Learning Intelligence and the Challenge to Education

I believe we can learn a great deal from our ability to survive when it comes to learning.

The picture shows such a challenge. It could represent the need to make a link between knowledge on the left bank and understanding on the right bank. The solution overcomes the challenge of the raging water and steep sides of the ravine by using what is available to build a bridge linking the two. We take knowledge and build a link to understanding within our learning environment. I would argue being able to build your own bridges means you have some control over your learning environment.

To survive we need to adapt to, and adapt, our environment. We need to make use of the things we have to overcome what we lack. We need to avoid what threatens us and embrace what supports us. We need to understand our purpose and possess the fortitude to overcome obstacles.  We need to take what we know and be able to apply it to what we have yet to understand.

In the same way as we cannot ignore the environment when trying to survive neither can we when we wish to learn.  We have a greater chance of surviving if we are alert and aware of our surroundings and so it is with learning.

We have made learning a process, one that ‘gives’ you an education and in doing so we have dulled the senses to the learning environment. As a result many learners look to others for solutions when they face challenges and fail rather than learning to use what they have, know, or understand. Using my analogy and the picture at the start of this article we would see learners waiting to have a bridge built for them or one pointed out.

Many are concerned by this and advocate an approach to education and learning that will rectify the situation. Problem-based learning, lifelong learning, enquiry skills, flipped lessons are all ‘solutions’ to an unspoken problem, that of learning to manage our learning environment to meet our needs.

It is my experience and opinion that we fail to share this concern with the learner. As a result, learners see subjects to learn rather than understand the challenge is how to learn the subject. We work at developing new flavours to entice the parched to drink when no one is thirsty. How can we demonstrate such things as independent learning, thinking, and enquiry skills are important and necessary if we have made learners so dependent?

We have made learners dependent by holding the keys to learning. We set the curriculum, the standards, and the value of knowledge. We have applied rules and regulations to education. We have constructed a ridged ladder of progression and labels to identify position and status in this most complex and fabricated of environments that we call education. To make students lifelong learners and thinkers we would need to shatter this illusion. We would need to de-regulate education.  Are we willing or able to do this? Shattering illusions is not anarchy or as dangerous as some who regulate education would have us believe for it can release our creativity.

Being creative is a human trait, if we allow it. I would even go as far as to say that not allowing creativity to thrive is inhuman.  There are ways in which learners can creatively work within the regulated education systems we have but we must first make them aware of their environment. This is the true challenge and one that the approaches I mentioned earlier seek to address. What they fail to do however is have the conversation with the learner, they do not start by explaining the ‘why’ of these approaches.  They do not start by sanctioning the process of challenging and exploring the learning environment.  They do not say it is okay to find ways of learning that suit you rather than learning the way you are being taught. They do not explain that failing to meet your learning needs is limiting your ability to learn and not your ability that is limiting your learning.

We have heard of long-term prisoners not wanting to go back into a world without rigor or regulation where they have to think for themselves. Is this any different to expecting learners to see the value in lifelong learning, thinking and enquiry skills when we have subdued them?

We develop learners thinking and enquiry skills by making them aware of their learning environment, the true environment not the one we have created for them.  Then we show how they can begin to manage this for themselves. We look at the skills, attributes, attitudes and behaviours that support learning. We do this by exploring and developing Learning Intelligence (LQ), the ability to manage your learning environment to meet your learning needs.

You will find many articles on this blog about LQ.  Here here is one relevant to challenging your learning environment, one article exploring creativity and learning through the what I refer to as the design process. http://wp.me/p2LphS-40

Questions and challenges always welcome and my thanks to those with whom I have debated LQ over the last 5 years. Your input continues to help me refine the language and descriptions of LQ.

You can Skype me at: ace-d.co.uk or email me at:  kevin@ace-d.co.uk