Becoming a Learning Organization: Launching New Modules to Support Learners and Organizations
A new set of modules from the Next Level Lab is designed to help individuals and organizations consider new visions for what it means to be an expert learner.
The Next Level Lab is pleased to launch a set of modules designed to help workplaces become strong learning organizations, “Becoming a Learning Organization: Supporting Learning in the Contexts of Work.” These modules were developed in response to requests from the field after workplace managers used the Reflection and Planning Inventory that we launched last year, “In What Ways Is Your Workplace a Learning Organization?”, to consider the ways in which their workplace supports learning.
About the Inventory
Based upon research in the learning sciences, cognitive science and neuroscience, the inventory invites reflection on six dimensions along which learning organizations support growth amongst their employees. It is designed to be used repeatedly as a periodic reflection tool so that it offers snapshots at different points in time. These serve as benchmarks for the organization to assess against in considering how well it is meeting its learning goals. Here’s what one workplace manager had to say about the inventory:
“We used the Organization Learning Inventory during our annual leadership kickoff meeting. It was an excellent instrument to expand and ground our thinking about organizational learning. This is something we’ve discussed before and have incorporated several efforts to become a learning organization. The self-reflection survey expanded our consideration of what it is to be a learning organization and illuminated our limited progress. It’s clear to me that to truly be a learning organization, we must build this ubiquitously into our business culture and address the mindset aspects of our leaders and team – that targeted activities and expressions of intent are insufficient to move us forward. Now that it’s clear that we’re not as far along in this journey as we had thought, I am hoping to tap into connected resources to further our journey as a learning organization.” - David M. Freeman, Vice President and General Manager, Healthcare Analytics Solutions, Quest Diagnostics.
The inventory is linked here.
About the Modules and Resources
The modules and related learning resources are designed to follow the use of the inventory. They can be used by workforce development providers, people managers, learning and development professionals within organizations, and educators to support organizational growth in learning as well as by individuals hoping to rethink how they position their own learning. The modules were developed by Dr. Tina Grotzer, a member of the Faculty of Education and Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in collaboration with Drs. Megan Cuzzolino and Tessa Forshaw.
The modules are organized around new visions of what it means to be an expert learner. These are informed by research on the nature of learning, how our minds work, and what it means to work at the edge of our competence. As with the inventory, the modules leverage research from the fields of cognitive science, the learning sciences, neuroscience and psychology. The resources build upon a rich history of practice in the teaching of thinking, creativity, and high-level performance. However, the tools and practices here are reimagined to fit with what we now know about the mind, learning, learners, and learning environments.
Next Level Learning occurs at the intersection of learners and supportive contexts. This work assumes that learners must be agentive and self-regulating and that the contexts that they work and learn in must be malleable so that learners can leverage this flexibility to enable their best learning and work performance. Next Level Learning views learners as asset-based. They must develop knowledge of their minds and be able to take steps to support their best learning and individual needs. It also views the most powerful learning as that which is contextualized and involves learning in the processes of workflow. This framing is elaborated in the modules. There are three modules in the set:
Module 1 / Asset-Oriented Learner Identity
This module invites learners to consider their identity as a learner and to think about the learning behaviors they engage in at work. It underscores the importance of taking an agentive stance towards learning, articulates how holding a mastery mindset enhances all of one’s learning, and considers how self-regulated learning is critical to success in the workplace.
Module 2 / Learners in Context: Promising Approaches
This module introduces the importance of assuming “agency in leveraged contexts.” This means that the learner views the surrounding social, emotional, physical, technological, and cognitive environments as contexts to be modified and leveraged towards their best learning and performance at work. It requires malleable contexts and learning structures within the organization that support “leveraged contextualized agency.”
Module 3 / Research-Based Moves for Learners and How Organizations Can Support Them
This module draws upon the rich research literature from the learning sciences related to effective feedback, feedforward, transfer of knowledge and skills, and the ability to enact what is called adaptive expertise, in contrast to more classical conceptions of expertise. It supports learners and organizations in developing generative moves to leverage these findings in their own contexts.
We hope that these modules are helpful to those of you working to establish strong learning organizations. We invite you to share comments and needs back to us at the Next Level Lab to help us with future iterations of these and other resources. Please see our website for additional information and reach out with questions, comments, and potential collaboration possibilities.