Positive Learning Dispositions Research Articles

Outcomes of an integrated STEM with design thinking module on preschoolers’ engineering practices

Research indicates that utilizing engineering design processes such as design thinking (DT) to integrate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines yields positive outcomes. However, there is limited study on the effects of STEM education on preschoolers’ engineering practices. This case study evaluation examined the outcomes of an integrated STEM with DT module on preschoolers’ engineering practices in a private preschool in Malaysia. Two preschool teachers facilitated the learning of twenty preschoolers in two classes daily over four weeks. Data was collected through interviews and direct classroom observations, including fieldnotes, students’ artefacts, photos, voice, and video recordings. The qualitative data were analyzed inductively through thematic analysis. The findings indicated that the preschoolers engaged in numerous engineering practices while they actively participating in learning tasks. During their efforts to solve problems using DT process, they showed compassion for the characters in the stories and successfully defined the problem. The findings also highlighted the preschoolers’ ability to design and sketch their ideas. They demonstrated proficiency in constructing, testing, analyzing and evaluating their designs, as well as generating ideas to improve them and solve problems. Additionally, the results provided evidence that the engineering design process fosters collaboration and communication. Through iterative testing and modification, the preschoolers exhibited persistence and very positive learning dispositions.

Disruptive Education for Sustainable Development-Cultivating Positive Learning Dispositions

Education is the process through which sustainable development can be achieved. Learners develop values and skills through proper guidance individually and collectively that enable to improve the quality of life. This paper addresses how teachers need to continually interrogate their practices focusing on improving outcomes of learners. Positive behaviour supports student learning and development in achieving their desired objectives. The methods involve dispositions, the key components for one’s sustainable development. The results suggest that environment with supportive autonomy versus controlling is essential for sustainability. Teachers need to cultivate appropriate positive dispositions in terms of interest, inventiveness and intensiveness. To elevate learning capacity, teachers provide challenging and appealing environments to extend student capabilities thus heightens their efficacy. Rendering the focus on research as eminently topical and pertinent which adds an importance to the existing literature through the direct focus into the classroom space with digital devices where disruption takes place.

Students Who Surprise Teachers When Learning Mathematics Through Problem Solving in the Early Primary Years

Teacher reluctance to teach mathematics through challenging tasks is frequently linked to beliefs that such approaches are not appropriate for students perceived as less mathematically capable. One potential means of shifting such beliefs is inviting teachers to reflect on students that surprise them when working on such tasks. Early years’ primary teachers (n = 160) participated in a professional learning initiative that supported them to implement up to ten sequences of challenging tasks in their classrooms across the school year. When asked to describe a student who surprised them when working on the sequences, approximately half (47%) of teachers described students previously assumed to be less mathematically capable being successful in their mathematical learning. Most remaining teachers (36%) commented on the depth of student mathematical thinking and positive learning dispositions demonstrated, without making any explicit reference to preconceptions of student capability. By contrast, a notable number of teachers (15%) instead described their surprise at how students labelled as mathematically capable struggled with working on tasks that were more open-ended, had multiple solutions, and required them to explain their reasoning. Our findings suggest that teaching with sequences of challenging tasks has the potential to disrupt rigid teacher preconceptions as to whom might be considered a mathematically capable student.

Coaching college students in the development of positive learning dispositions: A randomized control trial embedded mixed‐methods study

AbstractEnhancing college students' learning habits, attitudes, and capacities have been an important research topic in educational psychology. In this study, we designed, implemented, and evaluated a coaching program that integrated mindful agency coaching and motivational interviewing for the development of positive learning dispositions in college students. A randomized control trial embedded mixed‐methods design was employed. The quantitative phase with two experimental groups showed that the intervention group (n = 24) showed significant improvement in mindful agency, self‐efficacy, learning motivation, and emotional intelligence after the coaching, compared with the control group (n = 30). The qualitative phase with students in the intervention group (n = 15) revealed five themes: Task orientation, motivational management, openness and acceptance, self‐awareness and self‐regulation, and supporting factors for coaching. Integrated findings demonstrated whether and how coaching could be a promising approach to enhancing college students' various positive dispositions that are essential for them to be mindful, resilient, and self‐directed learners.

The Impact of Mindful Agency Coaching and Motivational Interviewing on the Development of Positive Learning Dispositions in Undergraduate Students: A Quasi-Experimental Intervention Study

ABSTRACTThis article details the design, implementation, and evaluation of mindful agency coaching and motivational interviewing interventions to develop undergraduate students’ positive learning dispositions. A quasi-experimental design was employed in the study involving three groups: one control group, one intervention group of mindful agency coaching only (MA group), and another intervention group of mindful agency coaching plus motivational interviewing (MA+MI group). The main findings show that compared with the control group, the two intervention groups achieved significant improvements in mindful agency, self-efficacy, and emotional intelligence. However, there was no significant difference between the two intervention groups in posttests. Moreover, participants’ improvement in mindful agency fully mediated the postintervention increases in self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, and metacognition. It can be concluded that mindful agency coaching and motivational interviewing are promising coaching approaches for undergraduate students to become mindful, resilient, and self-determined learners.

Art-based narrative interviewing as a dual methodological process: A participatory research method and an approach to coaching in secondary education

Objectives:The purpose of this article is to discuss art-based narrative interviewing as a dual methodological process with the focus on coaching.Design:A qualitative study was designed in order to explore how secondary students view their own learning as a journey.Method:Art-based narrative interviewing was employed as an approach to coaching that aimed to develop positive learning dispositions and enhance learners’ identities. Dialogic/performance analysis and cross case analysis were conducted to all the three cases.Results:Three distinctive learning stories were told, together with students’ narratives, drawings, and the interactive dialogues between the students and the author as the interviewer/coach. The analysis highlighted the learners’ growth, the use of metaphors and images, students’ experience of transformative learning and the landscape of time and action.Conclusions:The article covers the features of art-based narrative interviewing as a method of data collection, analysis and presentation, and its potential to be utilised as an effective coaching approach alternative to traditional pedagogical intervention.

Supporting the development of positive dispositions and learner identities: an action research study into the impact and potential of developing photographic learning stories in the Early Years

This discussion presents the author/classroom teacher's findings during an action research study evaluating the impact of photographic learning stories with young children. This is placed in the context of recent policy documentation that asserts the learner as a unique individual and literature promoting the need to support the development of positive learning dispositions and learner identity. The ethnographic study examines how learning stories can be developed as a tool to promote positive learning dispositions and support the mediation of home and school culture, suggesting that their potential lies in how they create an accessible and mutually constructed document that is accessed by children, parents and the teacher. The discussion supports reservations about the production of a definitive ‘list’ of dispositions and describes tensions between the aim of supporting positive dispositions and the unique learner in an education culture where effectiveness is measured by the statutory assessment of hierarchical goals.

Towards a systems model of Coaching for Learning: Empirical lessons from the secondary classroom context

Objectives:Coaching psychology has been increasingly used in the discourse of education. However, there has been a lack of research systematically looking at the nature of coaching in the learning process from a participatory and systems approach. This study aimed to investigate how coaching, implemented in enquiry-based learning, would make a difference to the knowledge construction process, the development of positive learning dispositions and learning agency in secondary students.Design:An exploratory participatory case study within a prototyping framework was utilised.Methods:One classroom in a mainstream secondary school in south-west England was selected as the case. 30 students participated in three prototypes of enquiry-based learning facilitated by teachers who were specifically trained to be coaches. Semi-structured and narrative interviews, focus group and classroom observations were conducted with two teachers and 30 students. Teachers’ plans and students’ enquiry products were collected in each prototype. Students’ learning power was measured by Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory before and after the three prototypes.Results:The thematic analysis and observational analysis showed that coaching in learning was a complex process in which teachers and students moved along different modes of coaching relationships. Noticeable increases in students’ independence, learning relationships, confidence, and learning agency were documented. However, the Wilcoxon Signed Test did not show any significant increase in learning power dimensions.Conclusions:It could be concluded that the nature of coaching in learning can be captured in the systems model of Coaching for Learning. The model has important implication for facilitating the enquiry-based learning process. The current study has special value in linking coaching and learning more explicitly and extending our understanding of coaching and coaching psychology to the context of secondary education.

Coaching for Learning: Exploring Coaching Psychology in Enquiry-based Learning and Development of Learning Power in Secondary Education

Coaching psychology has been increasingly used in the discourse of education. However there has been no research systematically looking at how coaching can make difference to the knowledge construction process and learning power development in secondary students. The current study aims to understand the nature of ‘coaching for learning’ in terms of coaching relationships and communication between secondary school students and teachers, and to investigate how the implementation of coaching strategies in enquiry-based learning would influence the development of students’ positive learning dispositions and their identities as learners. The exploratory case study involved a UK mainstream secondary school during the academic year 2010/2011.The students participated in three phases of enquiry-based learning facilitated by teachers who were specifically trained to be coaches. The study employed a qualitative-driven mixed method approach. Semi-structured and narrative interviews, focus group and classroom observations were conducted with two teachers and 30 students. Teachers’ plans and students’ enquiry products were collected in the three phases. The qualitative data was thematically analysed. Quantitative data was collected by Engagement Surveys and the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory before and after the intervention and was statistically analysed by SPSS. The qualitative findings showed that coaching for learning is a complex process in which teachers and students moved along different modes of coaching relationships. Significant increases in students’ independence, learning relationships, confidence, autonomy and awareness of learning identities were noticed. The quantitative result showed that there were increases in critical curiosity, meaning making, creativity, learning relationships and learning engagement. It could be concluded that coaching for learning is different from life coaching or executive coaching. The implementation of coaching psychology is important for students’ learning power development and identity formation by facilitating the knowledge construction process in the context of secondary education. The current study has special value in extending our understanding of coaching psychology to secondary education.

Assessing learning dispositions: is the Effective lifelong learning inventory valid and reliable as a measurement tool?

Background: The Effective lifelong learning inventory (ELLI) has been used as a diagnostic self assessment tool in schools and universities and other learning contexts as a means of raising an individual's awareness of their own learning dispositions and encouraging them to take responsibility for their own learning. The demand for the ELLI, in practice, has been significant, and since it is administered online, since 2004 a dataset of over 10,000 cases has accumulated. Purpose: This paper focuses on an exploration of the internal reliability, validity and stability of the seven scales of the ELLI. Some suggestions of its relevance to practice are made, though this is not the focus of the paper and is discussed elsewhere. Programme description: The inventory is available to formal learning organisations, and is administered by teachers who have been trained in its application, drawing on research and best practice through an evaluated programme. Sample: The total sample in this study is 10,496 individuals from 122 institutions and 413 classrooms. Design and methods: An exploratory factor analysis and scale reliability computations were undertaken and a ‘sensitivity’ study based on a subgroup of the original sample, collected in 2002 is reported. An Analysis of Variance study is repeated, comparing means between age ranges. Results: The study demonstrates again that the scales remain stable and continue to reach acceptable reliability levels in the new sample, in five age ranges and that the mean score on all positive learning dispositions reduces significantly until the 16–19 age range. Conclusions: The scales demonstrate a significant degree of stability, reliability and internal consistency over time. The constructs measured are thus useful for research, and institutional self-evaluation, and can be used, in practice, with some confidence. There remains a significant ongoing research agenda relating to the plasticity of the construct of learning dispositions and the ‘positioning’ of dispositions within an ecology of learning.

Supporting the development of risk-taking behaviours in the early years: an exploratory study

Children's opportunities for independent play in natural outdoor spaces, and the associated opportunities to take and negotiate risk, are being eroded despite potential links between such play and the development of positive learning dispositions. This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study that documented the risk-taking behaviours displayed by four-year-old children in the natural environment of a Forest School and within their school outdoor play-space. The data indicated that the Forest School environment was better able to support the development of positive risk-taking behaviours. The environmental features that may have contributed to the observed behaviours are considered.

Thinking at the edge: developing soft creativity

Creativity in education often takes the form of concentrated periods of arts‐based ‘light relief’ from the rigours of the National Curriculum. In psychology, on the other hand, creativity is often associated with a dramatic moment of ‘illumination’ in solving scientific, mathematical or practical problems. This paper explores a third approach called ‘thinking at the edge’ (TATE) that is based on a therapeutic practice called ‘focusing’ devised by American philosopher Eugene Gendlin. TATE involves learning the knack of delicate inward attention to a somatic process of ‘epistemic evolution’, in which hazy, pre‐conceptual ideas are given time to unfold into novel forms of talking and thinking. Particular forms of exploratory writing and exploratory conversation contribute to this evolutionary process. It is argued that TATE forms a useful addition to the expanding suite of ‘positive learning dispositions’ that lie at the heart of learning to learn; constitutes a corrective to an over‐rationalistic approach to teaching ‘thinking skills’, and offers a clear example of how learning dispositions may potentially be cultivated in educational settings.

Discriminating between Schemes and Schema in Young Children's Emergent Learning of Science and Technology Discrimination entre pense´e ope´rationnelle et sche ¤ mes dans l'apprentissage e´mergent des sciences et des technologies par les jeunes enfants Distinguir entre Planes y Esquema en el Aprendizaje Incipiente de Ciencias y Tecnología de Preescolares

The paper draws upon previously unpublished qualitative data collected through interviews and 'triad elicitation' (Kelly, 1955; Siraj-Blatchford, 1995) with 54 five-year-olds in London. These data were collected to provide the basis for an analysis of the children's current knowledge and understandings of their 'making' activity and of construction kit components. The data were originally collected to provide triangulation for a study that has been published elsewhere. That study showed that young children could achieve a great deal when instruction was provided, but that simple access and encouragement with construction sets were unlikely to support them in their development of understanding, capability or positive learning dispositions in science and technology. Ce papier s'inspire de données qualitatives non-publiées à ce jour recueillies au fil d'entretiens et du principe de l''élicitation triadique' (Kelly, 1955, Siraj-Blatchford, 1995) impliquant des personnes âgées de 54 ans, à Londres. Ces données ont été recueillies pour servir de base à une analyse des connaissances et de la compréhension actuelles des enfants par rapport à leurs activités 'créatives' et aux composants de kit de construction. A l'origine, les données ont été recueillies à des fins de triangulation dans le cadre d'une étude publiée ailleurs. L'étude a révélé que les enfants sont capables de beaucoup lorsque des consignes sont données mais qu'il est peu probable que le simple fait d'accéder à et d'être encouragé à utiliser des jeux de construction les aide à développer leur compréhension, capacité ou dispositions positives d'apprentissage dans les domaines des sciences et des technologies. Este trabajo de investigación hace uso de datos cualitativos no publicados anteriormente recogidos a través de entrevistas y 'triad elicitation (selección triple)' (Kelly, 1955, Siraj-Blatchford, 1995) con 54 niños de cinco años en Londres (Inglaterra). Estos datos fueron recopilados para proporcionar la base para un análisis del conocimiento y comprensión actual de los niños de su actividad de 'creación/producción' y de las piezas de juegos de construcción. Los datos fueron originalmente recopilados para proporcionar triangulación para un estudio que ha sido publicado en otra parte. El estudio demuestra que los niños de preescolar pueden sacar un gran provecho cuando se proporciona instrucción, pero que el simple acceso y estimulación con juegos para construir modelos era poco probable que les ayudara para su desarrollo del entendimiento, capacidad o disposiciones positivas de aprendizaje en ciencias y tecnología.

Tracking the Development of Learning Dispositions

The fundamental purpose of education for the 21st century, it is argued, is not so much the transmission of particular bodies of knowledge, skill and understanding as facilitating the development of the capacity and the confidence to engage in lifelong learning. Central to this enterprise is the development of positive learning dispositions, such as resilience, playfulness and reciprocity. For a variety of reasons, it is necessary to devise methods for tracking and assessing the growth of these dispositions. There are a number of existing methods that might be used, including dynamic assessment, customised challenges, 'learning stories', self-report questionnaires and learning logs, which we evaluate against the criteria of practicability, validity, flexibility and reliability and formative value. We conclude that no single method is adequate on its own and that what is necessary is the development of instruments and approaches that integrate these different assessment methods. We offer a 'learning disposition grid' and a 'learning disposition portfolio' as tools to begin this integrative inquiry.

If You Say It Three Times, Is It True? Critical use of research in early childhood education Si On le Dit Trois Fois, Est-ce Que c'Est Vrai? I'Utilisation critique de la recherche dans l'enseignement prescolaire Si lo Repite Tres Veces, Es Verdad? Uso critico de la investigacion sobre educacion en la primera infancia

Despite having a curriculum based on socio-cultural theory and changes in teacher education context, the tenet of 'readiness' and the belief in teacher non-interference remain strongly evident in New Zealand early childhood teachers practice. These practices have sub-optimal consequences for children's learning and development and for early childhood teacher status. Some insights from New Zealand research on child-child learning and teaching and on the importance of adult-child interactions for children to formulate 'working theories' and develop positive learning dispositions are used to argue that future research needs to focus on children's learning and the teacher's pedagogical role. It is suggested that a range of learning theories may be needed, appropriate to specific contexts. Bien que le programme scolaire soit base sur la theorie socioculturelle et que des changements aient eu place dans la formation des enseignants, le principe de maturite pedagogique et la croyance dans la non-interference des enseignants demeurent fortement manifestes dans les pratiques des enseignants de la petite enfance en Nouvelle-Zelande. Ces pratiques ont des consequences sub-optimales sur l'apprentissage des enfants et leur developpement, et sur le statut des enseignants de la petite enfance. Des apercus tires de recherches neo-zelandaises sur l'apprentissage et l'enseignement d'enfant a enfant et sur l'importance des interactions adulte-enfant pour que les enfants puissent formuler des hypotheses de travail et developper des dispositions positives d'apprentissage servent a affirmer que les futures recherches devront se concentrer sur l'apprentissage des enfants et le role pedagogique de l'enseignant. Il est suggere que tout un eventail de theories de l'apprentissage pourraient etre requises, selon les contextes differents. A pesar de tener un curriculum en base a una teoria sociocultural y cambios en el contexto docente del profesor, el principio de ''a punto'' y la creencia en la no interferencia del profesor siguen siendo evidentes en la practica de los profesores de infancia de Nueva Zelanda. Estas practicas tienen consecuencias suboptimas para el aprendizaje y desarrollo de los ninos y para la posicion del profesor de infancia. Se usan algunas opiniones de la investigacion realizada en Nueva Zelanda sobre el aprendizaje y ensenanza nino a nino y sobre la importancia de las interacciones adulto-nino para que los ninos formulen ''teorias de trabajo'' y desarrollen disposiciones de aprendizaje positivas, y con estas opiniones se discute si las futuras investigaciones deberian centrarse en el aprendizaje de los ninos y el papel pedagogico del profesor. Se sugiere la posible necesidad de una serie de teorias de aprendizaje, adecuadas a contextos especificos.