Dear OL colleagues:
Rick wrote:
>By the way... If you know how to walk... Where does that know-how reside?
>I wish I knew the current research better, but the know-how is certainly
>not all in the conscious brain.
>
>Ditto if you know how to give a good performance review, I think that
>know-how is not all in the conscious brain.
>
>Muscle memory is readily seen as part of physical skills. This is one
>of the reasons why some of "know-how" is tacit and cannot be
>articulated. There's a lot of tacit knowledge in ordinary day-to-day
>human interaction.
Yes, and I think there are ways to "tacit-ize" learning. I wrote a paper
several years ago about "Zen learning," which explored how "learning with
the body" takes place in Japan (precis of the article at
http://www.learnmaster.com/abstracts/abstractzen.html). For example,
learning math facts through the use of an abacus by children, combining
mental calculation with the physical movements of handling the abacus, led
all of the children to become proficient at math facts at an early age. By
the way, the training with abacus is outside of the formal schooling
system, and combined a lot of challenge games, club activities, and
rewards (stickers, etc.) with math training. Some of the children are able
to do "anzan" -- complex mental calculations by visualizing the abacus
beads and moving them mentally.
How does this relate to OL? The operative theory here is that through
repetition and learning with the body, one can "push" certain learning
functions down to more subconscious levels of the brain, and thereby open
up more "mental real estate." There are actually PET (brain) scans that
show the calculations of abacus adepts taking place in a different part of
the brain than non-adepts. I wouldn't call any of this proof of the
superiority of "learning with the body," but it is interesting.
The practical applications of this seem to me that if we wish to engender
tacit learning in organizations, it might be worth experimenting more with
somatic applications -- tying learning to physical movement of some kind;
using "body learning" to embed skills, etc.
Thoughts on this?
Dori Digenti
digenti@learnmaster.com
--Dori Digenti <digenti@learnmaster.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>