Developing Resilient Agency in Learning: The Internal Structure of Learning Power

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Understanding students’ learning dispositions has been a focus for research in education for many years. A range of alternative approaches to conceptualising and measuring this broad construct have been developed. Traditional psychometric measures aim to produce scales that satisfy the requirements for research; however, such measures have an additional use – to provide formative feedback to the learner. In this article we reanalyse 15 years of data derived from the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory. We explore patterns and relationships within its practical measures and generate a more robust, parsimonious measurement model, strengthening its research attributes and its practical value. We show how the constructs included in the model link to relevant research and how it serves to integrate a number of ideas that have hitherto been treated as separate. The new model suggests a view of learning that is an embodied and relational process through which we regulate the flow of energy and information over time in order to achieve a particular purpose. Learning dispositions reflect the ways in which we develop resilient agency in learning by regulating this flow of energy and information in order to engage with challenge, risk and uncertainty and to adapt and change positively.