I was at a visioning meeting for a massive organisation yesterday. We were talking about where the organisation would be in the next five years and how it would get there. The feeling around the table was that the company should stick to doing only what is simple, on expansion; because complexity at scale is an invitation for chaos. Here's the question I left with that day. Motivation is a complicated thing, love is, mistrust is, suspicion is...for a revolutionary idea to be scaled up, must it be simple? Is it that transfer of learning is effective when the content is simple or is it when the content is relevant. However complex, if the subject is something one can relate to, isn't it what makes the difference between effective learning and fragmented or rote learning?If the core of lasting and comprehensive learning is that the learner be moved by the content, then it follows, that the learner must allow the his/her Self to get involved with the content. That is the stuff that makes for effective process or pedagogy!The engagement of the Self in the business of learning is unfortunately more often than not, not a priority. Even sadder is that this is mostly because the connection is not seen. Oh there is the regular fare about Value Education and Moral Education, but it translates into tokensim because of the disconnect between the learner, his or her Self, his/her reality and the content. Clearly, there are tools for making this connect, which can be taught, explored, re-invented, devised, adapted; but first must be prioritised as part of the teaching-learning process in school at every level.
It always amazes me how many layers there are to the transfer of learning. A new facilitator who came to me to ask advice on her lesson plan, made me start thinking on the details of the strength enhancement we do in our organisations. She had her plan, she had her timings straight. Her conceptual understanding was crystal clear. As I said to her later, if she went with what she had, put it up on the Internet and circulated it to the development world, she would have a full calendar for her workshops. Luckily for her, she was in the habit of listening well - both to herself as well as to whatever was going on around her and she asked me a critical question, that gave me the confidence to expand her exposure. She asked how the participants of her workshop would need to tweak what she taught and how she taught it such that it would make sense to their students. As we unravelled the answer to her question, we discovered that she may well be learning about how learning is transferred - an...
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