Tiny Clue#3 “Thats not a Driver: These are Drivers!”

One of major influences over the years has been our partnership with Ruth Deakin-Crick, Bristol University with The Effective Life-Long Learning Inventory” (ELLI) and more recently with University of Technology Sydney and CLARA still with Ruth. The notion of learners having a range of Learning Powers which are able to be measured and more importantly able to be grown was a major clue for us about the nature of how people learn. The correlation of these Learning Powers with a measure of Learner Resilience  ranging from complete autonomy to learnt       dependence consolidated our understanding further.

We have data reaching back 10 years now on the learning of our students and teachers which provide a wonderful longitudinal narrative as our learning is shaped by various influences. Clearly there is a close connection between the Learning Powers and the General Capabilities.

The other exciting outcome is that working with Ruth Deakin Crick and her team from UTS our staff came to identify the Drivers for educational change to meet  the needs of our students acting as resident agents of their own learning. We have to understand clearly the which actions are Drivers and other actions which are not.

2 thoughts on “Tiny Clue#3 “Thats not a Driver: These are Drivers!”

  1. In R/1 we have discovered puppets are a great way to engage the attention/imagination of our children. Puppets also foster their emotional and social development. Across The Village we use Australian animal puppets to represent our CLARA icons. Each puppet has a role to play that relates to its particular learning power. The children are really attached to our puppets and by using the puppets we have really engaged the children in the language of learning. Here are a couple examples of children’s reflections that really highlight how our children have been able to apply the language in context.

    Mr Koala is our puppet for creativity:
    “I use Mr Koala’s learning power when I’m drawing” – child a
    “I use Mr Koala when I play with sticks”- child b
    “I used Mr Koala when I was dancing” – child c

    The school drivers complement each other. They also draw connection to our three pillars, values, influences and the general capabilities. I recently read two articles by Pasi Sahlberg- ‘Too much control’ and, ‘Let them play’. As I was read both articles the drivers were immediately at the forefront of my mind. A quote from the reading said “play is important because by definition, it is something every child can succeed in. It is a natural thing they do unless we take it away”- this particular statement made me go straight to our driver of negotiating learning with students- within this driver we are honoring individual student voice and providing children with choice about what, how and when they learn. Play is a gateway to this. Play creates an environment for risk taking and challenges our children (driver 2).

  2. How amazing it is to put the power of learning in the children’s hands. Learning is best done by experience than just listening, through agency and doing than transmission. In working with children on ELLI, CLARA and the Character Strengths I have seen first hand how these influences add values to provide a meta-language for how students see themselves as learners.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *