Relationship in traditional adult education and learning has emphasized separateness and isolation, causing learners to be ‘estranged’ from each other, their teacher, and the material ideas they seek to learn about (Radley, 1980: 34). As non-participants in the process, learners have been presented with their subject as the teacher’s ‘product’, often an alien ‘buffet of ideas’ (Radley, 1980: 40) and quite foreign to the student learner.
When relationship replaces estrangement, and learning is recognized as having implications in the realm of ideas, values, social interests and assumptions, then learning becomes ‘the expression of a social system… which is grounded in the ways in which student and teacher together work with their material’ (Radley, 1980: 36), suggesting connection between facilitator and learner and, we would add, learner and learner.
Belenky et al (1986) differentiate connected learning from separated knowing with reference to the deep relationships that characterize the former (1986: 115) in contrast to the detachment of the latter. Connected learning recognizes the significance of relationship as learners jointly construct knowledge for themselves and each other.
The learner as a model of ‘abundance’ rather than ‘deficiency’
Implied from what has been stated so far is the idea of individuals being resources of abundance that can be drawn upon to further learning. This is in contrast to the deficiency model of the individual being an ‘empty bucket to be filled’. The former model begins with an openness to abundance, an assumption that the learner already possesses in abundance what is needed for learning. In this model, given the opportunity, space and encouragement, learning will happen.
Thus in action learning set members bring their whole experience to the set as a resource to be applied to the issue presented by the presenting set member. Belenky et al (1986: 190ff) contrast stances taken by two college professors and their impact via stories told by two women who had each experienced one of the professors. The first professor, introducing a science class, asked the students to guess how many beans a jar contained. After a host of inaccurate answers he gave the ‘right’ answer and added: ‘You have just learned an important lesson about science.
Never trust the evidence of your own senses.’ The effect destroyed the confidence of the student who left and did not return to science for years, having had her notion of first-hand experience trashed. In the second example a philosophy professor put a cube on the table and asked what it was. In response to its being called a cube, she asked what a cube was. The response brought forth that a cube contained six equal square sides. ‘But how do you know? We can’t exactly see six sides, can we, when we look, yet you know it’s a cube.
You invent the sides you cannot see. You use your intelligence to create the “truth” about cubes.’ The contrast between the approaches of the two professors is interesting. The science professor, in a benign way, wanted to teach students that experience is a source of error. In isolation this had the effect of rendering the student dumb and dependent.
The philosophy student’s lesson was that although raw experience is insufficient, by reflecting upon it the student arrived at a truth. It did not diminish but enhanced her self-esteem and built upon her lived experience. The latter is the basis of action learning from the outset, that a set member is resourceful rather than resource empty; abundant rather than deficient. An action learning set unlocks (and sometimes unblocks) the experience that people bring with them. In addition, a set will also surface prior tacit learning.
Read More : Learning as a social and collaborative process
