It's About Learning

In his post It’s never been as easy to be an intellectual Seth Godin asks the following questions and then suggests that we badly need these kinds of people who are willing to do this work:

Do you click through to see the underlying data?
Are you aware of both the status quo and the argument against it?
Have you done the reading?
Are you comfortable asking, “why?”
Do you know how it works?
When someone knows more about something than you do, are you willing to catch up?
If the data makes it clear that you’ve taken the wrong position, are you eager to change your mind?
Are you interested in having a spirited conversation about the way things are, the way they were, they way they might become?
Can you set aside your worldview, at least for a few minutes, to consider an alternative way to look at the situation?

When I first read this post my ego was stroked because I have a tendency to see myself as an intellectual. There is a part of me that likes to engage things on a purely intellectual or rational level and, until recently, I had tried to limit the emotional side of perspectives because I foolishly believed that emotions or the heart just got in the way. Personal experience and too many life lessons have taught me that the head won’t go where the heart hasn’t been regardless of how rational the argument. Life has also taught me that we are complex beings and rather then try and ignore our hearts we really need to engage them along with our intellects if we really want to learn.

I think Godin is on the right track with his post, but I think he is missing the bigger picture. I suggest that we factor in the heart, or the affective domain, as Bloom recommends, then we can argue that it’s never been as easy to be a learner. The heart must also be engaged if we are to truly make meaningful connections and learn.

References

Bloom, B. S. (1974). Taxonomy of educational objectives: The classification of educational goals. Handbook 1-2. Longmans: McKay.

Godin, S. (2015, November 22). Did you do the reading? Retrieved from http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/11/did-you-do-the-reading.html

Godin, S. (2016, July 8). It’s never been as easy to be an intellectual. Retrieved from http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/07/its-never-been-as-easy-to-be-an-intellectual.html

Harapnuik, D. K. (2015, January 9). The head won’t go where the heart hasn’t been. Retrieved from https://www.harapnuik.org/?p=5461

If you really want to bring about change in people then you need to appeal their hearts and not to their heads. The sharing of more information or engaging in more rational discourse on its own doesn’t appear to help people to make significant change but an appeal to values, attitudes, and feelings first can motivate people toward making changes.

The two short videos below will clearly demonstrate this point but society still struggles with this notion and as you will see from the next few paragraphs I too will ironically address this first from the cognitive perspective. Why? Well…Isn’t that what good educators do?

Educational psychologist, learning theorists, instructional designers, educators and many more learning professionals refer to Blooms Taxonomy of Learning which looks at learning from three domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor.

These domains are also commonly presented in the following relationship:

Cognitive = Head/Knowing
Affective = Heart/Feeling
Psychomotor = Hands/Heard

Bloom intended the taxonomy to be holistic and assumed that all three domains would be included when we develop learning environments. Unfortunately, this often isn’t the case in our educational systems and most other sectors of our society.

The head, is often overemphasized and rational thinkers are held in high esteem, the heart is relegated to artists, musicians or the irrational and those who work with their hands are necessary but are limited to building and keeping our infrastructure running. It only seems rational that if you want to bring about effective change then you just need to appeal to the head–or at least this is what those oriented toward the rational would argue.

But experience doesn’t always confirm this notion. The science community is beginning to recognize the importance of the affective domain. For example the scientists within the Geoscience program at Carlton University recognize that including the affective domain in their teaching can significantly enhance learning or if ignored can hinder or prevent learning. To promote the use of the affective domain they have developed a useful site called The Affective Domain in the Classroom that points to and annotates a wide assortment useful resources and research.

Source: http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/index.html

This illustration of the two domains provides a good visual starting point for considering how the affective domain can be used in a scientific setting.

Enough of the head talk and onto the heart…

How to Change People Who Don’t Want to Change | The Behavioral Science Guys