Andre Chiasson in LO849 and Michael Gurstein in LO864 asked about
implementing Learning Contracts.
My experience with Learning Contracts (especially in large bureaucratic
organizations) is that they can easily be over-designed; i.e., too
elaborate, trying to accomplish too much, therefore too hard to use. One
unintended consequence of this is that the focus can shift from learning
to managing the learning contract.
I favor a very simple approach like that described in *Teaching and
Learning Through Multiple Intelligences* by Campbell, Campbell, and
Dickinson. (If you can't locate this book locally, it's available from
Zephyr Press in Tucson, 602-322-5090.)
Their Learning Contract template includes:
1. What do you want to learn?
2. How are you going to go about learning it?
3. Who and what will provide the information [and resources] you need?
4. What will you accomplish? When will you accomplish it?
5. How will you demonstrate what you have learned?
6. How would you like your learning to be evaluated?
In the corporate world, managers who are negotiating Learning Contracts
rarely think to ask question 6. Yet learning to design one's own
evaluation plan is a VERY important part of the metacognitive skill set of
the continuous learner.
Note also that this Learning Contract template can easily be adapted to
the team learning or collaborative learning case. Typically, I have the
team draw up a Team Learning Contract using questions 1 through 6. Then I
have each team member draw up an Individual Learning Contract using the
same questions, but focusing on their particular goals, learning
strategies appropriate to their learning style, specific interactions they
plan to have with other team members, personal time line, their role in
the team demonstration, etc.
One problem that sometimes comes up with the Learning Contract (LC) is
that the mental and cultural models we have for "contracting" clash with
how people actually learn -- to the detriment of the learning. For
example it needs to be emphasized to the learner that, unlike other kinds
of contracts, the LC frequently needs to be renegotiated based on what is
uncovered during the learning and how the learning goals evolve.
Another potential problem is that normal contracts spell out the *minimum*
requirements of a successful project. As a learning coach I want my
proteges to be reaching for the stars, not checking off minimum
requirements. I deal with this by first working with the individual or
team to create a Learning Vision. Then we design a step by step path to
the vision and write up LC's for each step.
If you're implementing LC's, you'll also need to design who the parties to
the contract will be. When LC's are used in K-12 education, the contract
is often drawn up between the student, parents, and teacher. In the
corporate world, the LC is usually drawn up between the learner and either
a manager or mentor. A common problem with this structure is that neither
the learner nor the manager -- even though they have the best of
intentions -- know enough about learning (resources, styles, techniques,
expectations, motivation, evaluation) to competently design and execute
learning plans. I have some good experience implementing a tripartite
structure in corporations: learner, manager, and "learning coach."
The learning coach is a specialist in learning who helps the learner &
manager develop the Learning Vision and Learning Contract(s) and acts as
an advisor and troubleshooter along the way. Training a small number of
learning coaches is often cheaper and more realistic than training every
manager to coach learning on top of all their other responsibilities. In
fact, working hand in hand with a learning specialist may be the most
effective way to develop that coaching competency in the manager and
learning competency in the learner. If your organization is wondering
what to do with its in-house trainers now that you've moved to
self-directed modes of delivery, you might consider training them as
learning coaches. (They'll likely need some extra training and "unlearning
time." Don't assume that what makes a good classroom instructor makes a
good learning coach.)
There is a third disanalogy between LC's and regular contracts: there is
no pre-established fair system of sanctions against those who break
contracts. If the demonstration and evaluation parts of the LC are linked
to the regular performance evaluation process, there is plenty of
incentive for the learner to follow through. But what recourse does the
learner have if the manager is not performing? One solution is to make
the manager's supervisor a party to the contract. I've never seen this
work well in practice (although I'm certainly open to disconfirming
evidence). The manager's manager is just too far removed from the
transaction and may understand even less about how to evaluate the
manager's coaching skills than the manager knows about how to coach the
learner. Alternatively, having a learning coach as a party to the LC
tends to even the power imbalance inherent in a learner/manager structure
and exerts some social pressure on the other two parties to uphold their
respective sides of the agreement.
Finally, all the LC implementations I know of, including my variations
described above, neglect the question of the *manager's* learning. The
current concept of the LC forces the learning to mirror the hierarchical
relationship between the parties: the employee (or team) learns, the
manager evaluates. If we want to maximize the value we get out of
learning, I believe we need to start moving toward an even more
collaborative framework. I would rather see both parties have public
learning plans and mutual evaluation of those plans. Ideally, the "mutual
LC's" would not necessarily be drawn up between the learner and manager,
but between the learner and whomever in the environment could best support
and evaluate that particular learning project, regardless of where these
people are on the org chart (or in the world). (Caveat: anyone who's
read Argyris on defensive routines will see that the naive direct
implementation of this non-hierarchical, mutual learning approach will not
work. In fact it's likely to *inhibit* learning instead of stimulating
it. That's why I recommend the traditional LC approach for most
environments and reserve the mutual LC approach for organizations that are
willing to learn how to diagnose and dismantle defensive routines -- a
serious investment in time and energy.)
I hope this is helpful. As always, I am interested in hearing about the
LC experiences of others. I would particularly value hearing from anyone
who has been the learner in an LC arrangement. What were the obstacles
you encountered?
Cheers,
John Snyder
Innovation On Demand
Round Rock, TX
jsnyder@bga.com
(512) 218-4870