Learning for resilience

PER BECKER

Contents
What is learning?
A pragmatic approach
System perspective on learning
Summary

What is learning?
Think about an example of when you learned something
very important
Describe that experience to your neighbour

What is learning?
Learn |lrn|
gain or acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) by
study, experience, or being taught
commit to memory
become aware of (something) by information or from
observation
(Oxford English Dictionary, 2014)

What is learning?

All interesting, but we must balance

complexity with utility

A pragmatic approach
Learning for the future is crucial for our ability to adapt to
deviations and includes ability to act creatively in
situations of uncertainty.

Learning and experience

Learning entails a continuous cycle of action and
reflection, making experience central.

Action

Experience

Reflection

NOTE :Not only conscious thinking!

Experience and living

Experience is associated with living, and living is the
continuous interaction between humans and their
environments.

Everybody has knowledge and is

capable of producing knowledge!

Informative and transformative learning

(Kegan 2009)

Future-oriented
Focus on proactively anticipating what-if consequences
to potential actions instead of causal if-then thinking.

Past
experiences

Current
experience

Implications
for future

NOTE :Not all experience leads to

knowledge

Linking experience and knowledge

Experience leads to knowledge if it can inform future
experiences.
For that it must leave the emotional and bodily and enter
consciousness and communication.
Inquiry is the process through which that happens.

Process of inquiry

Learning and disjuncture

Learning requires disjuncture

(Jarvis 2009)

Experiential learning

Knowledge is provisional, transient

and subject to change

Whose learning?
Individual
Household
Community

All necessary

Society

Remember that resilience is not fractal,

i.e. a community is not necessarily
resilient just because a number of
households are

System perspective on learning

Learning how

Learning why

Never underestimate the

importance of meaning!

Learning changes who we are

Never underestimate the

importance of identity and
social status!

Learning changes which groups we

belong to

Never underestimate the

importance of community!

System perspective on learning

NOTE: Both helps us

and restricts us!

Summary
Learning is a complex process, but as natural and
inevitable as eating or sleeping.
It is rooted in experience, but forward-oriented and
dependent on conscious reflection, conceptualisation and
generalisation, and testing the altered ideas and
behaviour in future situations.
It is dependent on experience of disjuncture from habitual
thinking and behaviour.
It entails practice, meaning, identity and community,
which all can both facilitate and undermine learning.