Andragogue Practitioner Tips: How We Learn
People are known to be divided into two types: those who read the instructions before turning on electrical appliances, and those who first turn on, and in the case of some jambs, begin to read what he did wrong.
I absolutely belong to the second group. Therefore, this is how I began to create my first training. At that time I had been working at Intel for 3 years, I read several intra-corporate trainings, when I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to do my own training.
After all, everyone knows that corporate trainings teach how to live in a corporation. You are inserted into the ear hose through which vision, mission & corporate values ​​are being pumped.
')
Therefore, I decided, I will do my training, where I will tell the whole truth-womb. And did. What is there to do? You take your experience, draw beautiful slides, invent exercises - and go!
And it was awful. No, people just liked it, but now it seems awful to me. Because, as it turned out after a while, for a successful training we need not only our own experience, a good sense of humor, the ability to speak and communicate with people. Need more technique. Without an understanding of which, people endure 10% of the benefits that they could get from your training if you first read the instructions on how to educate adults.
It turns out that humanity has already accumulated quite a lot of material on this topic. Which material and entered the science of adult education, which is called how? No, not pedagogy. This is a science about teaching and raising children. And about adults? That's right - andragogy.
In the last article [1], we talked about the matrix of awareness and competence and how adults learn skills. Let's now talk about a learning model that answers the question of how to teach adults. About Kolb cycle.
By understanding this model, you can:
About this model, I learned about 4 years ago in the train Kiev-Peter. This train is exactly a day, so after you have passed two customs and drank coffee three times, there is nothing left but to educate yourself. At that time, self-education was expressed in listening to a good course for coaches, from which David Kolb's model was drawn. Since then, I have heard this model under several different names, but I fell in love with it just under this one.
At once I will make a reservation that this article is unlikely to have a direct relationship with project management. And I didn’t plan to write about Kolb cycle from the very beginning - it’s a coach’s tool rather than a management tool. But she fell into this category for two reasons:
1. The previous article about the matrix of awareness and competence is somehow well located in this category, and this article is a continuation of the conversation on the same topic.
2. Project managers, by the nature of their activities, quite often have to communicate with people, convincing and teaching them to use various things. And there is a feeling that an understanding of this technique will also turn out to be not useless to them.
So, what did the American education theorist David Kolb tell the world?
Specific experience. It all starts with a specific experience. Such a banal thought voiced in his time, Mr. Kolb.
Well, when a particular experience is negative. That is, something did not work. At this point, certain processes begin in the head:
Reflection. Thoughts appear: “How so? I am so smart ... With a higher education ... I’m called the director ... And I lost my head in such a simple negotiating situation ... ”
Perhaps you had thoughts about how you would wave your fists after the fight. That is the very reflection. The results of reflection should be some:
A model that:
After that, the model must be tested. Need:
Practice. Interestingly, the practice leads to a new specific experience. And thus the learning cycle closes.
What stage to start? If we return to the matrix of awareness and competence and ask ourselves, where is the person we are going to teach something? In fact, it can be anywhere.
He may have a natural talent to solve such situations. Or he may have already passed a couple of trainings and is able to do something. Not perfect, but able. Or he filled his first bumps and is now actively looking for an answer to the question “How is it necessary?” Or considers all this garbage, but could not refuse the authorities, who decided to send him to the training:
Start: problematization. Coaches sometimes call this the degree of problematization of the group. In the standard training group of 12-15 people, you can be sure that you can get people from any squares of our favorite matrix of awareness and competence.
Therefore, good training usually begins with a problematic exercise. Some case is given, people are clamped in time, provoked to make a mistake, or they are offered to do one thing, and then ask about the other.
If you immediately start with a model - some people just may not listen to you: “Why listen to him? Everything is fine with us already ... The work is working, releases are being released, builds are being built ... ”
You need another thing - for people to listen to you. It is necessary that people make a mistake and begin to reflect on this topic, think about why it did not work and draw parallels into real life.
Reflection: questions and discussions. What do you think includes people's brains? That's right, questions. At the stage of reflection, you need as many questions as possible.
Why did it happen? At what point did it go wrong? How to avoid this in the future? How would it all draw in the form of a diagram.
Your task here is very simple - to help people SAMIM to come to the model.
Model: let them come up with it. You can set out the model yourself. But it is much better if people come up with it themselves. It's like an institute. If you yourself came up with the proof of some theorem, then at the exam you will invent it again. Because the necessary chain of reasoning was already digging into my head.
The hand-born model is remembered better. And your role is such an obstetrician who helps the model to be born. Using different simple and not very sophisticated techniques like the stability check mentioned in the previous article [2].
Practice: positive. At the stage of testing the model with a person MUST BE OBTAINED. Because if something goes wrong again, either doubts will arise about the model or mistrust of you as a teacher.
Therefore, it should work. And be kind enough to follow the process and be close, in case of which, to bring the necessary adjustments.
How to do it all. Friends, really. it does not matter whether you conduct seminars or trainings or not. If you are training anyone in any form (reading reports, in-house workshops, mentoring beginners, etc.), then you can definitely think about how to apply the Kolb cycle in your training:
Or maybe you use other learning models? Share with colleagues what. It seems to me that this will be a rather curious exchange of experience.
If you are not engaged in training groups of people, then you may occasionally have to share experiences with colleagues. Most likely, they come up with questions already when they got their specific experience. And then you just the same questions can bring them to the correct model and help to apply it.
To help colleagues stretch the brain and learn something new - does this not give us a plus in karma?
Alexander Orlov
Stratoplan.Ru
PS In the next article I would like to return to the management tools and talk about a simple tool for working with the motivation of people
PPS Links of this article:
I absolutely belong to the second group. Therefore, this is how I began to create my first training. At that time I had been working at Intel for 3 years, I read several intra-corporate trainings, when I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to do my own training.
After all, everyone knows that corporate trainings teach how to live in a corporation. You are inserted into the ear hose through which vision, mission & corporate values ​​are being pumped.
')
Therefore, I decided, I will do my training, where I will tell the whole truth-womb. And did. What is there to do? You take your experience, draw beautiful slides, invent exercises - and go!
And it was awful. No, people just liked it, but now it seems awful to me. Because, as it turned out after a while, for a successful training we need not only our own experience, a good sense of humor, the ability to speak and communicate with people. Need more technique. Without an understanding of which, people endure 10% of the benefits that they could get from your training if you first read the instructions on how to educate adults.
It turns out that humanity has already accumulated quite a lot of material on this topic. Which material and entered the science of adult education, which is called how? No, not pedagogy. This is a science about teaching and raising children. And about adults? That's right - andragogy.
In the last article [1], we talked about the matrix of awareness and competence and how adults learn skills. Let's now talk about a learning model that answers the question of how to teach adults. About Kolb cycle.
By understanding this model, you can:
- Clearly understand why some trainings and seminars are useful, while others go bad
- Properly educate other people - both in groups and individually
- Sagely talk about adult learning, confidently using the term “Kolb cycle”
About this model, I learned about 4 years ago in the train Kiev-Peter. This train is exactly a day, so after you have passed two customs and drank coffee three times, there is nothing left but to educate yourself. At that time, self-education was expressed in listening to a good course for coaches, from which David Kolb's model was drawn. Since then, I have heard this model under several different names, but I fell in love with it just under this one.
At once I will make a reservation that this article is unlikely to have a direct relationship with project management. And I didn’t plan to write about Kolb cycle from the very beginning - it’s a coach’s tool rather than a management tool. But she fell into this category for two reasons:
1. The previous article about the matrix of awareness and competence is somehow well located in this category, and this article is a continuation of the conversation on the same topic.
2. Project managers, by the nature of their activities, quite often have to communicate with people, convincing and teaching them to use various things. And there is a feeling that an understanding of this technique will also turn out to be not useless to them.
So, what did the American education theorist David Kolb tell the world?
Specific experience. It all starts with a specific experience. Such a banal thought voiced in his time, Mr. Kolb.
An example from life. The director of one company told about beer, how he went to the training on tough negotiations (then almost a direct quote):
There were about twelve directors. The coach is in a suit, sitting, something mumbles there. We sit, think that nothing came - what can he teach us? All people are experienced, each has ten years of experience in negotiations with customers, police, SES, firefighters.
Then the door opens, a two-by-two ambala comes in. It seems to me and leaning over gives out: “YOU WHAT ARE DOWN ON MY PLACE ?! Let's get out of here! ”
I was somehow taken aback even by surprise. I sit, keep quiet, turn red. Then I hear from the side of the coach: “You see, Sergey did not cope. Today we will see how to resolve such situations. ”
Well, when a particular experience is negative. That is, something did not work. At this point, certain processes begin in the head:
Reflection. Thoughts appear: “How so? I am so smart ... With a higher education ... I’m called the director ... And I lost my head in such a simple negotiating situation ... ”
Perhaps you had thoughts about how you would wave your fists after the fight. That is the very reflection. The results of reflection should be some:
A model that:
- On the one hand, it would explain what happened.
- On the other hand, would give advice on how to behave in the future, if a similar situation occurs again.
After that, the model must be tested. Need:
Practice. Interestingly, the practice leads to a new specific experience. And thus the learning cycle closes.
What stage to start? If we return to the matrix of awareness and competence and ask ourselves, where is the person we are going to teach something? In fact, it can be anywhere.
He may have a natural talent to solve such situations. Or he may have already passed a couple of trainings and is able to do something. Not perfect, but able. Or he filled his first bumps and is now actively looking for an answer to the question “How is it necessary?” Or considers all this garbage, but could not refuse the authorities, who decided to send him to the training:
- You know, you probably need to go to the training on effective communications ...
- What is wrong with communications? !!!
- Well, that's exactly why go for this training.
Start: problematization. Coaches sometimes call this the degree of problematization of the group. In the standard training group of 12-15 people, you can be sure that you can get people from any squares of our favorite matrix of awareness and competence.
Therefore, good training usually begins with a problematic exercise. Some case is given, people are clamped in time, provoked to make a mistake, or they are offered to do one thing, and then ask about the other.
A real life example: during a training for managers in Ireland, our team was given the task of making chicken materials with packaging for chicken eggs so that, being thrown from a height of 3m, it would not break.
Naturally, the resulting packaging was then analyzed, or how the team members communicated during this exercise, who took what roles. Who became the leader? Who stepped aside? Why? Who felt what at this moment? What prevented being more active? Etc.
If you immediately start with a model - some people just may not listen to you: “Why listen to him? Everything is fine with us already ... The work is working, releases are being released, builds are being built ... ”
You need another thing - for people to listen to you. It is necessary that people make a mistake and begin to reflect on this topic, think about why it did not work and draw parallels into real life.
Life example: at our trainings, we quite often give tasks to do something for a customer (we assign customers directly to the training). Interestingly, 100% of the teams are keen on gathering requirements from the customer and making the product, and ALL forget about it. which would be nice for the customer to sometimes tell what they have already done.
Then we ask customers what they thought about the teams during the exercise - they usually think not very well, which is often a surprise for the teams. And it starts the reflection in the heads on how we work with the customer.
Reflection: questions and discussions. What do you think includes people's brains? That's right, questions. At the stage of reflection, you need as many questions as possible.
Why did it happen? At what point did it go wrong? How to avoid this in the future? How would it all draw in the form of a diagram.
Your task here is very simple - to help people SAMIM to come to the model.
Model: let them come up with it. You can set out the model yourself. But it is much better if people come up with it themselves. It's like an institute. If you yourself came up with the proof of some theorem, then at the exam you will invent it again. Because the necessary chain of reasoning was already digging into my head.
The hand-born model is remembered better. And your role is such an obstetrician who helps the model to be born. Using different simple and not very sophisticated techniques like the stability check mentioned in the previous article [2].
A retreat about common sense. Naturally, if we are talking about an urgent problem, then do not walk around and around. It is not necessary during a fire to bring a person to the correct solution with questions: “How do you think which fire extinguisher is better to extinguish: powder or carbon dioxide? Or maybe it is better to use a fire hose? No, well, what do you think you yourself? ”The fires should be dramatically extinguished by directing the team. But if we are talking about questions that are not urgent, but important, it is better to delegate the birth of the model to those in need.
Practice: positive. At the stage of testing the model with a person MUST BE OBTAINED. Because if something goes wrong again, either doubts will arise about the model or mistrust of you as a teacher.
Therefore, it should work. And be kind enough to follow the process and be close, in case of which, to bring the necessary adjustments.
How to do it all. Friends, really. it does not matter whether you conduct seminars or trainings or not. If you are training anyone in any form (reading reports, in-house workshops, mentoring beginners, etc.), then you can definitely think about how to apply the Kolb cycle in your training:
- What exercise to make problematic?
- What issues enhance reflection?
- What questions to bring people to the model? (What to give to the one who will give the most correct answers?)
- How to organize a practice?
Or maybe you use other learning models? Share with colleagues what. It seems to me that this will be a rather curious exchange of experience.
If you are not engaged in training groups of people, then you may occasionally have to share experiences with colleagues. Most likely, they come up with questions already when they got their specific experience. And then you just the same questions can bring them to the correct model and help to apply it.
To help colleagues stretch the brain and learn something new - does this not give us a plus in karma?
Alexander Orlov
Stratoplan.Ru
PS In the next article I would like to return to the management tools and talk about a simple tool for working with the motivation of people
PPS Links of this article:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/199248/
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