epistemically competent practices instantiate informed reflexivity. Promoting informed reflexivity as an epistemic virtue might dispose students toward reliable processes of knowing and making epistemically informed resolved action appropriate to the context.

Motivated Globetrotting: A Goal-oriented Perspective of Why Individuals Relocate Abroad for Work

In this study, we use motivated action theory, to develop model of why individuals relocate abroad for work. Based on multisource data collected during a seven-year period at four lagged time points, we first find that the cultural richness of individuals’ prior international experiences result in having a superordinate identity in the form of global identity. A global identity in turn triggers the aspiration to move abroad for work. The aspiration to relocate abroad further mediates between a global identity and the actual decision to relocate. We finally show that dispositional learning goal orientation buffers the effect of global identity on the relocation process. Our study contributes to motivation theories, as well as global identity, global mobility and international management literatures.

Mathematics teachers’ capacity for change

Mathematics teachers across the Western world are faced with an expectation that they make significant change to their teaching, but repeated attempts have shown little embedded success. This paper draws on a longitudinal study of two apparently well-placed English mathematics departments attempting to make change aligned with both policy and internationally-valued ‘good practice’. It suggests deep teacher change draws on a wide range of both social and affective characteristics, as well as sophisticated professional skills and knowledge. The study supports a construct of ‘(mathematics) teacher capacity for change’ at both individual and group levels within teachers’ ‘personal domains’, synthesising the range of characteristics apparently needed by teachers in times of change. In particular, it argues for the development of dispositions for collaborative learning and of other learning-supportive affects. Such an approach has the potential to place teachers in a better position to respond to demanding aspirations.

Learning Stories: An Empirical Analysis of Their Use in Germany

Learning stories are used in early childhood education in Germany and throughout the world as a form of assessment and pedagogical documentation. The main objective of a learning story is to carve out the learning dispositions of an individual child by describing a certain situation which the teacher reckons to be important for the child. The concept aims to record children’s development in a way that is child-centred, non-standardised, holistic and socioculturally embedded. In order to obtain a picture of how this ambitious aim is pursued in practice, 338 learning stories from 32 early childhood education (ECE) centres in Germany were analysed. The analysis shows that the aims of the learning story concept are only partially achieved. In particular, the writers of the learning stories often do not make the stories’ subjective character clear, and tend to only focus on a limited number of the learning dispositions that underlie the concept. Many learning stories evaluate children’s abilities by way of comparison with a theoretical normal development. The form of the stories (language, text, use of pictures) often makes them less accessible to children.

Adding dispositions to create pedagogy-based Learning Analytics

This empirical study aims to demonstrate how Dispositional Learning Analytics (DLA) can provide a strong connection between Learning Analytics (LA) and pedagogy. Where LA based models typically do well in predicting course performance or student drop-out, they lack actionable data in order to easily connect model predictions with educational interventions. Using a showcase based on learning processes of 1080 students in a blended introductory quantitative course, we analysed the use of worked-out examples by students. Our method is to combine demographic and trace data from learning-management systems with self-reports of several contemporary social-cognitive theories. Students differ not only in the intensity of using worked-out examples but also in how they positioned that usage in their learning cycle. These differences could be described both in terms of differences measured by LA trace variables and by differences in students’ learning dispositions. We conjecture that using learning dispositions with trace data has significant advantages for understanding student’s learning behaviours. Rather than focusing on low user engagement, lessons learned from LA applications should focus on potential causes of suboptimal learning, such as applying ineffective learning strategies.

Learner Dashboards a Double-Edged Sword? Students’ Sense-Making of a Collaborative Critical Reading and Learning Analytics Environment for Fostering 21st Century Literacies

The affordances of learning analytics (LA) tools and solutions are being increasingly harnessed for enhancing 21st century pedagogical and learning strategies and outcomes. However, use cases and empirical understandings of students’ experiences with LA tools and environments aimed at fostering 21st century literacies, especially in the K-12 schooling sector and in Asian education contexts remain relatively scarce in the field. Our paper addresses this knowledge gap in two ways. First, we present a first iteration design of a computer-supported collaborative critical reading and LA environment, WiREAD, and its 16-week implementation in a Singapore high school. Second, we foreground students’ evaluative accounts of the benefits and drawbacks associated with this techno-pedagogical innovation. Our analysis of students’ collective sense-making pointed to a number of potentialities and perils associated with the design and use of LA dashboards. Positives included (1) fostering greater self-awareness, reflective and self-regulatory learning dispositions, (2) enhancing learning motivation and engagement, and (3) nurturing connective literacy among students. The motivational value of peer-referenced LA visualisations for stimulating healthy competition and game-like learning was identified, alongside the perils of these serving to demoralise, pressurise and trigger complacency in learners. By focusing on students’ experiences and interpretations of how the LA dashboard visualizations impacted their learning motivation and outcomes, this paper aims to shed insights into the pedagogical complexities of designing LA that considers the voices of learners as a critical stakeholder group.

Schooling, Learning Disposition, and Life Course Transitions: A Life History Study on Korean Elite Adult Learners

This article analyzes the crystallized learning disposition formed in secondary schools and its persistent influence on the transition between educational sectors and the workplace. Using interview data from eight adults who graduated from a prestigious university in Korea, this study reveals that exam-inclined self-direction, a manner of self-direction without self, is strongly associated with types of knowledge and the method of constructing the self under extreme ranking competition. Exam-inclined self-direction, firmly ingrained in the students, has momentum beyond secondary schools, in which it was cultivated, and has constrained some of their life choices. This article problematizes some ideas of self-direction and discusses exam-inclined self-direction as socially and institutionally conditioned, as well as the reason it has survived in the Korean social context. Finally, this article calls for the in-depth investigation of a new category of learner, exam-friendly adult learners.

Requisite participant characteristics for effective peer group mentoring

Effective mentorship, due to the developmental nature of the experience, hinges upon the people involved—specifically, the personal characteristics of the mentoring collaborators. In this paper, the author explored requisite participant characteristics for peer group mentoring. One dozen executive-level professional women shared their stories-of-experience as participants in peer mentoring groups. A thematic analysis was utilized to investigate the narrative data from these interviews. Findings suggest that these participant characteristics include (a) an intrinsic interest; (b) a learning disposition; (c) a commitment to the mentoring experience; (d) comfortability with vulnerability and having the courage to share struggles; and (e) an inherent desire to support others in their learning, growth, and development.

Dispositions for Critical Social Justice Teaching and Learning

This article examines the social justice dispositions that, when honed and developed over time, enable prospective teachers—and teacher educators—to embrace social justice praxis and persist in their everyday quest for equitable educational conditions, opportunities, and outcomes. Developed through work in a Community of Practice (CoP), these dispositions include radical openness, humility, and self-vigilance. In this article, we define each disposition and explore how they may be cultivated, enacted, and modeled in teacher education. These dispositions, we argue, serve as reminders of the unfinishedness of our work and the effort required to stay the course of equity and justice in the rough waters of the status quo.