The EmpowerED Learner Pathway
Strengthening and Infusing Dispositional Learning
The EmpowerED Learner Series is a multiple day professional learning inquiry utilizing the Design Thinking Process with a mission to grow empowered learners in becoming more reflective, confident, capable learners, ready to take on challenges.
Why is this important for schools, systems and learners?
Empowered learners don’t just know content. They have high self-efficacy, a positive learner identity, emotional intelligence, social awareness and the skills and know-how to take on worthy goals and challenges. Essentially, they know how to learn and what to do when they don’t know what to do. In the ever-changing world, we must empower students with more than knowledge and content. This series is about engaging in this process collectively to establish a community of skillful learners for educators and learners alike.
PHASE 1: The inquiry begins with empathizing with the needs of learners through engaging in collaborative inquiry to determine what students believe about learning and their identity as learners. A plan will be designed to gather student voice data from all demographic groups.
PHASE 2: Analyzing the evidence collected, the second phase will engage teams in developing an empowered learner profile with a goal of developing a school-wide language of learning and “way of doing” that describes learners’ contribution to the classroom based on the neuroscience.
PHASE 3: The third phase will explore the progress made thus far by teams and their learners with an aim of moving toward infusion of learner dispositions and growing positive learner identities into the entire school community. This phase will focus on observing and assessing growth in dispositional learning by leveraging the formative assessment process.
Success Criteria
EDUCATORS
Define and explain the connections between self-efficacy, learning dispositions, and learner identity.
Develop evidence tools to elicit student voice about learning.
Collectively develop learning dispositions, inviting students to establish a positive learner identity and to contribute to the learning in the classroom in empowered ways.
Model, share, and teach students the language of learning.
Infuse the language of learning and a way of doing into everyday experiences so students see the connectedness and use the learning dispositions to describe, reflect on, and move learning forward.
Provide learners on-going opportunities to use the dispositions of learning to engage in challenge.
STUDENTS
Provide evidence about how they think and feel about their identity as learners and their role as learners in the classroom.
Explore and learn about what skillful learners do and how they contribute to the classroom.
Reflect on their learning goals and their identity as learners to establish a realistic image of themselves as learners and set goals for growing as a learner.
Practice the learner dispositions and develop a positive learner identity.
Able to choose, design, research, troubleshoot and evaluate learning for themselves, with others in school and beyond.
Recommended Reading
Dive into Dispositional Learning with these two books by The Core Collaborative authors!
Partnering With Students:
Building Ownership of Learning
By Mary Jane O'Connell and Kara Vandas
This resource is designed to empower teachers and leaders with strategies to develop learners who have the confidence and tools to engage in any challenge.
Mistake Literacy
How to Optimize Student Learning from Mistakes
Why is it that sometimes students learn from mistakes while other times they stagnate or even regress? The answer lies in Mistake Literacy. To be mistake literate, one must have an eye towards optimizing learning by recognizing, reacting to, and repairing mistakes.
Join partner consultant Zak Cohen in a two-day workshop to help educators and school leaders make the most of what is natural and unavoidable to the learning process - the process itself!
Apply what the research says about how to optimize student learning from mistakes
Cultivate a teaching and learning climate that nurtures Mistake Literacy