Replying to LO23866 --
Was: Cognitive and Neural Systems
>>the property spontaneity may lead to most powerful
>>conceptualisations.
I understand that At de Lange made this notion while regretting that
spontaneity is undervalued in CAS (although surely not on this list, as I
respond spontanously to the 23866th spontanous contribution ;-) ).
In an article on Kurt Lewin's Change Theory by Edgar H. Schein, I found
the following <http://learning.mit.edu/res/wp/10006.html>:
"A learner or change target can be highly motivated to learn something,
yet have no role models nor initial feeling for where the answer or
solution might lie. The learner then searches or scans by reading,
traveling, talking to people, hiring consultants, entering therapy, going
back to school, etc. to expose him or herself to a variety of new
information that might reveal a solution to the problem. Alternatively,
when the learner finally feels psychologically safe, he or she may
experience spontaneously an insight that spells out the solution. Change
agents such as process consultants or non-directive therapists count on
such insights because of the assumption that the best and most stable
solution will be one that the learner has invented for him or herself.
"Once some cognitive redefinition has taken place, the new mental
categories are tested with new behavior which leads to a period of trial
and error and either reinforces the new categories or starts a new cycle
of disconfirmation and search. Note that in the process of search, if role
models are readily available, they will most likely be used.
Identification is thus an efficient and fast process, but it may lead to
solutions that do not stick because they do not fit the learner's total
personality. If one wants to avoid that, one must create learning
environments that do not display role models, thereby forcing the learner
to scan and invent his or her own solutions.
"It is this dynamic, to rely on identification with a role model, that
explains why so many consultation processes go awry. The consultant, by
design or unwittingly, becomes a role model and generates solutions and
cognitive categories that do not really fit into the culture of the client
organization and will therefore only be adopted temporarily. A similar
result occurs when organizations attempt to check on their own performance
by "benchmarking," i.e. comparing themselves to a reference group of
organizations and attempting to identify "best practices." The speed and
simplicity of that process is offset by two dangers. First, it may be
that none of the organizations in the reference set have scanned for a
good solution so the whole set continues to operate sub- optimally, or,
second, that the identified best practice works only in certain kinds of
organizational cultures and will fail in the particular organization that
is trying to improve itself. In other words, learners can attempt to learn
things that will not survive because they do not fit the personality or
culture of the learning system."
The article is said to be on managed learning. What a tension. A conflict?
Managed learning.
Managed: controlled, willfull, practice, measures, outcomes, doer, active,
non-spontanous...
AND
Learning: insight, scanning, selforganizing, open end, tacit dimension,
full personality, sustainable, spontanous...
Isn't this the, or at least one of the very fundamental tensions
sustaining the evolution of this list?
The article goes even one step further: It outlines, how to teach to
manage learning - in a way that walks the talk.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
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