Experiential learning

I was yesterday part of a group looking at how to promote whole person learning.

I’ll say more about whole person learning in future posts, but for the moment I want to report on the process we used. My sense is that it could be used by any group of reflective practitioners who are looking for ways forward to develop a work area or interest.

I use whole person learning in the methodology below, so substitute WPL for whatever issue you’re interested in.

The process took about two and a half hours, with a break as well.

We started with the decision that until we know what we’ve got within us on WPL (“whole person learning”) we can’t know what we can offer.

So on an individual basis, take up to 30 minutes to answer these questions:
1. What is my first/an early experience or inkling of WPL. When, where, what – build a sense of that experience. What were its implications or consequences – lasting value or only seemed mundane at the time.
2. How is that experience similar to, and different from, WPL if we were to be developing it now.
3. What was involved in the experience that makes it WPL?
4. What are my questions about WPL?
5. How would I use WPL in our work together?
6. What areas of theory and practice do I need to attend to?
7. If I’m more able to promote WPL in my work, what would it help me accomplish?

Share in pairs, 10 minutes each.
Back in the whole group: Share what came out of the pot.
Then whole-group discussion: What’s our resulting agenda, and priorities, and agreeing action.

The primary agenda item was for us to work on a two-day course for facilitators of whole person learning; again, I’ll keep you informed about this.

As with some experiential learning experiences, it was easy to feel at times that it was all going too slowly! But the depth of our sharing in the whole group would not have happened without that individual and pairs sharing which underpinned our later discussions.

If you try out this process in your own work or groups, do let me know how you got on.

Living as though other people matter

In a previous post I listed some of the many ways in which we are connected to each other. It posed the challenge: yes, but so what? This article is a start in saying Well, how about this what.

A great anti-connector are the negative aspects of the global economy. Whilst paradoxically it binds consumers and producers into what can be strangling economic relatioships, what’s really happening is a deconnectivity. The attitude that frequently accompanies globalistation – that those who are rich enough are free to to get whatever they want – means that the deeper, felt sense of connection is lost.

This, to me, is the greatest charge against globalisation. It enables us to live as though people don’t matter. The rich can buy, consume and relax in ways that ignore the consequences on others: the destruction of environments to produce the goods, and exploitation of workers so that others may have luxury on the cheap.

We must live as though other people do matter. We’re all in the same boat on this planet, and we all have a stake in our mutual survival. The environmental state of the world is perhaps the biggest example of how we need radical changes to how we collectively think. The personalised impact of globalisation on individuals, families and societies, is another. The militarism of politics is yet another.

Einstein is reputed to have said, “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”

No greater validation of that quotation exists today than the response required to our global situation. We are all connected. And, there is a “so what”. The So What is to bring awareness and a response to those connections into what we do.