Re-Awakening the Flow of Learning

Another way of thinking about ‘personal mastery’ is to think about it in terms of ‘self-efficacy’. This is a concept that lies at the heart of Albert Bandura’s work in psy-chology, where he describes it as:

the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.

Bandura 1995: 2

The core of the theory is that people’s level of motivation, emotional state and actions are based more on what they believe than on reality. The beliefs about ourselves that we develop throughout our lives exert a powerful effect upon our ability to manage our lives and achieve outcomes. Self-efficacy theory is compre-hensive in that it addresses the origins of beliefs, the processes through which they operate, and provides explicit guidelines on how to enhance and develop efficacy.

One of the strongest effects that beliefs about ourselves can exert is the extent to which they can be ‘limiting’. As you saw from the work of Carol Dweck in Chapter 2, beliefs about intelligence can have a significant effect on young people’s motivation.

The source of the ‘failure identities’ that many young people acquire (see also Chapter 1) will be the self-beliefs they derive from their life experience. Beliefs are also often irrational: they are based on assumptions of what we think we ‘should’ be like and ‘should’ be able to achieve. Such core beliefs can drive behaviour in unproductive directions, and because they are inferred from our interpretation of our experience, they often remain largely untested (Barbara Larrivee 2000: 302–3).

So just as ‘confusion precedes understanding’ challenging untested and assumed beliefs will need to precede the development of the skills of self-management.

Bandura believes that self-efficacy can be learned, and that there is a role for social

The stages of the CARE model for realizing potential

63

persuasion: verbal encouragement from others can help young people overcome self doubt and gain confidence in gathering ‘mastery experiences’.

Therefore there is a role for affirmation in Stage 3 and it will be twofold: firstly to challenge limiting beliefs and expose their irrational basis. Inability to achieve at a task or a piece of work does not mean a person is totally unworthy, but this may often be the interpretation young people place upon failure. The second role for affirmation will be to boost confidence by identifying the positive elements of a young person’s work and behaviour. Realistic feedback can raise awareness of ele-ments that young people may have become blinded to as a result of the over-whelming self-defeating power of self-beliefs. Affirmation is also significant in defining the difference between the person and the behaviour; confirming the worth of the individual while giving realistic feedback on the behaviour. Adopting the interpretation ‘there’s no failure only feedback’ will enable young people to face difficulties as challenges to be overcome rather than to give up on.

As well as seeking to encourage self-efficacy and give positive affirmation, in a Stage entitled ‘Re-awakening the Flow of Learning’, we also need to have an awareness of developmental aspects of young people in relation to their learning readiness. You will remember the use of the term in Chapter 1 in relation to Piaget’s theory of stages of mental development. Piaget used the term ‘operations’ to describe the mental activities and strategies used by children, which progress in a series of stages. While younger children are pre-operational, between the ages of 6 and 12 years a child will develop concrete operations, and will be able to cope with mental strategies such as addition and subtraction. At age 12+, in the stage of formal operations, young people develop the capability to deal with abstract ideas and things outside their immediate experience (Steve Bartlett et al. 2001: 124–5).

For our purposes, I am taking a wider sense of the term learning readiness. As you also saw in Chapter 1, although no-one has challenged Piaget’s basic assumptions, subsequent research has suggested the stages may be too confined, and that he may have underestimated the abilities of children and the speed at which they could progress. Early studies of readiness influenced educational practice to the degree that a practice of holding back children’s school progression until they were ready to learn became common practice. However, Rita Watson (1998: 156) cites subsequent research that claims there is no evidence whatsoever that educational postponement in the early years can in any way enhance children’s chances of success. Indeed, it’s suggested that the negative social and emotional consequences can have adverse effects on a child’s overall functioning.

A second reason for a broader approach is because Piaget did not consider any further development from his adolescent stage, and thus there is an implication that

‘development’ has come to an end. No such end point is imaginable in learning,³ particularly as we are taking learning as a lifelong activity.

The findings of research also draw attention to other factors. You will remember from Chapter 2 the fact that in adolescence young people are experiencing brain growth spurts, and that not all parts of their brains will have settled into their adult form by puberty as was previously thought. An additional factor is that the major brain-growth spurt around 11 years of age is three times greater in girls. Then there’s a reversal in a later brain growth spurt at 15, which is more substantial in boys (Philip Adey and Michael Shayer 1994: 141). So there’s a gender factor that also needs to be taken account of in relation to learning readiness.

Thirdly, Adey and Shayer also note that the brain growth that occurs is not an increase in the actual number of cells in the cerebral cortex, but an increase in the

‘connections’ – the dendrites that allow transfer of the electrical impulses between neurons (see Chapter 2). Since this type of growth depends upon stimulation from the environment, presumably, if a young person has lacked an appropriate stimu-lating experience to encourage new growth, this will limit new connections being made. Thus, we can factor in the effects of limited social and emotional experience to a broad concept of learning readiness.

Overall, an awareness of all these factors informs our ability to engage in a crucial aspect of coaching intervention – to stimulate a re-awakening of the flow of learning and help young people move to the ‘next level’. Mike Hughes (2006: 139) expresses it in simple terms:

if a student is at ‘level 3’ she has to be working at ‘level 4’ in order to progress; ‘level 2’ is too easy, ‘level 3’ is stagnation (this is different from consolidation) while ‘level 8’ is over-optimistic. Few would argue that getting the level of challenge right for each student is a key challenge for the teacher. When work is too easy, students become bored; when work is perceived as impossibly hard, they switch off.

Key Words for Stage 3: Self-Efficacy – Affirmation – Learning Readiness

Stage 4 – Empowerment

Affirmation can play a part in encouraging motivation, but as our overall aim in coaching is to encourage independent learning, plainly the degree to which young people are able to self-motivate will be crucial. There was a particular reason for naming Stage 3 Re-awakening the Flow of Learning: it relates to the fact that, however they may appear to us, young people are not born de-motivated or disin-terested. Rather, we were all born with a natural curiosity and a drive to explore our environment. David Fontana (1995: 149–50) explains how we can come to lose that

The stages of the CARE model for realizing potential

65

innate interest in learning as we mature. Firstly, the response of others to our natural curiosity helps determine how it develops. If attempts at exploration are met with adult disapproval then such attempts are likely to become less frequent, to be replaced by apathy or random purposeless activity. Secondly, there is a close link between curiosity as a motivator and the degree of interest that can be derived from the learning experience. To the self-motivated, nothing is ‘boring’. (Boring is just a place I’ve been to – it’s in Oregon.) Probably the reason some things capture our interest and others do not is because of the degree of relevance to our daily lives. For many young people though, their school experience may not inspire this level of interest:

the problem with much school learning is that it appears to lack this relevance. It takes place in an environment distinct from the outside world, and much of what it teaches is a preparation for tasks way ahead in the future, rather than in the present (or tasks which the child meets only in school and nowhere else).

David Fontana 1995:150

So the first two features of Stage 4 are closely linked. To fulfil our overall aim of generating independent learning, motivation is essential. To become self-motivated, young people need to be able to relate to the learning aims; to see them as having purpose and relevance to their own interests. When imaginative teachers do this, they are able to hand over ownership of the learning to their students.

Plainly ownership of learning is much more than a simple handing over of tasks for students to complete single-handed. You will have seen that the coaching stages have been working towards Empowerment by addressing the complex interplay of cog-nitive, emotional and social factors. Bandura (1995: 18) refers to this aspect in pointing out that the implications for self-regulated learning have been one of the major advances of the study of lifelong cognitive development. Until recently there had been a heavy focus solely on how the mind worked in processing, organizing and retrieving information. But social cognitive theory has widened the viewpoint by advocating that people must develop skills in regulating the motivational, emotional and social influences on their intellectual functioning as well as the cognitive elements.

The stages of the CARE model take this wider perspective. It is not the case that a person-centred approach is unrealistic, rather it is essential to an effective educa-tion for the twenty-first century. Adey and Shayer (1994: 180) make a similar point in arguing that keeping the development of cognition in mind will not interfere with the instructional goals of the curriculum. Rather, their view is that good instruction and the promotion of higher-level thinking can be promoted throughout the curri-culum. Similarly, fostering self-awareness and self-belief has to be integrated into educational practice if young people are to acquire the capabilities to educate

themselves throughout their lifetime. If knowledge is power, then self-knowledge is empowerment. Or as one dictionary definition puts it: ‘Something that is empow-ering makes you more confident and makes you feel you are in control of your life’.

Achievement of such an aim, for both young person and coach, will indeed be a cause for celebration.

Key Words for Stage 4: Self-Motivation – Ownership – Celebration