Join David W. Drewery, Robert Sproule and Judene Pretti in their webinar on Wednesday, March 16, 2022 to discuss their chapter in Taking Stock 2.0.
When we think about successful students and graduates, the image that comes to mind is one of a lifelong learner. Lifelong learners’ mindset seems central to their success in the classroom and beyond. It inspires individuals to ask questions, seek answers, discover relationships between theory and practice, and overcome challenges in the process of learning. Indeed, graduates have informed us that their success is due in part to their development as lifelong learners. This feedback motivated us to investigate how to develop students’ lifelong learning mindsets. Some of our research suggests that offering work-integrated learning experiences, such as co-operative education work terms, are helpful in developing students’ lifelong learning mindsets.
As we conducted such research, we ran into issues with assessment. Traditionally, assessing lifelong learning mindsets relied on students’ self-reports. Yet, when lifelong learning becomes a program level learning outcome, educators and not students become responsible for assessment. So, we wanted to explore alternative approaches to assessing lifelong learning mindsets, especially approaches that are applicable to work-integrated learning settings. Our chapter describes the development of a rubric for assessing lifelong learning mindsets in work-integrated learning. It presents for the reliability and validity of this approach. As such, it is relevant to educators seeking approaches to assessing lifelong learning mindsets beyond traditional classroom settings.
