Dear LO'ers,
The trigger of this contribution came from the combined messages of At de
Lange (LO20330) and Jon Krispin (LO20446) with the following paragraph of
At:
"Our task is to "guide" human systems to focus on a particular course
through self-learning. I have used quotation marks to stress that the word
guide does not give precisely the meaning which I want to articulate. When
I think of "guide", it excludes regulation, enforcement, ruling
controlling authority, dominion or similar things. In other words, when I
think of "guide" it excludes pushings and includes pullings."
Let us try to explore what At has proposed. It is worth doing, since we
are already in such an advanced state of knowledge about Learning
Organizations, that we may act as guides for others that are on a lower
level of Ordinary Organizations.
I guess you all have joined guided tours in your life. Tours in Musea,
touristic tours in cities or foreign countries, or other places. I have
joined a lot of guided tours in stalagmite/stalactite caves during my
holidays in France. I have joined too, a lot of geological excursions
during my study. Some of these two differ greatly. But before entering the
differences, I first like to mention something else: the position of the
guide. This is to exclude first of all the pushing.
The guide who is BEHIND the group he is leading, should constantly give
instructions to the front of the group which way they should go and to
keep the whole group in movement. Not so much imagination is required to
see that this way of guiding deserves a lot of energy and many things
could go wrong. Maybe Winfried Deijmann has experience in his teachings.
And also: the Guide's energy is completely used for directing, not for
information transfer during the tour. This is not such a strange example,
since management teams in organisation act often like the guide behind the
group (although they think otherwise). Well, this is the ultimate example
of pushing.
School teachers know, when walking with their small children that they
should walk in FRONT of the group (although occasionally one can see the
former example).
The tasks of frontal (that is 'pulling') guides are:
1. following the right track
2. keep the tempo of the whole group in pace (what to do with the slow
ones in the group)
3. transfer of information
There are good pulling guides and bad ones. The bad ones miss one or more
of these three requirements.
The track
The guide likes to show things to the group. He could build in his tour a
specific sequence in the places to visit. This sequence is critical
because it has to do with 3) the transfer of information. The order of
information is critical for the learning process in the group. Sometimes
the guide has no free choice in the sequence, due to logistics and
geographical limiting conditions. The guide has to cope with this.
The pace
Apart from the task to keep the group complete (moving too fast as a
guide, the coherence of the group will be lost), the pace is very
important for the timing and the dose of information transfer. Moving too
slow, often the group lost its natural curiosity and get bored.
Experienced guides know exactly what the best pace is for the specific
group they lead.
Transfer of information
Here we have the content of the tour. What are the best ways for
information transfer in relation with the learning aspect?
>From my experiences, a touristic and a universal example.
The visits to the caves in France were usually boring. Why? The guide
followed in the right pace the right track. However, he/she told the group
precisely what we had to see. So things like (pointing to the strange
forms of the stalagmites and stalactites): "Here we (!) see Maria with Her
Child", "There is Santa Claus", "And here you can see a stalgmite, which
we call The Giraffe", and so on. Our brains were not working, we looked
without much interest to the objects, and the guide received hardly any
tip-money at the end. Most of us left the cave as individuals and we
forgot the whole cave after short time.
Sometimes the group is fortunate with a guide. He follows too the right
track with the right pace. But he points to strangly shaped calcite
formations and asks the group what they see. The group was offered the
time to look and think first (activating the fantasy); after a short
moment, the guide told us the name. The interest of the group was
permanent, the guide received lots of questions, there was a lot of
curiosity, and the group was really a group. People were listening to
each others questions and comments, there were lively dialogues. Even
contact was made between people within the group; small spontaneous
teams were formed. The guide received a lot of tip money.
I had similar experiences with some of my geological excursions. The group
of students in a badly guided tour, amused themselves with jokes,
wantonness, etc. We learned hardly anything. I remember a very good guided
excursion through the Pyrenees mountain chain. We made a cross section
through this chain. Several things were explained. We had to listen
carefully, because we were told that we had to make our own
interpretations during a second cross section some 100 kilometres further
to the West. Furthermore, we must present a exposee during diner of
the things we had seen that day.
Well, all these things are familiar. Most of us know these basic
principles of education and pedagogy. Surprisingly, in organizations you
often observe other methods.
But what are the prerequisites of learning? Even the best guide is not
able to teach a piece of rock. If we restrict ourselves to humans, what
are the minimum requirements of the human to be able to learn (and
therefore a member of the guided tour)?
On top of the list I think is:
1. SENSES, all of them, the transfer of the collected data from the senses
to the brain
2. The transfer from these data into information (from brain to mind).
Thus from looking --->seeing; hearing---->listening;
temperature--->warm/cold; feeling---->soft/hard
Training in the use of senses should be one of the most important parts of
education. It is not strange that people who are professional observers
(bird watchers, botanists, doctors) are good in learning (and willing to
learn further). My study in geology was a good example. We were
permanently trained in observation.
I will stop my list of prerequisites here. It is up to you to add more.
But I think we have here already enough. Becuase with these two, we are
able to create a flow of information, which is sufficient to produce
enough entropy within our own body. Information passes easily the
bifurcation point of creativity and further to crystallise into knowledge.
I think we have here two very important themes: the role and position of a
guide; and the prerequisites of learning. All of us could supply other
examples of guidance. We may be practical to concentrate on LO's, but
beavioural, psychological, physical and abstract issues could be added as
well.
dr. Leo D. Minnigh
minnigh@library.tudelft.nl
Library Technical University Delft
PO BOX 98, 2600 MG Delft, The Netherlands
Tel.: 31 15 2782226
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Let your thoughts meander towards a sea of ideas.
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--Leo Minnigh <L.D.Minnigh@library.tudelft.nl>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>