Since this thread seems to have entered second phase conversations Fides'
reply to my original question seems a good place to come back in.
Its a long one. Sorry. It didn't start that way.
Inspired by Tobin I originally asked >LO9404>
>How do we create individual and organisational unlearning?. How do we even
approach personal unlearning?>
First thanks to all who responded. I have been storing all replies to try
and reflect a little [a discipline that has never come naturally]
Second Yogesh >LO 9465>
Thank you for the reference to Hedberg which I will be following up. As you
say his ideas come close to Arthur Battram's explanation - or at least seem
to to me which is hardly surprising given its fit with my preconceived
ideas.
Leaving aside complexity and memes, at least for the minute, two other
facets of the replies to my original question have struck me.
One was that the replies from the more academic institution end of this
list tended to deny 'unlearning':
"Maybe impossible because it would leave a vacuum" [Fides if I interpret
you correctly]
>Nothing more than the difference between domain learning and learning at
the boundary> Phillip LO9411
Mary I have read your post three times and cannot decide whether you are
commenting on unlearning or not. I do agree your comment about tendency of
kids, and I would say others also, to go back to what they intuitively
know. Thanks Jack for reminding us that Peter Senge uses 'unlearning' in
that context. I'm glad to know I am not alone.
Meanwhile people [Joan and William] who are, I perceive, from the more
consultant end of the list found 'unlearning' a more useful concept. I
agree with you Joan that it is something individuals must do but also found
myself wondering, as Arthur did why we must rely on teachers being the ones
who disprove and discover the knowledge to be unlearned [maybe however we
are attaching different meanings to the word teacher].
>From this observation came, for me, a reminder of how communities attached
to certain shared meanings react differently to a new piece of language. I
suspect one of the problems we have in helping Learning Organisations is
that 'Learning' carries such a different sense of meaning and promotes a
different value judgement in 'academia' and 'organisations'. Someone made
this point to the list months ago and seems to have dropped off active
participation since then. [A memetic explanation of this is BTW that a
strain of the 'Learning' meme contributes to a widespread pattern among
education researchers and promotes a defensive reaction when the meme
'unlearning' appears].
My second observation is that, of the replies to my original posting, only
two [plus one privately] seemed phrased as questions rather than as
assertions. Even in a community dedicated to dialog on learning we are
prone to react by advocacy more than inquiry [or is that just my perception
again? and does it matter any way?]
If we accept that by 'Unlearning' we mean something more than simply
'forgetting' there is then the question posed in different ways by Mike and
Fides. Can there really be unlearning because it would leave a >vacuum> or
a >rechunking to some new integration>. The danger with that route, it
seems to me, is that it may leave us believing we can do no more than
replace one mental model, one set of intuitive capabilities, with another.
Somehow that strikes me as pretty limiting.
Can we create the space to hold in our heads more than one model of the
same reality, or even no model? - which seems like living with 'knowing I
don't know' and a step to exploring what 'I don't know I don't know' [and I
am not talking about then having someone who thinks they do 'KNOW' come as
teacher or anything else and tell me - I am trying to express a state of
being genuinely open to different possibilties myself]. Can we create
organisations, or even small groups, who really explore that 'space of
possibility'. We can. We may all have experienced it. Some of us may have
helped others experience it. Some of us may even think we know how we
created that experience or why what we did worked.
My business partner/ co-author/ friend Ray first used the term Unlearning
to me about a year ago over a 'brewing the coffee session' in his kitchen.
Ray is less attached thasn I am [was?] to the 'faith' in 'The Learning
Organisation'. He is more interested in helping people make a difference .
Anyway Ray said "Maybe that's it, maybe it is unlearning that's really the
key". I remember hearing it as a questioning, perhaps a denigration, of
this wonderful idea of THE LEARNING ORGANISATION that had filled my mind
over the last four years.
I am now beginning to see - and maybe Hedberg got their 15 years ago - that
there is something 'more than' or 'different to' learning, or maybe just a
different way of putting it across. Unlearning is the closest I can get,
for now. How do we cultivate it, whatever we call it, in ourselves and our
organisations? I hope that the question engages the interest of others out
there and we can continue the thread - in a spirit of personal unlearning.
Takers?
If Price
The Harrow Partnership
Pewley Fort Guildford UK
101701.3454@compuserve.com
--Dr Ilfryn Price <101701.3454@compuserve.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>