Community of Learners –Coming Alive Across Winona 4th draft R. Schenkat 10/24/07
Introduction:This paper calls us to re- learn learning in a fashion that opens our consciousness and moves us as a community of learners to a more common way of operating beyond our egos. We consider; what are we learning about. We see a fact based, factory model of education has destroyed much intrinsic interest in learning. We need to expand what we are learning about the external world. But more importantly we need to consider our interior dimensions. Often there are elements which are our worst enemies. This expanded learning and grounding is needed for the mutual ways of being in a community of learners in creating and thriving in our future.
Dead Learning: Much of the Winona Council for Quality’s work over the last decade has been around what was labeled in 1999 by Winona Daily News Editor Marc Wehrs ” relearning learning”. In many ways we’ve stayed trapped in the phenomena of a limited view of learning characterized by Peter Senge “as we all went to the same school”(or the vast majority of us did). By attending that same school –whether it is pre-school, middle school or college, we stay locked in paradigms of learning that perpetuate cycles that stress performance with the attendant loss in interest, predictable responses to failure, avoidance of challenge, diminished quality of learning and emphasis on IQ not effort. In fact, it's hard for us to imagine learning in any other way, and it also makes it hard to imagine what real love of learning must be like. Yet, It seems to be so necessary for a community to imagine and have a language for transformative learning which is essential to a creative, innovation future.
Laurence Steinberg’s -"Beyond the Classroom" – offers more confirmation of this limited view of learning. In his exhaustive 5 year study, he concluded even the highest achieving students rarely learn for a love of learning, rather it's based on doing well to earn something like good grades for a college scholarship.
Relating to” going to the same school”, most of us have experienced college in the way Arnold Arons described again 25 years.. “We professors proceed through these materials at a pace that precludes effective learning for understanding. . . . Under such pressure, students acquire no experience of what understanding really entails. They cannot test their "knowledge" for plausible consequences or for internal consistency; they have no sense of where accepted ideas or results come from, how they are validated, or why they are to be accepted or believed. In other words, they do not have the opportunity to develop habits of critical thinking . . . and they acquire the misapprehension that knowledge resides in memorized assertions, esoteric technical terminology, and regurgitation of "received" facts. Although such failure is widely prevalent in sciences, it is by no means confined there. It pervades our entire system, including history, the humanities, and the social sciences “ .
A range of contemporary scholarship on higher education confirms that it still commonly operates in this fashion.
Learning Comes Alive:Learning is like breathing, yet we’ve become so alienated from it. Is it any wonder when it’s just dumped at us? We think it quite odd when the rare individual loves learning. Carol Dweck, a 30 year veteran of researching intrinsic and extrinsic motivation gives an image of these rare individuals who love learning and are intrinsically motivated and mastery focused: “They tended to maintain the positive mood they had displayed during the success problems, but some of them became even happier about the task. One young man, who when, the difficult problems started, pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips and said, "I love a challenge". Or another, who as the difficulty began, told us in a matter of fact voice "you know, I was hoping this would be informative." Or another child who asserted cheerfully, "mistakes are our friends". Dweck concludes, "for us, it was as though a light bulb went on. We had thought that you coped with failure or you didn't cope with failure. We didn't think of failure as something to embrace and relish. These students were teaching us what true mastery-oriented reactions were. Far from lamenting their predicament, the mastery-oriented students welcomed the chance to confront and overcome obstacles.”
There’s a glimmering of appreciation of this type of learner in Winona. Winona Health CEO Rachelle Schultz says it well: “What make me really passionate in what I do… is working with people and helping them find the same passion, and seeing them grow and develop.”
What Are We Learning About?:As we think about learning coming alive, it’s important to consider what we mean by learning. What are we learning about? Twenty years ago I wrote a paper called, “What Are We Learning About?” It was an expanded look at Bloom’s Taxonomy , the most common lens used in considering school curriculum. We often hear complaints today that kids are only learning facts. That No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requirements have reduced learning to memorization, and critical inquiry is gone. I set out in the article that the knowledge level of Bloom’s was so much more than facts. It included knowing about: terminology, specific facts, conventions(ways of doing things), trends and sequences, classifications and categories, knowledge of criteria (by which facts, principles, opinions are tested),knowledge of principles and generalizations, and knowledge of theories and structures.
Lee Shulman, who was the main visionary behind the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards expounded upon what this expanded Bloom’s learning should look like for a proficient teacher. Below is an example of a well educated Biology teacher .
“To think properly about content knowledge requires going beyond knowledge of the facts or concepts of a domain. It requires understanding the structures of the subject matter. For example, the biology teacher must understand that there are a variety of ways of organizing the discipline. A) A science of molecules from which one aggregates up to the rest of the field, explaining living phenomena in terms of the principles of their constituent parts. B) a science of a ecological system from which one disaggregates down to the smaller units, explaining the activities of individual units by virtue of the larger systems of which they are a part. C) a science of biological organisms, those most familiar of analytic units, from whose familiar structures, functions, and interactions one weaves a theory of adaptation. The well prepared biology teachers will recognize these alternative forms of organization and the pedagogical grounds for selecting one under some circumstances and others under different circumstances.
The same teacher will also understand the rules of biology. When competing claims are offered regarding the same biological phenomenon, how has the controversy been adjudicated? The teacher need not only understand that something is so; the teacher must further understand why it is so, on what grounds its warrant can be asserted, and under what circumstances our belief in its justification can be weakened and even denied. Moreover, we expect the teacher to understand why a given topic is particularly central to a discipline whereas another may be somewhat peripheral.”
It’s possible this description only sounds like words, if we too have learned like Arons described most college level teaching. I’d submit that our learning at any level- Elementary, Secondary, or Higher Education- is doing little to help us see these bigger pictures in subject areas. Yet, this richer kind of knowing is a critical element to creativity and problem solving that are needed in a creative economy.
Beyond Out There Learning—teaming: What I’ve come to realize of late, is this kind of knowledge(the “out there” knowing about things) is only partially what is necessary. We’re doing a poor job here, and few gain this deeper knowing. But, when people become steeped in expert knowledge, they are still fraught with an array of interpersonal problems – such as inability to accept feedback, failure to listen to others, constantly comparing and judging people, feeling righteous and often putting others in “their” place, blaming others and structures, not suppressing aggression, and believing that ridiculing is good sport. To say the least, these qualities make working in team environments very problematic. Yet, it is this team environment that is being called for increasingly today. Locally, leaders have supported this assessment. HBC CEO Gary Evans said, “ I think the world of the single business leader driving a business or industry to greatness just isn’t the way it works anymore”. Dennis Theede, CEO of Home and Community Options says, “ I don’t have all the answers , and I don’t think any manager can say that they know everything there is to know about how to do their business”. And Dan Rukavina, co-founder of emd, says, “ But we also have blind spots, certain areas where our ideas and strategies aren’t the greatest, and it’s an opportunity for learning”.
“interior knowing”: It’s this call for teaming which is creating the need for a new work environment that makes the community of learners a necessity. And relating it to “What We’re Learning About”-- in addition to the” out there” knowing- the big pictures , “ in here”-in the interior of the individual and in the mutual, relational ways of the group. EF Schumacher gives some sense of this knowing of the interior and relationship as he speaks of the three purposes of work that come from all of the Religious Wisdom traditions:1) workers can develop and use their faculties. 2) enable workers to overcome their inborn egocentricities by joining with others in common tasks, 3) bring forth goods and services needed by all for a decent existence. The second purpose of work conveys vividly this need for inner knowing and developing mutuality with co-workers.
This emerging awareness of knowing more about the self and the self’s interactions with others has certainly been part of the organizational development bag of tricks starting with the T-Groups and sensitivity training in the 1960s. Some of the work has been codified in packages- Fifth Discipline and Field Manual, Crucial Conversations, Presence, etc.
There are veiled references in these programs to something more interior- more spiritual , if you will. For instance, Crucial Conservations’ first chapter is “Start With the Heart” But our secular world seems fairly blind to this deeper significance.
“beyond skills”: In reclaiming a life of passion, we’re remiss in not considering that there’s more going on in healthy interactions than just some well applied skills. In making this case, I will share some wisdom from a beautiful little book from 1962- The Miracle of Dialogue- by Reuel Howe, an Episcopal Priest. My friend , Fr. Joe Keefe-who was prepared for the priesthood in Rome during that era, tells me it was highly esteemed by Pope John Paul and the Vatican II thinkers. The book’s title suggests that we are in the action of dialogue . Howe says it well, “We can expect miracles of dialogue because, as we have described it, dialogue brings us face to face with truth in a relationship of love. As each person speaks and responds honestly to the other, each moves toward the other and includes him. This kind of meeting between man and man cannot occur without the implicit meeting between man and God. To really see another is to see the Other, and to really be another is to love the Other. When we are truly known by another we are known by God, and to be truly loved by another is to know the love of God. Dialogue , as we
have been thinking of it, is more than communication. It is communion in which we are mutually informed, purified, illumined, and reunited to ourselves, to one another, and God. A spirit pervades and directs the ‘conversation’, and from this spirit….. comes the fruits of the Spirit. Dialogue is a condition and relationship for the appearance and work of his Spirit, which calls men to, and enables them for, dialogue out of which comes the fruits of dialogue, of the Spirit.”
The book”Presence:Human Purpose and the Field of the Future” made much more sense to me in the context of Howe’s quote and book. The book highlights the U process of coming to action. Imagine descending on the left side of a U, going through stages of suspending, redirecting, letting go then at the bottom of the U letting the ideas come, and then proceeding up the right side of the U crystallize, and then be prototyped and institutionalized ideas into action. “Standard theories of change revolve around making decisions, determining “the vision”, and very often acting through a charismatic figure who can command people’s commitment to vision. But Arthur spoke of reaching a state of clarity about and connection to what is emerging, to an ‘inner knowing’ where, in a sense, there is no decision making. What to do just becomes obvious, and what is achieved depends on where you’re coming from and who you are as a person. The rational calculus model of decision making and following through pays little attention to the inner state of the decision maker.
The state of the bottom of the U is presencing—seeing from the deepest source and becoming a vehicle for that source. When we suspend and redirect our attention, perception starts to arise from within the living process of the whole. When we are presencing, it moves further, to arise from the highest future possibility that connects self and whole. The real challenge in understanding presencing lies not in its abstractness but in the subtlety of the experience”.(P 89)
The inner challenge: Having read books like Presence on the inner life, and spending considerable hours in trainings over the last 20 years, I‘ve always wondered why I didn’t change that much after the euphoria of a new fix wore off. Howe’s quote below gives such a richer sense of what’s involved in living out the fruits of the spirit.
“The fruits of the Spirit are not achieved in a vacuum. They are achieved and found in the context of human relationships, and, as we have seen, human relationships at their best are dialogical. We look there for the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. These are the signs of ……a love lived in responsible, reciprocal relationship. Unfortunately, however, we are apt to think of these signs in the abstract, as achievements apart from the process which produces them. Love, for instance, is not a ready-made, easily purchased product. Indeed, we cannot understand love except as we see it striving in behalf of all enemies. Peace accepts strife as part of its responsibility. Patience or long suffering has meaning only in relation to the conflicts, distortions, and misrepresentations of life. Goodness is not innocence, but a quality of life that has wrestled with some of the forms of evil, indeed the very principle of evil itself. Gentleness is not weak but strong, and has been forged out of the temptation to be hostilely aggressive, to use compulsion as a way of achieving one’s own will. And self control trembles in its conflict with self will.” .
This capacity to function as a community of learners is very profound and calls forth the best of us as humans in living out the fruits of the spirit. This is incredibly hopeful to have this call, for in my judgment, we’ve expected very little of us, especially in non emergency situations. Yes, we seem to show good qualities in responding to floods, for instance, yet to bring the best forth when we’re considering the long range common good, it seems we’re mired in power agendas.
Structural limits to inner knowing: As we return to the “What are We Learning About? “ question, and still focusing on the interior dimension, learning about our self is paramount. Schumacher suggest the laboratory of the work setting. It seems though that as we gain more consciousness today and understand how systems have influenced us, a good chunk of our behavior that keeps away the fruits of the spirit, can be explained by some analyses we generally aren’t exposed to.
Marshall Rosenberg, a leader world wide in mediation and communications practices, in Nonviolent Communication(2003) offers explanation of why people stay unconscious.
Life alienating communication both stems from and supports hierarchical and domination societies and renders a slave like mentality. Life alienating communication has deep philosophical and political roots; these views stress our innate evil and deficiency, and a need for education to control our inherently undesirable nature. We learn early to cut ourselves off from what's going on within ourselves. The language of wrongness, "should" and "have to" is perfectly suited for this purpose: the more people are trained to think in terms of moralistic judgments that imply wrongness and badness, the more they are being trained to look outside themselves-to look to authorities-for the definition of what constitutes right, wrong, and good and bad.