On Teaching Others

Even if per­sonal state­ments of phi­los­o­phy aren’t your thing, you may find Lor­raine Zinn’s Phi­los­o­phy of Adult Edu­ca­tion Inven­tory most use­ful. Thanks to the learn­ing design­ers of MDE617 for includ­ing this activ­ity, and to the work of Roger Hiem­stra and Ralph Brock­ett for bring­ing clar­ity to the process with their advice on how to con­struct a phi­los­o­phy statement.

These state­ments describe my philo­soph­i­cal beliefs:

My philo­soph­i­cal sys­tem. I am most at home with the edu­ca­tional foun­da­tion set by the pro­gres­sive model, par­tic­u­larly as artic­u­lated by John Dewey, who felt that all gen­uine edu­ca­tion comes from con­tin­u­ally recon­struct­ing expe­ri­ences and inter­act­ing with the envi­ron­ment, that stu­dents play an active role in the learn­ing process, that the instructor’s role is to guide this process, and that edu­ca­tion plays a promi­nent role in bring­ing about social change.

Mean­ing. I believe in the rad­i­cal notion that peo­ple cre­ate mean­ing. Mean­ing mak­ing is a process that is both a per­sonal men­tal activ­ity and a socially inter­ac­tive exchange. And so, there are per­sonal mean­ings and pub­lic mean­ings. Fur­ther­more, mean­ings are never per­ma­nent; they are always open to rein­ter­pre­ta­tion. They only change when peo­ple vol­un­tar­ily let go of their present beliefs in favour of a new inter­pre­ta­tion. So, cre­at­ing mean­ing is a messy process that may take time.

What is Real? Each of us cre­ates our own inter­pre­ta­tion of what is real. Real­ity is the sum of all these inter­pre­ta­tions. Like mean­ing, views of real­ity also evolve and each new con­tri­bu­tion reflects the per­spec­tive of the per­son offer­ing it. I believe that feel­ings evoked dur­ing the expe­ri­ence are espe­cially impor­tant in defin­ing what is real.

Nature of Being Human. I believe that most human beings (the for­tu­nate ones) are emo­tion­ally tied to one another. Our self-interests co-evolve into a sys­tem of inter­de­pen­dence once we real­ize that we have shared inter­ests. Thank good­ness. This pre­vents life from devolv­ing into a bor­ing, fruit­less game of try­ing to dom­i­nate one another, in favour of a moment of con­nect­ed­ness with an other, a bridge to some­one or some­thing out­side of our own empty plans.

And these describe my pro­fes­sional prac­tice values

Pur­pose. The pur­pose of learn­ing is to develop these emo­tional ties. The pur­pose of edu­ca­tion and train­ing is to sup­port learn­ers’ respon­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion in their com­mu­nity (or class, or team, or orga­ni­za­tion or nation). By respon­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion, I mean shar­ing cul­ture and struc­ture as is, or should be.

Learn­ers. Each learner is unique, because of their unique expe­ri­ences, indi­vid­ual reflec­tion and the social and his­tor­i­cal con­text in which they find them­selves. I also believe that learn­ers choose whether or not they share their unique per­spec­tives. It is not pos­si­ble to coerce learn­ers into learn­ing. Learn­ers only develop an alter­na­tive view when they let an expe­ri­ence ques­tion their present beliefs. We are all learners.

Role of the learn­ing designer. When I orga­nize for­mal train­ing in response to a prob­lem, I see my role as a con­vener who involves learn­ers in the cre­ation of change, rather than some­one who deliv­ers it. This rec­og­nizes that some­one has already fig­ured out the res­o­lu­tion to a prob­lem (and it is usu­ally not me), or is already prac­tic­ing what oth­ers think is impos­si­ble, or has crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion that would help find a solu­tion. In between for­mal train­ing, my role is to advo­cate for learn­ers because they are far more capa­ble than most of us know.

Con­tent. Con­tent resides not only in the author­ity that is the West­ern canon (as I was taught), nor the envi­ron­ment (as behav­iourists believe, and the lens through which train­ing is con­ceived), nor even exclu­sively in the learn­ers them­selves. These are impor­tant, but sup­ple­men­tal, sources. Instead it is the cul­tural sit­u­a­tions in which the learn­ers find them­selves that pro­vide the key source for learn­ing. In for­mal train­ing, we begin with every­day prob­lems that can be solved through the using prac­ti­cal skills and knowl­edge. The learn­erss’ feel­ings pro­vide energy that directs the learn­ing process, and the con­tent evolves with their interest.

Meth­ods. My favourite method is nego­ti­a­tion, for which I have two pre­ferred tech­niques. The first is is to ask ques­tions, par­tic­u­larly ques­tions that high­light para­dox or probe ambi­gu­ity: What are you try­ing to accom­plish? Why is train­ing the solu­tion? Who else should be involved in this dis­cus­sion? and so on. The sec­ond tech­nique is lis­ten­ing, to how the prob­lem is artic­u­lated, and let­ting the answers shape the train­ing event. All this begins long before for­mal train­ing. My pur­pose is to have as much par­tic­i­pa­tion in the train­ing design as pos­si­ble. I’ve recently come to real­ize that this pre­lim­i­nary work is the actual train­ing; the train­ing event itself is a cel­e­bra­tion of a job well done.