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Lifelong learning is our birthright. We can continually develop our capacity to learn throughout our lives. We are all learners every day of our lives it’s just that sometimes in our busy schedules we can lose sight of this wonderful capacity, worse still we can take it for granted and then assume that our children will just "pick it up"!

Research however is less cavalier and suggests that there are several dispositions that we need to develop in order to become successful lifelong learners.

Guy Claxton, (click here for his website), who has created Building Learning Power suggests that there are 4 key learning dispositions;



These dispositions are inherent in us all. They are not fixed at birth, or when we leave school; they can be developed by everyone regardless of “ability”, social background or age. In fact,
...there are NO limits to extending our learning power!
How empowering is that? How liberating? How exciting?

We can think of these dispositions as being like groups of "learning muscles". Just as we can build our physical muscles with the right kinds of exercise, so we can exercise our learning muscles to develop their strength and stamina. Each of these dispositions is made up of a number of learning behaviours, which are called capacities. Because the learning capacities are quite specific in nature, they can be individually trained, nurtured and exercised.

Have you exercised your learning muscles today?
Because if these learning muscles are not exercised, through lack of opportunity or encouragement, they can so easily wither and fall into disuse.


Go to "The Learning Muscles" tab for detailed information on the capacities.