THINK THOUGHTS
THINK THOUGHTS
Thinking Thoughts and Making Connections
Inquiry
Inquiry allows a process for discovery, wonderment, and awe. It is how we cultivate curiosity and develop a sense of our smallness, our interconnectedness, and our temporality. Inquiry is how we express engagement with the world around us, make meaning from transactions, and indicate to ourselves (and others) that we are yet becoming.
Looping?!
Looping is my shorthand reference to research on feedback loops, learning loops, and double loops across the fields of education, organizational behavior, management, and science.
Research: Interests & Questions
I often think about the intersection of consciousness, the development of human thought, art, design and everyday creativity. In my practice as an educator I am exploring, developing, and implementing multidisciplinary creative pedagogic practice by drawing on design theory, philosophy, cultural studies, social science, and natural science.
I think a lot about "looping". One of the loops that I have been thinking about recently is the act of reflective practice.
• How does intersubjectivity change within groups?
• What are the connections between contemporary neuroscience, positive psychology, and differentiated learning/
universal learning design?
• How do we activate and learn from practices that sit in the space between everyday creativity and contemplation?
• What does Becoming look like? How does Naming happen?
• Is it possible to use transpersonal qualitative research in an ongoing set of feedback loops within group processwork?
• Is reflective learning an application of a form of grounded theory to a form of auto-ethnography?• Are we engaging in our own action-research as we propose to be awake to our own lives, and to our cultures,
subcultures, and societies? Are we taking the time to know about knowing? Is this the Becoming?
• Now that we can narratively and culturally construct a world, how do we? How do we do this collaboratively and
co-creatively? What does accountability look like?
• Is it possible to be aperspectival and how does that change the way we design, relate, and create?
• What capacities do we need to be identified and strengthened to collectively move forward towards a more inclusive
and equitable future?
• How do we hold space for the tension between making changes in existing systems and new systems.
• What can I learn about cultivating spaces through a service design approach that is different than a
biopsychosocial approach?
CULTIVATING CAPACITY FOR COLLECTIVE INTERSUBJECTIVITY
THROUGH REFLECTIVE PRACTICE, GUIDED CRITIQUE AND METACOGNITIVE AWARENESS
Hypothesis: If learner capacity is cultivated then collective intersubjective experiences will be more equitable, accessible and pluralistic.
Influencers
Christopher Alexander, Christopher Martin Bache, Ria Baeck, Susanne Cook-Greuter, Eric S Chelstrom, Merlin Donald,
Values
Authenticity is the ability to align my self perceptions (theories of action) - valuing integrity, compassion, continuous learning, and wisdom - with my actual behaviors (theory of use).
The loop I employ to self check is a third person subjective approach. I observe thought, felt sense, and behavior. Additionally, I allow trusted others to engage me in a third person objective approach. I toggle between those two in a double loop learning process.
Ethos
*These are the values that I hold and enact in my personal life and professional practice, but also value and encourage in organizational settings. Each of the values here are described in an activated way - using a constructivist structuralism approach to group processwork, organizational design and leadership development.
EQUITY & INCLUSION
Cultivating the ability to hold multiple perspectives allows for activated, informed, empathetic, and intentional choice-making to create more diverse, inclusive, and equitable experiences for ourselves and others. By examining underlying assumptions we can challenge our views, increase empathy, and take action.
CREATIVITY & COURAGE
Creativity allows us to imagine innovative responses to circumstances and ideas—and to use different techniques to solve problems. Courage gives us space to take intellectual and creative risks, accepting failure as part of the creative process.
COLLABORATION & COMMUNICATION
Collaboration and communication foster both positive interdependence and individual accountability. Both are rooted in the ability to listen actively and express oneself clearly in spoken, written, non-verbal, visual, and inter-personal domains.
CRITICAL THINKING & REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
Critical thinking and reflective practice enable us to interpret and evaluate information from multiple perspectives—and to analyze, judge, define, question, organize, and prioritize information.
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT & GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Being a human in society means working and living with diverse individuals, organizations, and communities, respecting your own and others' personal and cultural histories while recognizing societal structures.
INTEGRATIVE & INTERDISCIPLINARY PROFILES
The increasing complexities of living in a post-postmodern time require that we be able to think, research, and communicate across disciplines throughout everyday life.
Pedagogy in Practice: Praxis
I am troubled by traditional pedagogy. Pedagogy is a word that has become a heuristic with assumed, self-evident meaning, but society changes, cognition changes, and meaning-making changes. There is little room in traditional pedagogic practice for something other than the hierarchy of instructor as the purveyor of knowledge. The instructor becomes the curator, judge, and interpreter. There is little room for pluralism, self-determination, or recognition of the individual human development process.
I find myself aligned with progressive education and critical pedagogic theories, and work hard to design environments and to hold space in a way that honors all of the people in the room, irrespective of position in the organization. There is a challenge in creating a space for delivering curriculum, achieving tasks, assessing development, and making room for content and technique training and everything that each group member brings into the room with them.
Each time I facilitate, mentor, coach, or teach, I am actively engaging in praxis. Putting pedagogic theory into practice is intentional for me. I am interested in spaces that allow for shifts in power, sharing of knowledge assets, and collaborative practice. I am inspired by Open Space Technology, We groups, and T-groups, and I deeply value the opportunity to connect both the content and the structures of group work with society and culture.
Philosophy of Learning
My approach to teaching is based in a belief in human potential, social responsibility, and the value of reflective practice. As a way to cultivate the teaching and learning environment, I use processwork and encourage metacognition to prepare students for a post-postmodern world. By creating learning opportunities for students to engage both their technique training, and by grounding in theory and context, students are able to synthesize and apply their learning. In one way or another, all of the work that happens in my classes builds capacity in the following nine areas: intentional observation, phenomenologic understanding, inquiry, identifying and understanding patterns, meaning making, reflective practice, empathy, multiperspectivism, and taking action.
Inclusion
Considering inclusion has brought me to some questions about how we go about developing inclusionary practices and talk about subjective experiences (inside and outside of cultural perspectives) and the structures we function in. I challenge myself to hold and value multiple perspectives.
However, I wonder about the goal of creating pluralism and developing multiperspectivalism. Is this the end state?
If inclusion is a way of being and an act of Becoming that is actually integral nonexclusion, then maybe inclusion is about challenging ones own culturally constructed, socially informed biases. And, maybe considering inclusion brings us an imperative about considering equity, recognizing narratives, and making change.