When I teach a yoga class, some students focus intently on what they want but don’t yet understand how to accomplish. Other students focus on judgmentally comparing themselves to others in the class. This mix probably happens in any group of students… the Learning self and the Critical self.
Sometimes being a beginner is cause for celebration because we don’t have to prove squat and we have everything to gain. At other times, beginnerhood feels uncomfortable if we worry that others in the group seem to have ‘more’ than we do… Do we look foolish? Will others have patience with us? Can we feel smart if we don’t know or understand something that others already seem to? How come asking a question feels less safe/acceptable than giving an answer does? When did learning become so fraught with stakes?
So, the problem I’m currently obsessed with is: When and why does the state of being a beginner, first-timer, newbie, etc. become a negative rather than a positive? How can we cultivate positive states and lessen dispiriting negative states in ourselves and others when we’re in new learning situations?
I’m excited by environments where question-asking and ‘not knowing’ is a welcomed means of dialogue rather than a pathway toward feeling ignorant. Anyone have thoughts about cultivating these group learning states and how our habits of evaluation are related to our Learning selves and Critical selves?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Arnold Aprill // Jun 18, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Comfort with “not knowing” is learned. One approach is to collectively practice asking questions:
gather a group and give the challenge of asking and sharing questions that we don’t have the answers to. The parts of ourselves that want to “do it right” becomes useful - generating more and more open ended questions. The questions, once shared, stimulate other questions.
2 Phil // Jun 18, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Arnold’s comments make me think of zen koans, those “imponderable riddles” that are supposed to help one achieve enlightenment.
It’s partially about comfort with not knowing, and it’s partially about allowing answers to generate from a new, more intuitive process.
I agree that human nature leads us to finding solutions whenever possible, and sometimes the solution is not about finding the answer to a question; sometimes the solution is knowing that others share your own question. Hmmm.. analogous to Peer to Peer, perhaps?
3 Carolynn // Jul 3, 2008 at 11:57 am
With younger children, there are ways to encourage them to be happy as either the “seeker” or the “expert”. As part of the setting up of the classroom culture, a teacher can actually encourage the children to be excited by the possibility of learning something new, by demonstrating the “keen to learn” attitude. The teacher must demonstrate to the students that there are things that he/she doesn’t now …. that they do know. (computer skills, culture etc.) Allowing the children to be the “Expert” and do the teaching is a great way to boost confidence. If every student is given the opportunity to be the teacher, then they are more likely to feel comfortable with not knowing and needing to ask questions. It is important to teach children that the most successful people in life don’t know everything. They are people who aren’t afraid to ask questions and search out the experts who do know.
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