My first year or two after graduating from college, I kept wanting there to be some instruction book that would teach you how to do all the lessons you somehow had missed in life thus far that it seemed like people should know. Today, young people would refer to this body of knowledge and skills as “adulting,” I think. I’m still wishing I had the magical powers that I witness only on the internet of those people who are able to meal plan effectively and sustainably (as in do it week in and week out). I’ll do it like once and then be so exhausted by the process that I won’t try again until like three years later.
It still amuses me how this yet-to-be-discovered curriculum evades me. When you think you have something figured out, change emerges, and you’re right back in a liminal space. Jarche writes:
The Cynefin framework can help us connect work and learning, especially for emergent and novel practices, for which we do not have good or best practices known in advance.
Speaking of instructions: Will I ever live to see the day when I don’t need to look up the pronunciation of Cynefin each time I run across it, yet again? I’ve been in the field of learning my whole life, though started getting paid for it at the age of 14 and a half, when I first started working and was quickly asked to train other people how to scoop ice cream, decorate cakes, clean the store, and so on at the local Baskin Robbins. It wasn’t that complicated. Sweeping the floors looked the same day-to-day, Even when someone requested a new cake design, it was essentially tracing on plastic wrap and didn’t require new ways of thinking.
Instead of step-by-step actions, many of the challenges I navigate today at work are complex. I was once selected to be the scholar in residence for the University of Michigan Dearborn specifically because I wasn’t an “expert” (nor did I claim to be one). The role was to explore artificial intelligence in higher education. The team who hired me said it was specifically my curiosity that was what made them think I would be an effective person to help them explore the various perspectives people hold without acting as if there was some easy way to step-by-step figure out exactly what needed to happen.
Jarche writes:
In a crisis it is important to act but even more important to learn as we take action.
This “as we are going” learning is only possible with intentionality. It’s otherwise all to easy to succumb to the tyranny of the urgent and neglect the humility required to continuously learn from what is emerging. We are invited to think of an example of each of the following, which I will attempt to do:
- formal community – at my work, we have our Academic Leadership Council (ALC)
- informal community – a group of friends have a text chat, where we share each others joys and sorrows, as well as recommend podcasts, articles, tv shows, books, and so on with each other
- open knowledge network – I’m thinking about communities that arise from clever (intentional) hashtag use, such as ones related to the disability movement, or Black lives matter, etc.
- formal knowledge hub – so many universities have resources to share with faculty related to teaching + learning, like the University of Virginia Teaching Hub