Learner Identities

By Lorraine Sands, 24 August 2022

I have spent the last few years writing a Masters thesis about learner identities, particularly in relation to the way learning stories nurture a child’s sense of themselves as learners. Thoughtfully written within a listening community ethos, they inform whānau about what valued learning might look like and embed whānau aspirations into Learning Stories in ongoing partnership-focused ways. In addition, Learning Stories written and shared across our teams enable kaiako to design learning environments that have a mana-enhancing vision.

To begin, I think learner identities are formed through the storied lives we all lead, that with reflection over time, give us a sense of who we are as learners, and an understanding of the ways we respond to people, places and things. It is more appropriate though, to think about multiple stories, shared in community-oriented, relational ways that connect us to our cultures. Te Whāriki gives us an aspirational, visionary curriculum and it is in the hands of teachers to ensure we design learning settings worthy of these principles and strands and indeed worthy of the immense curiosity children bring to their learning lives.

Understanding the ways we think of ourselves as learners, essentially happens cumulatively over time, in different places and within a range of social and cultural contexts. There is no one story, no one truth, no one ideal learning identity. And this is why Learning Stories written by multiple teachers and contributed to by families and children, as we all respond to learning with and alongside the people, places, and things we love bring learning alive, making it possible to re-visit, re-imagine and re-energise our possible selves. Learning Stories can have such a dramatic effect on the way children see themselves as learners and actually on how teachers and families see their children and their own roles in nurturing learner identities for the children they care so deeply about.

Learning Stories can bring a heart-energised component to the way we all engage in learning because it is emotional connection, that imbues learning with the kind of excitement that encourages children to be brave, courageous, kind, thoughtful, resilient and resourceful. These are of course dispositions. When teachers write about the times children were being brave, thoughtful, kind leaderful, resilient and resourceful because we share Learning Stories across our communities, children hear these stories in multiple places, times, and social contexts, they begin to think: I am brave, I am kind, I stick with things when they are hard and I don’t give up.

Professors Margaret Carr and Guy Claxton (2004) do not see dispositions as a noun but as a verb. Something to be acquired and to keep acquiring over time. They suggest it is the role of early childhood settings:

To strengthen valued learning responses and actions along three dimensions: increasing their frequency and robustness, widening their modus operandi, what they look like in an ever-widening circle and deepening their complexity and competence. (95)

So, as we view a child’s learning and write about this, do we see positive learning dispositions becoming more frequent? For example, when something is new, is it the child’s default response to be curious, do we see this learning occurring in ever more varied places and times, and is it growing in complexity and richness? Alison Gopnik says: “Our job is not to shape our children’s minds; it’s to let those minds explore all the possibilities that the world allows”. With this in mind: What will our own legacy be as, moment after moment, day after day, year after year, as we intentionally nurture the children in our settings, to build the brain they will have for their lifetime? We can do this through the way we write story after story about children in the context of their lived experiences. This is the very essence of being a learner, and acquiring the kind of view of ourselves, whatever that may mean to each of us, that will sustain us all through the joyful as well as the difficult times and with resilience find our many possible selves? What impact will we have; what impact are we having in the way we write these stories?

Mā te ahurei o te tamaiti e ārahi i ā tātou mahi.
Let the uniqueness of the child guide our work.

Reference:
Claxton, G., & Carr, M. (2004). A framework for teaching learning: the dynamics of disposition. Early years, 24(1), 87-97.

Below is a Learning Story, which highlights how play shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul! (click the image for the full story)