January 2012
7 posts
Noticing - an exercise
In some previous Posts I have advanced the idea that full engagement is, if not necessary, then at least strongly supportive of transformational learning. I have also suggested that the body has an important role to play in advancing such learning.
In the most recent Posts I have discussed something of the complex and key role that the body plays in the life of we humans. (By focusing on...
Becoming present
For some students the pressures of university life, coupled with challenges of both family and work life can produce, over time, a bodily reaction of disengagement. In speaking with such students I get the sense that they are just not fully present - or perhaps better said, they are not fully open to the potential of the moment. It is important, as a teacher, to be able to help the student...
The art of powerful routines
Teachers who are concerned with improving the performance of their students know that a significant driver of improved performance is developing and sticking to a routine. The exact routine can vary but key elements are: attending class, focusing while in class, reviewing after class, understanding what is wanted in assignments and handing assignments in on time. None of this says anything...
A step towards autonomy in learning
In an earlier Post I wrote about the six dimensions of engagement. Autonomy in learning was one of them. The overall idea is straightforward but there may be insights in exploring specific actions that can be taken to bring this concept to life.
When a teacher asks a student to do something it sets up a certain dynamic - a power relationship. This way of teaching has its place but is it the...
Body / Mind - monologue or dialogue
In this Post I want to explore an aspect of the work of Peter Levine that he writes about in ‘In An Unspoken Voice’. Its not meant to say anything particularly new. Rather, it’s to help me get my head around both what he is saying and why that is important to me and to how we educate our students.
From the work of Candice Pert and others I knew that the body is a more...
The power of gratitude
I wonder how many of us ask ourselves the question ‘What do I have to be grateful for in my life right now?’?
It is a worthwhile exercise to sit quietly, ask this question and then wait for the answers to bubble up. When I have done it, I have been surprised at some of the things that have come up, especially after the ones I would expect to surface have already appeared. I have...
Something Fresh
Of late I have been coming across or recalling a lot of stuff that related to the idea of ‘freshness’. I would like to mention some of these and then try to understand how to begin to get to this place.
One thought comes from a Japanese poet and wanderer Matsuo Bashō, among whose writing is ‘The Knapsack Notebook’. Reflecting on the way people approach journal...
December 2011
4 posts
Laughter Yoga
This is an odd Post. Its origin lies in a realization I had a while ago that much of my adult life has been like a bell curve. At one end is laughing and the other is crying. I seldom do these things and thus live in the middle of the curve where things are comfortable but not much exciting happens. This is an exploration of the laughter tail of the curve.
Last year a student asked me to...
Right and wrong answers
In some disciplines there are right and wrong answers. Mathematics, the sciences and areas that deal with known facts come to mind as do answers to questions like ‘While driving what do you do when you come to a red light?’.
But there are other areas of learning where things are not so clear cut - where value judgments are involved or there are not enough known facts. In such areas...
The Process of 'Mattering'
A few years ago I was asking students at the end of the academic year why they came to class. One answer struck me as particularly insightful. It was that the student came because she felt ‘wanted, needed and knew that what she said mattered’. I have often mused about what she said but something happened during a discussion with a student earlier today that took it to a deeper level for me.
At...
Empowering teacher / student relationships - An...
In his book ‘Anatomy of an Illness’, Norman Cousins reflects on both the respective roles of doctor and patient and on their supportive relationship in overcoming disease. A number of things stood out for me in reading this book that are worthy of further exploration.
I want to discuss these but I want to do so in the context of the roles of student and teacher and their supportive...
November 2011
3 posts
Reflection and Oxytocin
Years of teaching using the process of individual and small group reflection to anchor the learning from the class has produced many insights for me concerning my students. One of them is that where students are prepared to ponder what they have learned then share that learning with two or three others in the class, within a mind set of curiosity and respect, something something quite wonderful...
Growth and money
Over the last week or two I have been incapacitated for medical reasons. One of the side benefits of this is that it has given me time to reflect on a few things. One of them is about the legitimate transmission of wisdom.
When I was in my 20’s I was much taken with yoga and, in particular, with the flow of yoga postures. I spent some time in an ashram and came away with some important...
Waiting
In my classes at Trent University students write weekly reflections. I have them do this for two related but distinct reasons. The first is that, in the world of work, students are going to be paid well only for applying innovative thought to solving problems. Innovative thought comes about through reflection. The second is that, in the complex worlds of interpersonal and intrapersonal...
October 2011
8 posts
Four Knowledges
At university it is easy to have a mental model that sees gaining knowledge as sort of like having a well stocked filing cabinet where we know what is in the files and how to find them. In writing essays or exams we simply open the cabinet, open the relevant file and copy what is in it. This type of knowledge clearly has the potential to be useful provided, of course, that it will have relevance...
The Fourth Wall
There is a theater term with a long history. It is called the ‘fourth wall’. If we think of the stage as being surrounded by four walls, one of them, termed the ‘fourth wall’, is that metaphorical wall that separates the audience from the play. The phrase ‘breaking the fourth wall’ has been used to describe what happens when the boundaries between the play and the audience have been removed and...
Transformational learning – The potential of this...
The past, present and future all have their potential for transformational learning. Recalling the past provides us with fertile ground for reflection, connection of ideas, taking pleasure in things done and experiences had and the development of knowledge and wisdom that will support us throughout our lives. The future can be something to look forward to and something to prepare ourselves for. ...
Asking powerful questions
I want to start this Post with some quotes that I have found provocative:
Judge not a man by his answers but by his questions - Voltaire
The uncreative mind can spot a wrong answer but it takes a creative mind to spot a wrong question - Anthony Jay
There are the questions you ask and the answers you get and the questions you don’t ask and the answers you don’t get - Anon
If you do not ask...
The sweet mind
In Buddhist practice there are many forms of meditation, each designed to foster aspects of our growth as human beings. One involves just maintaining basic awareness. It is to me a neutral state of mind where thoughts come and go without being grasped. Such practice provides many benefits - it calms and centers the mind, it allows us to see thoughts for what they are and it opens us to a more...
Achieving balance
There is a phrase ‘things are out of balance’. It speaks volumes. Balance can sound like a simple, obvious and easily achieved thing. However, in a conversation today someone gave an example that really changed my mind about how I saw the process of achieving balance in my life. Here is the example.
Imagine you have a store front dummy complete with hands and feet. You put its...
Dealing with negative thoughts
I was prompted to write this post by some very perceptive comments on earlier posts. Essentially they were reflecting on how difficult it is to deal with negative thoughts.
There is no easy answer to this but there is a way forward. The mind seems only to have so much space in its consciousness. The question is what do we fill that space with. Negative thoughts and emotions can easily take...
How we speak with each other
Speaking with each other can be an opportunity for transformational learning. And there are certain things we can do and attitudes that we can adopt to turn this opportunity into a reality. Here are a few thoughts in this direction.
There is a question that we can ask ourselves before engaging in conversation with someone that can get us on the right track. It is “How am I holding myself...
September 2011
5 posts
Letting go
Our orientation to data, information, knowledge and wisdom encourages us to think of personal growth as taking in things. Things like, taking courses and workshops, reading books, getting credentials, thinking about things in some depth, visiting new places, getting in shape and so on. All these have a common characteristic - they are about accumulating. Clearly these can be important for our...
Competition or cooperation and with whom?
Something interesting happened in class and to me after class today. We were talking about work as competition. There were different views with some students feeling more comfortable in competitive environments while others favored environments that were more cooperative in nature. It was a good discussion and brought forward interesting points of view.
After class I was going over what we...
The coral reef as a metaphor for community
Metaphor is a helpful tool to explore the broader and deeper dimensions of a subject. It can provide us with a way to avoid getting stuck in our thinking - a way to avoid the ‘staring at a blank sheet of paper’ phenomena that often arises when we try to think creatively. In this Post I want to bring out some aspects of coral reefs that may allow us to think about community in more...
Six dimensions of full engagement
There are countless studies focused on what makes for a successful company, institution, civil service, team and student. While any number of organizational structures, incentive systems and environments have been suggested as contributing to success, underlying all of these is one simple attribute – full engagement.
If a student, worker, executive or hockey player is not fully engaged, then...
The environment of the class
Something important happens in a class when people cease to become just individuals with no relationships with others. We could call this the environment of the class. Often you can feel the environment of a class as you step into it for the first time.
I find the technique of parallel fields analysis to be a useful tool to think about this - and particularly to think about the potential for...
August 2011
4 posts
100% Commitment
Commitment is difficult. The world is filled with people, like myself, who have committed themselves to dieting, giving up smoking, getting more exercise, heathy eating, spiritual growth - and the list goes on. Such commitment is initially a source of wonderful optimism and then morphs into a lingering pessimism until a new cause to commit to is found. We are sort of shopping for commitment.
Its...
Exploring a creation story as a guide to thinking...
All cultures have their creation stories and many invite us to ponder deeper levels of meaning implicit in those stories. So, while a creation story itself may be short and appear quite simple on the surface, time spend reflecting on it will allow us to access a much broader and deeper vision of life’s meaning. In what follows I am going to explore one such creation story from two perspectives:...
Deepening dialogue: Rhetoric and the oral...
Over the years I have worked as a coach, consultant and teacher with individuals and teams in business, not-for- profit, government and in universities. One of the common and somewhat disturbing characteristics of people working in these areas is that few are very good at articulating what they want to say in ways that invite dialogue, reflection or agreement.
Why is this? I think it is because...
Emily Carr - a statement of transformational...
In the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria are a number of paintings by Emily Carr - together with excerpts from her most interesting diary that has been published as ‘Hundreds and Thousands’.
The diary entry for November 17, 1927 expresses her reaction to viewing the works of members of the Group of Seven. Carr was an extremely innovative and self-directed painter who, at the time, was, I think,...
June 2011
15 posts
Stress and learning in a university environment
A survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies found that between 1985 and 2010 the self measured levels of emotional heath of first year university students dropped by almost 13%. In other words, a significantly larger number of students are experiencing markedly increased amounts of stress. This is not an isolated result...
Transformational learning and the flow of ideas
An increasing body of research seems to suggest that many new ideas that are useful come about by the pulling together of many thoughts that either deal with a portion of the bigger picture or that and not fully formed. The focus of this work is getting an understanding of how big ideas come about.
However, there is another aspect of this process which is that, regardless of who comes up with...
Transformational learning and the flow of ideas
An increasing body of research seems to suggest that many new ideas that are useful come about by the pulling together of many thoughts that either deal with a portion of the bigger picture or that and not fully formed. The focus of this work is getting an understanding of how big ideas come about.
However, there is another aspect of this process which is that, regardless of who comes up with...
Polishing our diamond
“So many things fail to interest us, simply because they don’t find in us enough surfaces on which to live, and what we have to do then is to increase the number of planes in our mind, so that a much larger number of themes can find a place in it at the same time.”
When I read this poem by the Spanish poet Ortega y Gasset...
Feeding the wolf
There is a story of Aboriginal origin that poses an important question. Here is a version of that story.
A young boy had a close relationship with his grandfather. One day the grandfather said to the boy ‘Grandson, there are two wolves inside you and they each can be very powerful. The first wolf is an angry wolf that tries to destroy things. The second wolf is a good wolf who tries to...
Reflection As a way of knowing: A classroom...
I recently posted an article ‘Reflection As a Way of Knowing: A Classroom Experience’ based on my experience with two offerings of my course ‘The Meaning of Work in Contemporary Society’ on the Presencing Institute Community site. It describes the use of reflection as a way of transformational learning and covers both theory and student comments.
Check it out here.
Summer lightning
A thunderstorm has just passed to the South of where I am.
One can study thunderstorms in the classroom and can see many amazing pictures of cloud formations and lightening - And this brings a certain kind of useful academic knowledge of thunderstorms. But how different is the knowledge of thunderstorms gained by having a bolt of lightening flash very near to where you are standing...
Placing stones
Our land near Parry Sound is Canadian Shield country – lots of granite both as large outcroppings and as individual rocks. In moving these rocks around in order to build I found myself creating stonewalls that seem to meander around the properly.
Each year, due to the freezing and thawing of the earth, more stones come to the surface. It has become a pleasant ritual for me to come across these...
Boethius and the Medicine Wheel
I first came across the name Boethius in a most intriguing book by John Kennedy Toole titled ‘A Confederacy of Dunces’. I have read it so often it is now held together by elastic bands. Its inspired title comes courtesy of Jonathan Swift who said:
‘When a true genius appears in the world,
you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.’
The second time I...
Slow coaching
When I did my coach training the model we used was loosely based on a thirty minute coaching session. While the model clearly works well for many coaches and clients it did not work for me. Despite my efforts to master it with several early clients, I never felt I did much good for them nor did I feel that I got much satisfaction out of the process. So I took refuge in W.C. Fields quote ‘If at...
Cause and effect or random occurrances
In many of the Posts in this Blog a background assumption is that, to some degree, we can do things or assume certain states that will have the effect of causing transformational learning to occur. While there is not a 100% relationship, there is at least a positive probability that one will lead to the other.
However, I think it would be an error to think that transformational learning is solely...
Music as a metaphor for exploration
Some music we now call classical has an underlying structure of development. I am referring to music called concertos, symphonies, sonatas as well as others.
Perhaps we can think of this structure as having three dimensions that are sequential. The first is a statement of the raw material. The second is a working through of the interactions of the elements of the raw material. The third is...
Drawing out
The word ‘education’ has its roots in the Latin language. One of its meanings is ‘to draw out’. Not to stuff in. This means that an important task of teachers and students alike is to draw out the student – to draw out his or her thoughts, thought processes, intuition, creativity, the ability to think about what teachers are saying, enthusiasm, focus and so on.
Coming from a rather different...
Reflecting on foundations
Less than two hours North East of Toronto is a unique landform called the Carden Alvar. Carden is the name of the area and Alvar is the name of the rock formation. It consists of limestone that has not been fractured - so it exists as a flat sheet of rock just below the surface of the soil or, in many places, on the surface. I spent last weekend there because it is an exceptional place to...
Scrabble - a story
A little while ago I was standing in line with a colleague waiting to join the faculty procession into Convocation. We were speaking about transformational learning and she was reflecting on a recent meeting with a group of students. These students had a high level of academic ability but faced challenges in interacting well in the University environment.
When they got together, they generally...
May 2011
8 posts
Opinion and transformational learning
What is your opinion on this? An often asked question in classrooms by many professors. It is a pedagogical device used to ensure that the student is paying attention and that he or she is thinking about the issue. It is also useful in developing arguments among students and exploring the issue further.
The first sentence of this Post asked the student to state his or her opinion. This, I...
Tying or weaving the threads together?
One of the functions of a teacher is to explain the individual ‘threads’ that are relevant to the subject of the class. Another is to ‘tie the threads together’. This metaphor is useful but, at the same time, rather limiting if we are looking for full engagement and a higher form of learning.
Another metaphor that suggests itself is based on an Indigenous teaching...
Vitality and Volition
One of the aspects of the Medicine Wheel that has helped me both personally and as a teacher is the concept of ‘volition’. This is the directed energy that is at the centre of the Wheel. I have written about this in my book ‘Conversations that Matter’.
There are two variables in this concept - ’energy’ and ‘direction’. Thus, we are ‘at...
Blogging as a created learning environment
After having completed some fourth Posts I am starting to see the creative potential in blogging. Specifically, two rather different aspects of the activity are coming clearer. The first begins internally while the other begins externally.
The first is about what happens inside my mind because I write Posts fairly regularly and have done for some time. What I notice happening I explain as...
