An adult learner is an established persona with distinctive habits, presumptions, and supporting stances and beliefs. Beliefs develop and change throughout life due to collected experiences and received feedback. In general, beliefs support a person's ability to cope, but in certain instances they may be overly generalized and thus hold a person back from taking the important steps necessary to apply positive changes to life.

The baggage of beliefs accompanies learners in learning situations as well. Learning outcomes are directly influenced by beliefs related to learning and learners' understanding of their ability to learn, develop and change. A prior negative learning experience combined with the belief that being less competent and less successful than others leads to an even stronger perception that learning is difficult or that the person is incapable of learning altogether. This directly affects the motivation and confidence to perceive different situations as opportunities for learning and self-development.

Perceived ability is a person's individual assessment of how well he or she can solve problems or cope with activities in a certain field. Research confirms that people with higher perceived ability are more successful in learning and use more effective learning strategies.

Beliefs and Perceived Ability

Attitudes towards learning and development have been extensively discussed by American psychologist Carol Dweck. She describes two opposing ideas in her theory of an individual’s mindset toward success. According to this theory, the characteristics defining an individual can be considered as of something permanent, innate, and constant (the fixed mindset) or as of something moldable and improvable (the growth mindset). If the learner believes that personal qualities and mental abilities can be developed, he or she will be better able to cope with the setbacks of learning, show greater perseverance and be willing to make further efforts to achieve the desired results. However, if the learner does not believe in the possibility of personal development, he/she will avoid difficult tasks or situations or refuses to make further efforts in the event of setbacks.

Since an adult learner is an established individual, changing attitude and beliefs is not a quick process. An educator’s advice to simply take a different stance towards learning is certainly not of much help. The learner must become aware of their own attitudes, understand their impact on learning and want to change them.

The willingness to work with one’s own attitudes often increases after a learner has dared to admit that change is inevitable to be more satisfied with their life, but they fear that they may fail in making that change. Such learners are very sensitive to the first setbacks and try to avoid situations where their already fragile self-esteem will be hit again. Adult educators are familiar with examples of learners who take an active part in studies but interrupt or withdraw from them before summative assessments or taking examinations because they do not believe they can carry through them successfully.

Although it is a process of the learner’s personal growth, the educator can help the learner. First, by understanding that an educator’s role is not only to teach a specific subject/topic/skill, but to support learning as such. Furthermore, the educator should be aware that all learners are different, as are the obstacles they tackle in their development at different stages. Conversations with learners, in which they can describe their thoughts and feelings in the face of new and challenging tasks, provide information about their beliefs about learning. Various self-analysis tasks that help learners become aware of their own learning strategies and to notice patterns related to learning also help to make them aware of their beliefs related to learning.

Growth mindset can be developed by creating an experience of success, in which case the educator should make sure that the tasks would be difficult enough for the learner, out of their comfort zone, but at the same time feasible and realistic. Task completion must be followed by feedback, in which it is important to recognize the development of skills and effort put into it, not only the end result of the work. As important is to develop the learner’s self-reflection skills: the ability to set realistic goals, to assess the appropriateness of one’s own activities and the results of work, as well as drawing conclusions from it all for further challenges. In the course of reflection, the learner evaluates his or her own activities, which confirms the growth mindset (I may have what it takes to make it! I shall try doing things a bit differently next time., etc) or the fixed mindset (I have always known that numbers are not my cup of tea! There’s nothing to discuss, I knew this would happen!, etc.). The facilitator can support the adult learner’s self-reflection by providing self-assessment questionnaires followed by an interview in which the learner, on one hand becomes aware of the beliefs and attitudes that supported him/her in the task, and on the other hand questions and reshapes the restrictive beliefs.

The opportunities to share learning stories and experiences with fellow learners and to celebrate the small victories over oneself are also encouraging and motivating. It is in the hands of the educator to create such opportunities and ensure that a narrative that supports self-development is created together, so that it also normalizes setbacks and encourages further learning.

Find out more: Carol S. Dweck, “A New Way to Succeed in Psychology. The Way of Thinking” (Pegasus 2017).

One-minute lecture: How belief affects our abilities

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