Commonground Learning Theory
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.
We have written this essay by it just needs fitting in to the page – Cheers Commonground.
It’s About Understanding What
“Out of Context Problems” are all about
Humans have an internal Learning theory where we contextualise the way we live and work. By doing this we create our own unique way of solving problems that in turn creates our current comfortable way of living. This has taught us to react in very specific ways to how we see and deal with problems that confront us. Serious issues arise however when we are confronted by a problem we not see coming. This is what we call an “Out of Context” issue that our normal way of dealing with just does not work. This demands radically new way of solving the problem which is totally alien to the traditional way our lives work. Our instinctual response in this unforeseen problem usually involves, panicked, fear, denial, even violent responses. Our Climate issues right across the board from over-consumption, climate change right over to biodiversity, where we misuse our natural resources is an event we did not see coming.
These are all ‘Out of Context Problems’ that we have to solve but we don’t have a clue how to go about fixing them because the solutions are in conflict with our current comfortable way of thinking. If we are to create solutions to solving our biodiversity & climate problems, we need to re-learn how to play is a way to learn. We need to relearn how to play, think and solve problems in imaginative ways.
This section starts you off easy by defining two simple words (to learn and to educate) in both terms of a modern definition and there original meanings. The idea is to help you understand how far we have moved in the wrong direction in terms of the actual effect of applying modern meaning have led us down the wrong path.
The Biodiversity decline and Climate Change is something we are all having serious problems in solving and the reason is down to how we have been taught in regards challenging problems that face us. There is one basic fact that defines these two problems is that “We as humans need to change the way we live and to consume much less”. That’s the problem we are trying to solve but we have not defined the question properly yet and secondly when you see people talking about the catastrophic problems that are coming round the corners and will hit us right between the eyes with a breeze block, the majority of us do not see this problem or understand it. If the solution to solving these problems is us but we don’t see it it in an shape of from then we need to look at ourselves in how we think and learn. This is partially what we are about.
At the core of this is that we make bad assumptions based on what we have been told, we do not have the skills to even understand what is the issue here. When something unique arrives like Climate Change we stick our heads in the ground and panic. We refuse to address the problem. We have what’s call an “Out of Context Problem”because we have been taught to work in a linear analogue of thinking way based on the way we have been educated. If it worked in the past we just need to adapt old solutions slightly. Assumptions causes problems in defining what the real problem actually is.
To give you an idea of how wrong we have been taught have a look at the definition of the words education and learning in both a modern context and the original latin meanings. The differences in these meanings are stark and thought provoking. It also makes a strong case why we are having trouble getting a proper bead on solving climate issues. Lets start with how the modern dictionary defines the idea of what education should be ……..
“The process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, reasoning & judgement to preparing one-self for an intellectually mature life”.
On the surface this sounds great don’t you think, it has all the right words in extolling the idea that this is how you become educated and how it will set you up for life. However if you sit and look at it in a deeper way you will start to see problems and are worry for us at FROG. While there are quite a few problems here, one of the most fundamental is that there is nothing defined that actually defines YOU and your abilities as an individual.
There is however a much better definition of education that is all about you. Let us take you back to ancient Rome for a more original creation of the idea of what education is about. This original definition places the individual at the centre of being educated. To be ‘educated’ in the latin sense is derived from two distinct verbs.
Educare ‘to train or to mould’ and Educo ‘to bring out, to draw out, and to develop from within.
Learning general information as in the modern idea of education does not create you or your own skills and abilities. Education is great at getting us all defined by a narrow rigid set of left brain knowledge data to define what is means to be educated. This is where FROG has a problem with education as each person is different. We need to teach the individual much more allow all individuals to gain a wide way to being educated that encompasses both left and right brain education.
Modern education does not do this. However all is not lost. Its about the act of doing and in that process learn something meaningful that can be use for profound purposes. Its about finding out what your own innate skills and abilities are. Incorporated as a part of the process is knowledge and information as well as adapting that knowledge to create something that works.
This brings us to the definition of what actual ‘learning‘ should be about.
The undeniable fact is that all animals learn, it’s a basic anthropological fact. They have to learn how to survive. The problem is that human constructed education does not work well with our biological learning skills we are born with. Learning is all about adaption of something you have learnt. You can define anthropologically learning simply as
The physical act of internalising an object or process that forces one to further learn something new.
while our modern dictionary simply says it’s
The act of gaining knowledge or (skills?). or Knowledge acquired by systematic study in any field of scholarly application:
The modern act of learning does not encourage us to progress out leaning. It is a dead end street. Thats why we have bracketed the term (skills) above because really education does not really teach profound usable progressive skills. One reason among many is that passing exams is more important than progressing and developing skills.. We very rarely test for meaningful skills. The learning in schools is academic attainment and is the Dictator in ways we learn. Nothing else is ever allowed to come close.
The idea of internalising an object so that it forces us to further learn something new, understands the fact that acquiring knowledge only works if we progress it and continue our learning. Knowledge is a small part of the nature based learning system. To solve problems you need skills to adapt and grow your abilities. Our Education system does not do this.
Imagine what a child could achieve in our modern education if they are allowed to develop real skills. The point that Alan Moore made about schools primarily promoting obedience and monotony over everything else and that school policies tend to act as aversion therapy, he is really correct in his assertions.
Ref “Do Schools Kill Creativity”, we strongly advice you to watch this, it’s brilliantly.
This manifesto is as you will see is about showing you how you can create a really cool garden/farm that encourages a more personal level of learning. FROG and Commonground is all about teaching solving problem in creative/innovative ways. You solve one problem and then you solve the next one and then the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to create something really cool. This is what FROG is about however being creative/innovative can be hard especially when you are struggling to engage with a tricky nitty bitty issue. Its this struggle we want people to become comfortable with.
A simple way of thinking about is going back to being a child. If you think about this it’s a rare skill, the ability to look at interesting problems in different ways just like a child regardless how adult the problem is. Remember children will always have a go. They are not worried about failing.
This is not true of our education system, answers nearly all of the time everything has a solution either right or wrong. Learning like a child is a natural learning outcome to solving problems with many parts. We need to find our way of learning, that suits our spirit. At FROG and Commonground we solve problems by looking as there constituent parts and work through ways develop solutions. This is not true in an after schools project
“When Feynman faces a problem, he was unusually good at going back
to being like a child, and ignoring what everyone else thinks
… He was so unstuck …
If something didn’t work, he’d look at it another way”
Marvin Minsky, MIT
One of the best way to describe this comes for the art of looking sideways. At FROG we tend not to have a set curriculum, there are no tests. We’re not trying to teach anybody anything specific. FROG is an immersive experience, where building and creating is at the heart of the experience: its hands on, fully committed to the problem at hand. Success is in the doing, failures are celebrated. Problems become puzzles and obstacles disappear. Its about challenging ourselves to truly think about how we go about doing this stuff and then creating cool solutions. That’s the whole point of President Kennedy’s statement about working towards putting a man on the moon that you saw on our contents page.
What is Lorem Ipsum?
Developing a Growth Mindset
Here is a brief outline how you go we approach SOLVING out of context problems. Lets start with a short trip through human learning abilities with a psychologist Carol Dweck. While this won’t necessarily answer how we solve problems that within modern education and human learning more effectively, it does make a start in terms of creating the right attitude to effective learning and cognitive creative thinking.
If you read the work of Carol Dweck or have watched her TED.com lecture she creates a clear illustration that children thrive in school when they adopt a growth mindset. This also by the way applies to adults. Schools unintentionally set up a doomed fixed mind-set, directing children’s focus and success towards grade success, through standardised testing. Dr Dweck strongly argues that we should be encouraging a totally different set motivational pronouncements.
“The problem is not the problem,
The problem is your attitude about the problem. Savvy ”
Attributed to Captain Jack Sparrow
We tend to praise ability through intelligence and talent. There are better ways to define success or ability. Instead we should be promoting success in areas like effort, strategy, focus, enthusiasm and improvement as it identifies something the student has done. Research has shown that working in this way creates children who much more are hardy and resilient.
The idea of focusing on process in regards what you do, rather and praising how intelligent you are or what grades you have, is paramount. This cultivates a belief that any difficult task is a challenge to be attempted whether you fail or succeed. This harks back to the quote on the previous page by Feynman about really getting involved and studying hard, after-all as he says nearly every thing is interesting if you look deeply enough in to it.
A Growth Mindset however must not be limited to just academic achievement. It should be applied to what our own unique talents tell us. The challenge is to create a belief that our own talents and abilities can be grown through the idea of correct effort. Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) will find that they develop a drive to succeed and grow.
These people worry less about looking smart and put more energy into learning more in a more meaningful way. These kinds ot people tend to see their talents are innate gifts and as a result will engage with them to a greater degree than those with fixed mindsets.
This also seeps in work because when companies embrace a growth mindset, their employees report feeling far more empowered and committed; they also receive far greater organisational support for collaboration and innovation. In contrast, people at primarily fixed-mindset companies report more of only one thing: cheating and deception among employees, presumably to gain an advantage in the talent race.
The four areas of growth that define how a growth mindset works
The 4 Pillars of Learning that Underpin what we do at FROG and Commonground
One of the best ways we have found to develop a Growth Mindset is to incorporate the four pillars concept that were highlighted on the next page. If you look at nearly every single really successful people, nearly all of them have strong leanings towards these concepts. FROG has enshrined them in what we do. Those that start projects with FROG are intimately involved in every aspect of the project and have a valid say in how it progresses. You chose what is important for the project to move forward.
Being involved in any project you begin to grow your Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose skills and at the same time you instil and develop a more robust definition of GRIT (see article in our muse section). Amazing things can happen as people begin to take control of what they do, as they develop their skills and abilities. Along with this comes the confidence of controlling of how the things you are learning are created. Problems become personal but not in a selfish way, as you learn to collaborate in all areas as well, after all criticism and concrete advice is always needed and as a result of this you learn trust.
The idea around Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose with a dose of well apportioned Grit are not just about abstract learning ideas. There is solid science behind these concepts. Some really serious research that has gone into these areas, and we have tried to illustrate this throughout this manifesto. Develop these four pillars is not a simple thing. Our aim in this manifesto is try and show you how it works and then how we will apply the ideas can be applied to our sustainable, eco based range of businesses and learning programmes.
What is Lorem Ipsum?
how to re-define real learning psychology
HOW LEARNING at FROG WORKS
Before we start, lets dis-spell something here. FROG is not your run of the mill activity project where kids are sent for a one off experience never to be repeated or grown from. Instead it’s about developing a lifelong positive understanding towards learning. We have developed a learning environment that is not just for kids but adults too, its a place where
“I just want to keep honing the thing that I’ve got, making it better & better that’s all. That’s the only ambition I feel. I just want to be very good at what I do … to keep the standard very high,
& to also remain dangerous”
Billy Connelly you can create and find solutions to problems that excite or entice you as well as a place where you can work with many like minded people.
Our aim is to encourage and develop talents, skills and abilities that helps you find where your real passion come from. FROG basically fills the massive gaps in what our education system does not teach you or deliberately leaves out, while at the same time incorporating strong biodiverse sustainable attitudes.
…..So lets ease you in with a little theory & application
At FROG we combine art and science so that kids and adults can pick up tools and a variety of other difference bits of equipment so they can create some seriously awesome things. At it’s core FROG is about developing your problem solving skills in a creative thinking and innovative way. This manifesto aims to highlight how challenging this can be when we start to define the issues around how to become creative and innovative thinker. The following section will start to give you a start as to how to grow develop talents/skills and breach the ideas of what it means to be able to express those passions that you have inside yourself. It’s important to understand how skills & effort……
……and how it develops passion,
mastery, grit & achievement.
The core to achieving this or anything meaningful lies in the innate talents/abilities we all have. Everyone of us has a talent or ability in some form or another we just need to find it. Once you have found it you need to set about developing it. This begs the question of how do we define the idea of talent. We tend defined talent as “How quickly your abilities improve when you invest effort”. To answer this you need to understand what ‘effort’ actually is.
The true is that when you enjoy doing something you invest more time and effort than usual. It stands to reason that the more effort you put into something the better the end result. It’s an easy assumption to make that the more hard graft/effort you apply, results in better creations. Well not really, at FROG this way of think and working we reckon is pointless, your need to understand the actual ‘quality of the effort’ you put in. The mundane idea of hard graft/effort needs to be better defined to understand how we progress skills and what we create..
Many peoples idea of being gritty can be defined as mindlessly never giving in and grafting. There is however one vital bit left out of our understanding of this concept of hard work and grafting. Some of you may have worked it out. In the every form of hard graft, effort or hard work lies something we call “Effective Graft”.
Effective graft, works on the premise of constantly working at ironing out those imperfections in your skills. The first part of developing effective graft is called CORRECT EFFORT, and believe us this is not easy, its a very hard thing to do over a long period of time. Initially Correct effort is about targeting how you improve your skills and abilities. To work this way you are improving your focus and learning the skills you need to do this. A simple equation illustrates the point.
Talent/Ability x Correct Effort = Enhanced Skills/Abilities
You need to target the right kind of effort to improve. By develop a better targeted focus in the way you work to improve. The previous equation illustrates the point well. The more time you spend working this way the more you will enhance your skills. However it’s pointless spending masses of time just becoming skilful, if you can’t develop or create something meaningful in your life and work, whats the point of all that effort and hard work.
This is where passion comes in – that overwhelming desire to want to create something profound and be good at what you do. We have to at this stage re-define the idea of effort again. Before we used it to enhance our skills and focus, now we need to applied it in a different way, in regards what we create or make or do for that matter. So ‘Correct Effort’ is re-defined here in terms of how we solve problems and what we produce. The next equation defines this.
Enhanced Skills x Correct Effort = Above Average Achievement
You may have heard of the ten thousand hour rule which says that ten thousand hours is the required time needed to become an expert in something. It’s true to a point but it is only true if those hours that are applied correctly based on what we have defined above. An easy way to think about this is that if you graft mindlessly at what you a good at you are not working in the areas you are weak in. Part of your 10,000 hours needs to have areas you are weak in.
Working and learning this way depletes willpower and drains motivation. This is why passion becomes so important in what we do. Passion drives motivation and motivation drives us to put the hard hours of correct effort in. Loving what you do has to be at the core of doing what we learn. If you like running you will get stronger and fitter, the same applies for your mind.
The bottom line is that success is more likely to occur BECAUSE YOU LOVE WHAT YOU DO.
Loving what you do, makes you work harder and strive more, to become awesome at who we are.
Ref – Grit by Angela Duckworth and The Puzzle of Motivation Ted Talk by Dan Pink
