Social Media Post #171: Twenty Year of the BCP (Part 4)

What if one of the outcomes of learning is becoming better able to benefit from teaching?

This was part of the question explored in Louis Benjamin’s 2005 PhD research on cognitive modifiability.

Rather than looking only at what learners could achieve independently, the research examined their response to mediation — asking whether that response changed over time.

This idea continues to resonate with how we think about learning through BCP.

Learning is potentially cumulative.

A concept can expand a learner’s language. Language can support more complex thinking. That thinking can then become a resource for engaging with the next concept.

The result is not simply a collection of things learned, but a growing network of things the learner can use to learn further.

That is the thinking behind the “snowball effect” of learning.

And it leaves us with a question worth investigating:
Can we measure the growth of a learner’s capacity to benefit from teaching — not just the knowledge they have acquired?