Adaptation • Learning
Learning Happens!
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- Your system is constantly adapting to how you go about your life and what you encounter.
- You learn.
- You are a learning creature.
- Learning isn't an act you do, it happens.
- Real learning looks like play.
- How you set-up the conditions for learning has a huge effect on how learning happens.
- Neuroscience research is giving us information about how learning works, everything from ideas like: we learn better when we are happy to learning happens mostly on the other-than-conscious level.
- The nature of learning
- A learning process based on how the system makes neural connections
- Common interference to learning, much of which come from how we were taught
Play Ball Demonstration of Learning
TARGET PRACTICE or Mistakes and other illusions
Dr. Leon Thurman articulates a useful image for the nature of learning based on neuro-science research. He refers to learning being a matter of taking target practice. When learning a skill you have to go off target to learn the coordination, synaptic connections, neural pathways that let you acquire the skill or hit the target.
Mistakes are just human constructs often surrounded with negative connotations. “Don’t make a mistake.” “Mistakes are bad.” Worse yet: “I’m bad because I made a mistake.” A “miss take” is what your system has to do to find the target; you have to go off target to learn where the target is. When your system registers “ah that dart went slightly to the left” then your system makes an adjustment, it learns what isn’t the target. Your job isn’t to say, “Now I’ll move my hand to the right.” You just need to keep your eye on the bull’s eye and allow your system to learn how to throw the dart and hit it. Your system learns to throw the dart and hit the bull’s eye by taking target practice, by going off target.
A Coordinating System Learning Process
(Adapted from LearningMethods™ based)
This cycle gives your system time and freedom to learn the conditions and coordination necessary for the desired task.
Step three of the cycle, assessing what happened, is the moment when it easy to get off the learning cycle.
Detecting that what happened, wasn't what I wanted, is an absolutely necessary aspect of learning. It often feels like frustration. (If something happens that isn't on target but I don't register it is off target, I'll just keep doing the off target thing and never learn the coordination for hitting my target. No Learning.) If I can recognize that I didn't hit my target and simple refresh and clarify my intention - I learn.
That feeling of frustration that I didn't get what I want, shows me what I want. Sometimes I have trouble learning or developing a skill because I haven't clarified the target. Surprisingly I can use frustration to help me identify what I want.
Some Traps to Learning:
Assessment-judgment is NOT the problem. Misunderstanding what the assessment means is the problem. It is extremely important to be able to assess whether or not you did or didn't hit the target. The uncomfortable "gut wrench" feeling commonly associated with missing the target is not a feeling to avoid. It makes perfect sense if your system learned that missing the target meant being wrong and being wrong meant being a less worthy person, (or some variation of this common interpretation of mistake). In this case your "gut wrench" should be outright terror, because your system has making a mistake aligned with being worth-less. Put another way your system has the essential ingredient for learning interpreted as dangerous; mistake equals pouncing tiger. (You may not believe this intellectually but if making a mistake and a gut wrenching feeling go together there is some negative association with not hitting the target.)
Miss-taking Learning Moments
If you can stop in the moment and identify you are in one of these learning moments. You can clarify “This gut wrench is just telling me I have something to learn here”; you reinterpret the instantaneous detection of "off" target as a learning moment rather than a wrong moment or self worth moment. You are practicing seeing a “mis-take” sensation as a healthy alert signal, like a smoke alarm saying "Hey there's something to here to learn." It is time to slow down and assess what just happened and clarify my intention and give it another go. As you engage in this ‘virtuous circle’ you can transform fear of being wrong into joy of learning. As a person meets that moment with clarity and reinterprets the sensation, the sensation will change and ease up. It won’t be a gut wrench but a sensation of normal dissatisfaction or simply “This is not what I wanted. What now?”
Playing Well Trap
Another trap in learning is wanting to be right or good. Being right or playing "well" as goals don’t work well. They are vague targets. There isn't anything specific the system can coordinate around. We need to attach specfic criteria to playing "well" if we want a clear intention to aim for and assess. If I say I want to hit the bull's eye then I have a clear intention. I can assess the result. I want to sing in tune or with feeling or in a particular tempo. These are clear intentions that can be assessed.
- To evoke an optimal Learning Environment and demonstrate Target Practice as another way to think of learning.
- Demonstrate the 3 aspects of what human’s need to thrive: 1. Empathetic Relatedness 2. Competency(success) 3. Autonomy.
- Hold a Ball (Can you hold it successfully?)
- Play with the ball and find a few things you can do with it that are easy to do and a few that you can’t quite do. (Is there a difference between doing what you can do and what you can’t? If so describe it?) note: it can be useful to ask people if they’ve noticed a difference between something and then ask to describe. A more open ended question like: What did you notice, can feel vague to people or take the group off on another track.
- You have a minute to do which ever play you’d like to do. You can do the activity you can already do or keep working on the one you are figuring out.
- What choice did you make? Why?
TARGET PRACTICE or Mistakes and other illusions
Dr. Leon Thurman articulates a useful image for the nature of learning based on neuro-science research. He refers to learning being a matter of taking target practice. When learning a skill you have to go off target to learn the coordination, synaptic connections, neural pathways that let you acquire the skill or hit the target.
Mistakes are just human constructs often surrounded with negative connotations. “Don’t make a mistake.” “Mistakes are bad.” Worse yet: “I’m bad because I made a mistake.” A “miss take” is what your system has to do to find the target; you have to go off target to learn where the target is. When your system registers “ah that dart went slightly to the left” then your system makes an adjustment, it learns what isn’t the target. Your job isn’t to say, “Now I’ll move my hand to the right.” You just need to keep your eye on the bull’s eye and allow your system to learn how to throw the dart and hit it. Your system learns to throw the dart and hit the bull’s eye by taking target practice, by going off target.
A Coordinating System Learning Process
(Adapted from LearningMethods™ based)
- Intention: Have a clear intention of what you want to do – a target or bull's eye.
- Do: Take action, throw the dart. You go for our intention. You do.
- Assess or Locate where you are in relationship to the bull's eye: Is what happened what I wanted to happen? If 'yes' then you simple carry on. If 'no' then you get specific, you clarify!
- How close did I come to my target, my intention?
- Specifically what didn't I like and what do I want?
- Clarify and specify the new, revised intention and repeat the process with this new intention.
This cycle gives your system time and freedom to learn the conditions and coordination necessary for the desired task.
Step three of the cycle, assessing what happened, is the moment when it easy to get off the learning cycle.
Detecting that what happened, wasn't what I wanted, is an absolutely necessary aspect of learning. It often feels like frustration. (If something happens that isn't on target but I don't register it is off target, I'll just keep doing the off target thing and never learn the coordination for hitting my target. No Learning.) If I can recognize that I didn't hit my target and simple refresh and clarify my intention - I learn.
That feeling of frustration that I didn't get what I want, shows me what I want. Sometimes I have trouble learning or developing a skill because I haven't clarified the target. Surprisingly I can use frustration to help me identify what I want.
Some Traps to Learning:
Assessment-judgment is NOT the problem. Misunderstanding what the assessment means is the problem. It is extremely important to be able to assess whether or not you did or didn't hit the target. The uncomfortable "gut wrench" feeling commonly associated with missing the target is not a feeling to avoid. It makes perfect sense if your system learned that missing the target meant being wrong and being wrong meant being a less worthy person, (or some variation of this common interpretation of mistake). In this case your "gut wrench" should be outright terror, because your system has making a mistake aligned with being worth-less. Put another way your system has the essential ingredient for learning interpreted as dangerous; mistake equals pouncing tiger. (You may not believe this intellectually but if making a mistake and a gut wrenching feeling go together there is some negative association with not hitting the target.)
Miss-taking Learning Moments
If you can stop in the moment and identify you are in one of these learning moments. You can clarify “This gut wrench is just telling me I have something to learn here”; you reinterpret the instantaneous detection of "off" target as a learning moment rather than a wrong moment or self worth moment. You are practicing seeing a “mis-take” sensation as a healthy alert signal, like a smoke alarm saying "Hey there's something to here to learn." It is time to slow down and assess what just happened and clarify my intention and give it another go. As you engage in this ‘virtuous circle’ you can transform fear of being wrong into joy of learning. As a person meets that moment with clarity and reinterprets the sensation, the sensation will change and ease up. It won’t be a gut wrench but a sensation of normal dissatisfaction or simply “This is not what I wanted. What now?”
Playing Well Trap
Another trap in learning is wanting to be right or good. Being right or playing "well" as goals don’t work well. They are vague targets. There isn't anything specific the system can coordinate around. We need to attach specfic criteria to playing "well" if we want a clear intention to aim for and assess. If I say I want to hit the bull's eye then I have a clear intention. I can assess the result. I want to sing in tune or with feeling or in a particular tempo. These are clear intentions that can be assessed.