dodopal@biruni.erum.com.pk wrote:
"I've been reading a lot about the parallels drawn between how children
learn by experimentation and bit by bit and that if organisations want to
learn then the most obvious way to get around this is follow in the foot
steps of the child learner.>
"Conceptually and even rhetorically I find this very appealing but for one
little problem. . . "
--- end of quote ---
I would recommend giving this approach a try instead of looking for
reasons why it wouldn't work. Find a child, copy what he does in a
situation, and see what you learn. One time I went to a fast food
restaraunt, and while I was waiting in line, a four-year old male child
and his mother walked up to the door. The child tried and tried to open
the door before his mother arrived. When she got to the door, she opened
it, depriving the child of the learning because she was in too much of a
hurry.
When they got inside, mother got in line, but the boy decided it was the
perfect time to learn about hopping. So he hopped from the end of the line
to the exit and back a few times. I joined him in his hopping. He was
suprised, and we had quite a good time hopping. I hopped back to work.
"Thereafter I started to teach myself how to write with the wrong hand and
after one week of frustration I asked the dreaded question "why the hell
am I doing this and what am I going to gain from it?". 8 months later I
still cannot write legibly with my left hand.
"The point is that conceptual learning is very different to Kinaesthetic
learning and all of us have their own conceptual world that affects our
learning parameters (mental models if you will). For the sake of sanity we
prefer to remain within the extremities of this framework and this is why
new and profound (change in our mental models) learning is painful for
us."
--- end of quote --
I think it's painful only because we need more practice.
I wrote with my left hand for the first 35 years of my life. I started
writing with my right hand and for the first year, my hand couldn't keep
up with my brain. I kept misspelling and leaving out words when I wrote.
After another year, my writing was almost legible, but I wrote slowly.
This bothered my employers, so I went back to using my left hand to write.
By this time my thinking had slowed down so much that I kept misspelling
and leaving words out of my writing.
At that time, I started alternating weekly from my left hand to my right.
I also alternated the the wrist upon which I put my watch. After about one
year, I lost my watch. Now, I don't wear it at all, but I can write
comfortably with either hand, or both of them--one hand writing left to
right and the other right to left. My goal is to write Japanese with one
hand while I write in English with the other. Anyway, I also think that I
am more flexible in my thinking now than I was when I started ten years
ago.
Dan Dungan
Investor's Business Daily
Bass_stang@msn.com
--"Daniel Dungan" <Bass_Stang@msn.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>