Researching my old learning while experiencing new learning

As well as writing my AOL's, I've been having a little whirlwind of activity over the past few weeks - On starting this MA I decided to also engage in as many new dance opportunity as I could, it has been interesting to have experiences with my mental eye viewing them through my AOL's.
Last weekend I went to the Ageless Festival at Yorkshire Dance, Leeds, as the name suggests the weekend was an exploration of what it means to dance at any age. 
An amazing weekend of workshops and talks; the highlights include Liz Aggiss' performance, chatting with Nanrom about his re-engagement with performance and working with Galit Liss and experiencing her Gila Movement.
The name Gila, which in Hebrew means age, joy, and discovery, reflects the spirit of women who choose to dance at any age. (Ageless Brochure). 
Galit is a performance artist who chooses her medium to be the mature female dancer, she says she fell in love with the integrity of the stories that the mature body produces. Instead of being a choreographer who makes work for the older dancer, she uses the older female dancer as a tool to represent, disrupt and challenge the narratives she is presenting. (Galit 2019).
Her process led her to develop a movement style that helps women create integrity in their dance movement. She uses - Visualise - Feel - Imagine. Each movement she encourages us to, see; what we are doing, feel; sense what is actually there and imagine; both as a tool for the quality of the movement (i.e walking through sand) and as an eye from outside.

Her use of the mature dancer as a tool for her art, transcends cultural stereotypes about 'old dancers' - Her work Go, combines the mature dancers with images of combat and military customs, she says;

In the work she uses the older body to subvert our expectations, allowing her to interrogate themes far removed from 'the older dancer' - the juxtaposition challenging us to reconsider our prejudices.

Galit says;

"I found that the movement of an older body has a "physiological aesthetic" that in the context of the stage has implications with the personal, social, and political representation that I am interested in touching upon. I felt that working with the older body sends us to a delicate place where we constantly wonder: Is it possible? If not, then how can it be?" (Time Out 2018)

All this new thought stimulation keeps throwing-up moments of realisation about how I have come to know what know. These realisations mostly come through discussions about the new ideas, it is interesting that we sometimes only know what we understand when we need to articulate it - Which I guess is the point to the AOL's

The Freefloating Theories of AOL

It's an interesting journey at the beginning of Module 1 - There's the theory and the discussions; which feel a little like 'normal learning' our tutor's suggest a topic for discussion or post a video, we  use this as a starting point for our own exploration and (hopefully) learning, we come together to discuss our ideas, we reflect on what we and others have said and then we post our (hopefully) deeper thinking on the topic. By reading the posts of others you can see this learning process in action, it makes me happy to see the simplicity of the complexity of it.

Then there are the AOL's - Which feel a little like indoor skydiving; there you are trying hard to maintain any position at all just to stay afloat, while the ideas whiz around you, wildly buffeted  by the wind tunnel, every time you see something you think you can get a grip on, you or it are forced the other way by an unpredictable force.

Having spent a few weeks feeling a little 'air-sick' I went back and read every single blog that Adesola, Helen or anyone else that has already done Module 1, had written about AOL's and I found myself getting more and more angry - Angry at the absence of knowing, angry at myself and subsequently angry at the course. So I decided to focus on the framework - what was the course all about? - and to forget about me and my AOL's for a while. 
For me this meant going back to the theory, reading and reading anything that related to the theories, that related to the framework of the course. Then I read a sentence by Moon, she is describing situations when material of experiential learning can be challenging;

'In relation to experience we have suggested that mediation is a secondary process in which the material of teaching is simplified or recodified usually to create an easier or more certain situation for the learner... Mediation thus usually reduces the complexity of direct experience. Sometimes, though, mediation can involve manipulation of the situation in order to increase the challenge to the learner and guide her into useful learning about her learning process'. (Moon 2004)

Ping! the light bulb came on - the anger evaporated - and I was able to think again (thus also learning by experience the lessons of emotional learning).

I wrote an outline for one AOL - It is only a beginning but at least it is a beginning!



Moon J - A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning - Routledge Farmer, 2004


   

Frameworks and Theory - From Homophily to Cognitive Diversity

I started thinking about next Sundays Skype discussion while driving home from my dance workshop on Monday evening. I was turning over in my mind what I understood about frameworks and theories with reference to Adesola's ideas on her blog:
That frameworks are the domed ceiling of a cathedral we work/live/think under.
The theories are the gold leaf decoration which line the dome making visible the form of the dome
The gold leaf reflects back the light making it impossible to see the dome (the framework)
You need to scratch at the gold leaf to reveal the framework underneath.

I was considering how it was easier to understand ideas of theories and frameworks when we think of extremes - For example, thinking about racism - it is easy here to see how the framework houses the theories, which in-turn sustains the framework - creating  a self-referencing truth. The framework becomes a truth not just a set of theories, something that, for people who exist conceptually  within it, they cannot step outside of to question their own understanding.

I then took this analogy and thought about the framework of this MA, the learning framework we are working within and wondered about the conflicting nature of the course itself - We are being asked to reference ourselves and our learning, in conceptual terms, set out by the framework of the course -  Paradoxically we are being asked to 'scratch at the surface of the theories to expose the framework' and maybe step outside of this.

I was wondering all this, while listening to Radio 4, when Matthew Syed started talking about his book 'Rebel; Ideas the power of divergent thinking' (2019).

Syed states that we live in a homophlic society, where we naturally gravitate towards people who have similar conceptual ideas to ours - we all like to hear something that validates our own point of view! 
His premise is that as society becomes more homophilic, ideas become concentrically smaller. If everyone in a group already understands (and believes) in the same theories, the ideas they put forward are likely to be very similar. However, by adding conceptual divergence to a group, the theories and ideas will come from many different places, contradicting and challenging each other, but all varied - as an example he states;

10 conceptually convergent people in a problem solving group, each have 10 ideas - theses ideas are all very similar, so this equals 10 new ideas.

10 conceptually divergent people, in another problem solving group, each have 10 ideas - theses ideas are all very different, so this equals 100 ideas.

So this led me back to thinking about Siemens' (2006) ideas on new technology and how it  is impacting the way we acquire knowledge -  knowledge becomes a shared matrix, a two way process or a 'mass divergent conceptual thinking'. I wondered how this process will impact our framework in the future.

Idealistically we could imagine this sharing/acquiring of knowledge breaking down frameworks, releasing theories and creating a more free-floating framework - Perhaps, a framework that has characteristics more like liquid, (going back to our analogy from our last discussion) could frameworks be like the ocean - there may still be boundaries, and the droplets within them would have form, enabling them to move and flow together, but being liquid, it might be easier to break out and flow wherever the knowledge takes you.

In reality all this freedom to acquire knowledge seems to be creating more a world with more not less polarised thinking - people are at their most homophilic when intimidated. There is nothing like a new idea or theory diametrically opposed to our own to scare us and send us running to frameworks where we feel recognised safe and significant.

So how do we solve this conundrum... how do we use divergent thinking to strengthen sharing of knowledge and not threaten the process itself? And what does it mean for us on this course and the frameworks we are learning to work within/without? 

• https://adesolamapp.blogspot.com/2017/03/ideas-theory-and-theoretical-frameworks.html -Akinleye A (2017) 
• Syed M - Rebel; ideas the power of divergent thinking - 2019

• Siemans G  - Knowing Knowledge - Lulu.com, 2006

Thoughts on connectivisum - Connecting Module One Focus discussion and 'Learning Domains and MAPP (Adesola) 30/09/2019

I'm sure, like all of you, there were many different points in the discussion last night that inspired you to think further and join-up or re-join some dots in your practice.

However, as my thoughts wandered last night, I found myself being drawn back to a comment Iris made - about how, through the Skype conversation, she had learnt that she was a much better communicator 'in person' and she was struggling with the format of the Skype discussion. We all have to acknowledge that as a way of communicating it is a little disjointed - leading to stops-and-starts in the flow of the conversation. In a real-world conversation we recognise the cues in each others faces and body language - How they are responding to what we are saying before we finish - Do they need more information? - Do they want to add thoughts of their own? - Are they interested at all? We adjust the flow, dynamics and emphasis accordingly. It is the rhythms we create that causes the conversation to build, bouncing ideas, developing greater concepts than our original statements - Sometimes allowing ideas to multiply leap-frogging in new directions, whisking-up our ideas and creating new exciting connections (different for all of us depending on our perspective (Moon 2004)) but capable of triggering new paths of enquiry of even  shifts in preconceived areas of 'knowing'  - This rhythm and flow is like a dance, where, because of understood frameworks we know when to lead, when to follow, when to connect and how this relationship develops creativity.

This led me on to thinking about Adesola's Blog 'Learning Domains and MAPP', particularly with reference to 'Knowing Knowledge' (Siemens 2006). Siemens' theories are seductive and compelling, the two-way flow of knowledge will inevitable change, not just the hierarchy of Knowledge distribution but also the shared experience of knowledge that forms the foundation for how we position of ourselves in society and culture, leading to a freeing of traditional boundaries both physical and metaphysical.

'We do not consume knowledge as a passive entity that remains unchanged as it moves through our world and our work. We dance and court the knowledge of others—in ways the original creators did not intend. We make it ours, and in so doing, diminish the prominence of the originator.' (2006)

However by Siemens own admission, we are not there ye -, we stand with our feet in two worlds - a knowledge system designed for an industrial era and a new emerging system designed for tomorrow (2006). 
So this brings me back to our discussion and how the tools we have with Skype and Blogs are not yet equal to the skills we innately have for communication, connectivity and idea growth - actual real life conversation. As we stand on the bridge between the old and new world, we can not reject the new, as this would be counterproductive - After-all it is the generation of these tools that allow us to study on a course like this, from wherever we are, sharing in a  learning process that would be otherwise just available to those who have the means, time and finances to be physically present in the space. What we can do is try to make the new forms of conversations be as productive as possible?

I wonder if it is possible to all share some tips on what makes the connection work more effectively - I began to think about this and here are a couple of the ideas and actions I have started with;

• I have begun to follow you all  (not added you all yet but getting there)

This is easier if you have a follow button on your page but can be done though our own dashboards 'reading list' 'manage reading list' 'add'
Following doesn't quite give the experience I want (an alert on my phone every time one of you posts, so I can engage with it in real time wherever I am) - I still need to actively check my reading list to find your post, but at least all new posts are there for me to check on.

• Posting a photo in my profile

For me there was a huge difference last night between those that spoke who had a picture posted and those who spoke without a picture - I emotionally engaged with the speaker and it was somehow easier to connect - I am guilty of not having a picture but will edit that today.

As an extra idea to this I wondered if we could change these pictures before each conversation - allowing the visual to say something about where we are 'emotionally or conceptually' with our learning process or just in life itself?

I would be really happy if any of you would comment on any ideas, tips and tricks, that help you connect to each other, whether this is a practical 'know how' idea or an emotional idea that helps us to 'know' each other better.

At the end of last night discussion I said I was going to look at the strands that ran though my learning - for me facilitating communication was important. Though this blog post I have learnt that I facilitate communication between others because it is really important in my learning - I struggle to learn when I don't feel connected, which I think is what Iris was saying last night!

• Siemans G  - Knowing Knowledge - Lulu.com, 2006
• Moon J - A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning - Routledge 2004