Replying to LO28749 --
Dear Organlearners,
Terri Deems < Tadeems@aol.com > writes:
>I've enjoyed this discussion lately. I've long been
>interested in the question of just what is learning,
>and how does it occur.
Greetings dear Terri,
So it has been with me. As university student from 1963-67 and then up to
1971 as a soil scientists, i had long discussions with my late uncle on
what is learning. He was a high school teacher who live close to the
university. Then in 1972 it became a passion to know what is learning.
That passion is still the same today, if not stronger.
>While I was doing my research on natural workplaces,
>it was necessary for me to define what I meant by
>learning. Like others have mentioned, something
>bothered me with the more traditional conception of
>learning as change (perhaps because so much change
>does not, in my mind, involve learning).
I began avoiding definitions many years ago. The reason is that for me a
definition hides the "history which led to its creation". (Wow, I find it
difficult to say in English which is so easy to say in my mother tongue
Afrikaans. In Afrikaans I would say that a definition hides its
"aanloop"=runway. The definition is the liftoff, but what about all that
had to be done to get that liftoff?)
In studying natural sciences such as physics, chemistry and botany i
learned slowly how crucially important it is to observe and to describe as
best as possible that which i want to understand. I also began to learn
that the same applies to the human sciences. But the hot problem with
learning is that so much of it cannot be observed in another human so as
to describe it. For that hidden part of learning i can only reflect upon
how learning happens in myself. And this is dangerous because i have much
wear and tear to show.
This is also why my account of the History of Uncovering the Act of
Learning will differ from that of another person. For example, someone who
thinks of learning as "instruction" will select other incidents from
history to tell the story of learning. I myself, in a nutshell, thinks of
learning as "revelation".
>Ultimately I was most satisfied with how Peter Jarvis
>(1992) described it, where learning is the process of
>giving meaning to or making sense of experience.
The door to my office opens to the Exploratorium where young and old can
have hand-on experiences on a diverse collection of apparatus. The purpose
of all these apparatus is to provide explorers with the senstations sight,
sound and touch. Sadly, providing for the sensations touch and smell is
usually to risky. At this very moment a couple of dozen of kids from a
nursery school are making a lot of noise. I am going to observe them just
to make sure ...... I am back.
Yes, together with them are some university students also browsing around
as well as some aged adults. The interesting thing for me is to compare my
observations for the children, students and adults. The children are bent
on exploring sensations -- to see, to hear and to feel the unkown. They
are scattering around from apparatus to apparatus, seldom staying at one
for longer than a minute. The students stay solitary and longer at an
apparatus. They are more reserved, but also more purposeful in their
exploring. It is as if they want to make personal sense out of their
experiences. The aged adults explore in small groups each apparatus,
staying the longest at each. They alternate between talking to each other
and exploring the apparatus individually. It is as if they want to make a
common meaning out of their experiences.
This above is a description of my observations. But it falls far short
from describing the act of learning because i cannot observe what goes on
in their mind! The only thing which i can do is to go out to them and
explore with them an apparatus. ( I sometimes do it when they become too
many for the curator to cope alone with them.) While exploring it,
skilfully doing self just enough to give the other person confidence to do
it self, i began with my questioning, trying to probe unobtrusively how
they learn and whether they did learned.
> .... what is learned within a given experience is the result
>of the interaction between an individual and a social context
>of some sort.
I am glad that you made this comment. I have turned may chair around for a
while and am observing exactly what you wrote.
>While the information can be (and so often is) gained
>externally, the process of meaning-making, and thus of
>learning, is an internal construction.
To that I would like to say amen. But let me say it otherwise to see if we
are still congruent. Learning is the process of revealing the
"world-outside-me" in the "world-inside-me" in a creative manner and then
recreating the "world-inside-me" in the "world-outside-me" so that the
"me" can share with the "you" that learning.
The kids have left and it is much more quiet now. One of the apparatus is
a piano with a perspex panel in front so that one can observe how it
works. One of the aged adults is playing the Moonlight Sonata upon it. A
few others are standing next to him. It is beautiful because it tells for
me what happened within that person the past couple of hours. I wish i
could have someone like Alfred Brendell here exploring among kids,
students and aduls the various apparaus for a couple of hours. And then
everybody has to leave so that he can play one of Beethoven's sonatas in
solitude. I think it would be much different from his regular
performances.
>Within an LO, as with adult learning and development
>(Dewey, Jarvis, others), development is directional and
>shown in a physical, intellectual, and moral continuity.
Let me say it differently to see if we are still together. Learning is the
irreversible change from the less to the more complex in all which we are
involved with.
>Unfortunately, what we too often end up with are
>miseducative experiences, whose effect arrests, restricts,
>or distorts both the human and the organizational growth.
>I see this in many workplace reforms, where experiences
>may be vivid and interesting for people, yet also promote
>a narrow or careless attitude that impacts the quality of
>later experiences. It promotes nonlearning, characterized
>by such things as mechanical action, received knowing,
>lack of thoughtfulness or critical thinking, fearfulness, or
>the rejection of possibility.
I have been working on the essay Uncovering the act of Organisational
Learning in which you will find much of what you have said above, only
presented in a different manner. For this reason I will not comment on
what you wrote above, except that we think much in the same direction.
Thank you for your thoughts on the act of learning. I think we always have
to bear in mind how much we do not know of learning rather than waht we
already know. Sharing thoughts is a major way to become aware of what we
do not know.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.