Why current learning approaches trap us in the status quo
“We keep getting more data, but it’s not helping”.
When it comes to changing systems, more and more people are coming to recognise the vital role that learning has to play. Organisations are investing increasingly in learning, with learning partnerships or learning cultures. And yet systems are not changing. The vast majority of our social systems are stuck.
We believe that we’re doing learning wrong. The core mistake we’re making is to depersonalise learning. We talk about ‘the learning’ as if it were something that exists outside of people. It cannot. Learning is something that happens to people – that is where change starts. If no-one is learning, then no learning is happening.
In our depersonalising of learning, we are accidentally stripping away so much of the experience of learning that is incredibly valuable – the parts that connect with the heart and the gut. Just as capitalism teaches that life is about acquisition and accumulation, we have reduced learning to the acquisition and accumulation of facts.
We need to focus much more on the people doing the learning and their experience – their nuanced, emotional experience. Knowledge – the facts – will not set us free. In fact, knowledge is lethal when it isn’t balanced with felt relationships with the world. Rather than simply accumulating intellectual knowledge, we believe learning must focus on becoming more sensitive, more attuned to the reality of the world.
This is a session for anyone interested in learning cultures across organisations, networks or systems. In this session we will explore what an alternative approach to learning might look like, including questioning and discussing as a group:
What is learning?
What are the conditions for true, deep learning?
What happens if our starting point for reflecting on learning is 'relationships' rather than 'information/data'?
What role do ‘outputs’ play in all of this?
This is a session by Abby Taylor and Andy Crosbie of Collective Impact Agency CIC; we help organisations and people try bold things that scare them - and do it together. They will be joined by Marcus Jenal of Fondation Botnar.
Read more: https://www.ciacic.com/post/lived-experience-and-the-importance-of-the-heart
Capacity: 60 maximum.