It's About Learning

Creating Significant Learning Environments

It’s never been as easy to be a learner

Dwayne Harapnuik — July 18, 2016 — Leave a comment

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

In Learning affective, cognitive, head, heart

Change before you have to
One of the key ideas we deal with in the Masters of Digital Learning and Leading program at Lamar University is change and how to use technology as a catalyst to bring about change in the learning environment. Reluctance to change is one of the most difficult challenges that most of us who promote the use of educational technology have to wrestle with. Ideally we would all like to work with only highly motivated colleagues and students but this is not the world we live in.

In response to a student request to share links to useful articles dealing with reluctance to change I did a quick search on my blog to find a couple really good articles or posts to share and I was surprised to notice that I have over 226 posts that are tagged with the word ”change” and dozens more posts that simply include the word change. I have several hundred notes in Evernote about change, dozens of links to articles on change in my Zotero reference database and I and hundreds more links related to change, reform, and innovation related to technology in education in my Diigo bookmarking tool. Can’t forget to mention the dozens of books about change I have in my hardcopy and digital libraries. This includes at least 6 books by John Kotter the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, who is widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on leadership and change.

Out of all this how to do I find the just a couple of articles, posts or links that will be most useful. I started to review some my favourite academic articles and posts and after a few hours I was reminded by my wife’s caution

when people ask you for a recommendation they aren’t asking for a literature review and they more than likely don’t want to read all the books and articles that you have read…they are just looking for an answer to a problem.

So what is the problem that my student wants to address?

How do you deal with people who are reluctant to change?

The posts listed below are what I like to refer to as intellectual mash-ups because I take an assortment of ideas and combine them together to address the problem. Each post has many embedded links to the original sources so I am confident that the perspectives presented are supported by sound original insights.

The Head Won’t Go Where the Heart Hasn’t Been
This post points to the fact that while we like to believe that we make decisions based on rational thought the reality is that we are much more emotionally driven and as the title suggest that head won’t go where the heart hasn’t been.

People who like this stuff…like this stuff
In this post I point out the key factors for why people often reluctant to change and outline my 4 step process for organizational change which has become the foundation for the graduate course Leading Organizational Change I teach at Lamar University

The following three posts are also compilations of ideas that deal with the mindset one requires to embrace change. In addition, I address the fact that we often need to model or embrace change by living it.

Sense of Urgency: Create It Now or React to It Later

Pick Two – Innovation, Change or Stability

Practice Change by Living It

It is most important to remember that while change often is a constant part of 21st century living we don’t have to fear it or just react to it and let it adversely impact our lives. If we are proactive we can embrace change and use it as an opportunity for growth and development.

Commitment takes Heart

Dwayne Harapnuik — March 19, 2015 — Leave a comment

In his daily blog post The difference between commitment and technique Seth Godin makes the argument that we (society) would be a lot more successful if schools created an environment where teachers used commitment as a foundational part of the learning environment. Students with access to resources are almost unstoppable if they are committed to learning.

Instead we have created an environment where learners can say:

“teach me, while I stand here on one foot, teach me while I gossip with my friends via text, teach me while I wander off to other things. And, sure, if the teaching sticks, then I’ll commit.”

This is another example of the principle of “The head won’t go where the heart hasn’t been.” Genuine commitment must involve the affective domain and until we are willing to engage emotionally our heads will not follow.

I agree with Godin that “great teachers teach commitment.” I would add that great teachers use passion to teach commitment.

In Learning head, head won't go, heart, passion, teaching

The Head Won’t Go Where the Heart Hasn’t Been

Dwayne Harapnuik — January 9, 2015 — 8 Comments

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