A conversation about UNLEARNING...

Replies to This Conversation

Permalink Reply by Nadene Canning on September 11, 2009 at 12:59am

Hello,
I have used the Argryis and Schön model for the past 3 years in a variety of different workshop and coaching settings.
I was really thrilled to discover your article and want to thank you for sharing it.
Unlearning is absolutely key, I use it when I work with people to help them understand more about their value system and expore how it may be blocking them. Often a conversation about unlearning allows all sorts of things to bubble up to the surface in an enabling way .
Unlearning has also proven very useful when I train teams, your comments are very relevant and made me chuckle! Avoidance and fear are issues that must be addressed and in the best cases worked through, so that people have the courage to walk the unlearning path.
Thank you Adriano for this excellent article

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Permalink Reply by Adriano Pianesi on October 1, 2009 at 10:30am

Nadene:
I appreciate your comments and glad the article was helpful for you... I am curious about the piece by Argyris you are referring too...Is it available somwhere fro purchase? Where can I get more info about it?
Looking forward to continue the dialogue on unleanring with you..
Respectfully
Adriano

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Permalink Reply by Nadene Canning on October 2, 2009 at 12:56am

Greetings,

Two books actually by Argyris and Schon-
Theory in Practise: Increasing professional effectiveness (1974). San Francisco CA, Jossey Bass

Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective (1978). Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley

I have no idea whether they are available for purchase, or still in circulation for that matter.
Off the top of my head best bets - a university library for consultation or Amazon for purchase.

Am doing my best to build unlearning and deconstruction into a workshop on Abusive power in the workplace (Prague oct 9) because I believe both are fundamental to engage perception and create change.


Warm wishes from sunny Switzerland
Nadene

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Permalink Reply by John Inman on September 11, 2009 at 8:14pm

Adriano, I appreciate the post. I just printed out your article and will read this weekend. I am very interested in this approach as I have not journeyed down this path before, at least not explicitly. I seem to find myself on a continuous path of unlearning and relearning. I use the word deconstructing not in the framework of breaking apart into parts but in looking at what is with new eyes so that I might have new insights emerge. Sometimes this means that I need to let go of what I thought is real to allow a new way of knowing to emerge. Thank you so much for your insights; this will be a benefit to me.

John

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Permalink Reply by Adriano Pianesi on October 1, 2009 at 10:31am

I found myself in the same predicament, that is why I HAD to research and write something about it... Thanks for your comments
Regards

Adriano

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Permalink Reply by Arshad Malik on February 21, 2010 at 3:28pm

Thanks for sharing a thought provoking article.

First of all we need to understand that all theories related to human thinking are abstract and socially
constructed. Thus they continue to get redefined and reshaped and thus the concept of unlearning touches
both individual and collective/group parameters.

If we closely disect the process of unlearning, I feel it is more of a modification of our existing learning. Lets take the example from the article and discuss it. If I drive left-hand and move to a country with right-hand driving- then I don't have to scracth off my previous experience. My previous knowledge is registered both as series of experiences (dynamic) plus (static rules etc in the memory). My brain has to reassocciate the meaning to the rules + hold on previous experience and create a new understanding and move on. Interestingly it is the capacity of our brain which has tremendous ability to reshape existing knowledge. Even after learning rt hand drive our brain can so quickly switch to the old one when we want.

Now see this at organisational level. If people are not used to dialogic communication and you motivate and teach them to adopt new behaviour. Briefly, as it is said, they unlearn and adopt a new behaviour in which they commit to dialogues. I think we need to go more deep into the process of learning and then see whether it is unlearning or modfication of our learning. Learning takes place under certain conditions : Aspiration and trust/safety are the key. Our mind is modifying the existing learning and giving it a new shape because the mind is receiving more safety and trust and thus we are aspiring forward to adopt new behaviour. The moment the safety and trust are lacking the mind may quickly rebound back to the old behaviour.

We can always understanding learning better if we observe the ongoing process of learning from a vantage position where we can see all the theories stretched in a unified timeline and we can extract a meaning out of the situation... as Leaning is Psychological, Physiological, non-Normative, Cyclical, contextual, natural,
transformative , interactive, constructive ...and a lot more at the same time.

The article is interesting... I am challenging it on the notion that Let's not accept it as Unlearning but focus the very nature of our amazing mind.

Arshad, Toronto

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Permalink Reply by Clive Durdle on February 24, 2010 at 12:20pm

My immediate reaction is very strong support - home schooling has a similar idea

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling

Which brings up Illich - deschooling society. Why are we still assuming that the "management factories" the bureaucracies of organisations and institutions are normal?

Maybe Kafka was on to something? Maybe we have to unlearn institutions and organisations?

Clive Durdle

clivedurdle@me.com

http://clivedurdle.wordpress.com/about/

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Permalink Reply by Glyn Potter on June 9, 2010 at 12:30pm

I was reseraching the Stanford D school recently and they have a faculty that deals with unlearning. The idea is that their students have to unlearn all the standarised teaching to tests that plagues the West's public education systems. interesting concept!

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Permalink Reply by Franis Engel on June 11, 2010 at 5:50pm

Brilliant article. To be short and to the point while writing is a significant challenge, ( I need that!) Unlearning is a foundation skill that is tragically under-rated and even ignored. This is a subject that is not often recognized for it's importance - yet.

Most often, people are without a clue how to approach learning the ability of unlearning. Some of the reasons people are inept comes from skipping over another basic skill of personal self-observation. By default, have found myself teaching the skill of unlearning professionally. Mostly every grownup is sorely in need of it.

The form I'm using to teach this abstract skill is Alexander Technique. If you're not familiar with it, Alexander Technique is how to unlearn what you trained yourself to do by accident. Alexander Technique contains many foundation skills about unlearning - applied to inefficient, unnecessary efforts of physical movement. If you have heard of Alexander Technique, many people mistake the form that it uses, (freeing movement ability,) for the content of the skill. The skill content is changing reactions at the core of intentional thinking strategy. Reaction strategies are buried in perceptual assumptions and the training of any skill.

The perception of where your body is located in space, how much effort is required to perform an action and the judgment of relative weight is lumped together in our culture with the general sense of "touch." In a sense, this training of Alexander Technique involves education of an ignored sixth sense. An Alexander Technique teacher can supply a direct experience of what it will feel like to use less effort to move easier, which feels positively strange and disorienting, but effortless. Disorientation happens because we adapt to familiarity. Once trained, habits adapt to disappear the sensation of effort. We lose a sense of what we are doing because we use trained skills.

Focusing on the skill of unlearning is a short-cut that gets to the root of the question: "How do I recognize the value of an improvement?" There is always a "cost" to changing things, and a person must be certain the learning curve will pay off. The skill of unlearning is hidden in perceptual assumptions of movement behind fear reactions. It is hidden in a fear of learning new things. It is hidden in the resistance to using improvements. it is hidden in a sense of survival about the consequences of change. It's hidden in procrastination.

As those in the field innovate the teaching of Alexander Technique in classroom situations, Alexander Technique teachers are finding that it is a short-cut to use abstract, strategic thinking skills - as you are doing!

There is not one method that works for everyone. Although for some it works to train movement skills directly, for others it is the long way around to gaining the skill of changing reactions. Many people who are not conceptual, abstract thinkers by their nature. Those sorts of learners need this "long way around" exclusively. The one-on-one hands-on guided modeling that is a signature of teaching Alexander Technique continues to be essential. Tedious, hands-on repetitive instruction eventually trains conditions of "use." (Alexander Technique teachers use the word "Use" to mean a person's strategy for approaching how they are responding in general.) This method "sneaks underneath" the bureaucracy of resistant self-preservation.

How to address the different ways that people learn, unlearn and relearn? How to stop the domination and insistence of outdated ways when they still "work OK"?

Your article features some great tips for addressing this important issue! I'll spread it around the Alexander Technique community... There is so much more to be explored here. Thanks!

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