The idea of learning is a paradox. How do humans come to learn something they do not know? What happens in that Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky) when a person moves from the unknown to the known. How can you know something that you don’t know? Why do people drop something they thought they knew (lived) and then moved to something they didn’t know? How can you move to the unknown? What happens in the movement of conversion in learning? These are all foundational questions posed in understanding learning.
It is important in this discussion to remember that the brain is NOT a computer and that learning is not about movement of data or information. It is also important to know that knowing is not about the collection of information or content.
Learning is a process, not an outcome. When people learn individually, organisations or in teams, the focus should NOT be on the outcome but rather the process. All experienced educators know that a learning moment (when people move from unknown to known) depends on a multitude of highly complex factors. Similarly, any approach to pedagogy and curriculum requires extensive specialist knowledge to understand what’s going on in any learning moment.
Expertise in learning is not studied or known in safety.
All teachers know that the best they can do to help learning is facilitate a Zone of Proximal Development but the movement (if it follows) is in the learner NOT the teacher. Teachers cannot make students learn. The will of the learner and their ‘readiness’ is foundational to learning. All the teacher knows is how to identify ‘readiness’ and how to lead the learner to the zone. Even learning how to identify ‘readiness’ takes extensive expertise.
The teacher knows that learning requires a unique relationship between: curriculum, intra-psychological and inter-psychological relationship, pedagogical design, e-motional resonance and the coming together of the history of the learner, linguistic development and their social-psychological maturity. People don’t learn just because data is thrown at them. People don’t learn about safety just because they are told about safety, or some particular view of safety. People are not a ‘blank slate’ to be written on or a funnel into which data is poured.
It is no surprise to see Safety telling people about ‘learning teams’ or ‘better questions’ from a source of no expertise in Education, Learning, Pedagogy, Linguistics, Semiotics or Curriculum. If you want to learn about learning, don’t ask Safety, Science or an Engineer. These disciplines focus on changes in data, not movement in learning. Training is NOT learning.
Learning is also a psycho-semiotic and psycho-linguistic phenomena. All learning involves a thorough understanding of Language (visual and verbal) and how the internal text of one connects externally and internally to the other. Psycho-semiotics and psycho-linguistics is foundational to all learning. A good place to start is here: https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9783035102192_A31439575/preview-9783035102192_A31439575.pdf
The exchange of representations of meaning (semiosis) to others to create movement and change is what learning is all about. All such exchange involves language and semiotic thinking (not brain-thinking). For example, every metaphor that is used in language is mysteriously learned through embodied gesture and then moves according to a meaning that describes something by what it is not. This is the paradox of metaphor. Understanding metaphor is foundational to understanding psycho-semiotics. (https://ceulearning.ceu.edu/pluginfile.php/100337/mod_forum/attachment/9319/Metaphors%20We%20Live%20By.pdf).
Talking about learning as movement in data is NOT about learning. Knowing data in safety, makes no difference to the enactment of safety. Information in and information out is NOT learning. Unless there is e-motion, there is no learning.
Learning most often occurs in the unconscious state, NOT in the conscious state. That is, most often we don’t know rationally or consciously that we are learning. Indeed, comprehension operates the same way. This is why semiotic (visual-verbal) learning is so powerful.
Resistance to learning also occurs in the unconscious.
Many in safety have no consciousness of the fact that they have been indoctrinated into a certain way of thinking about safety. Indeed, how can you know what you don’t know?
Many don’t know that the beginning for learning safety requires un-learning of traditional safety indoctrination. For example, learning that causation is linear or that injury rates have any meaning is a concoction of years of indoctrination in the semiotics of the likes of Heinrich, Reason and Dekker. Indeed, the focus on safety rather than a focus on risk is also a major impediment.
All linear semiotics whether dominoes (Heinrich), Reason (swiss-cheese) or Dekker (tunnels) bear no resemblance to reality or event causation. All traditional safety semiotics like these, simply endorse traditional safety indoctrination in linearity. How fascinating that all accidents run from left to right!
You can see in the semiotics of dominoes (Heinrich), Reason (swiss-cheese) or Dekker (tunnels) just how much Safety fears dis-order and even creates accident causation theories of semiotic left-to right order. OK, everyone, if you are going to have an accident, do so in an orderly left-to-right fashion.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a linear tunnel (Dekker) or
‘drifting’ down a drain, all linear semiotics are misleading and a distraction from understanding event causation and how people learn. People do NOT ‘drift’ into failure. There is no status of non-failure in human systems or non-fallibility. Real life, risk and being is messy, dis-orderly and ‘wicked’. This is why methods that assist messy and relational thinking are so powerful.
The beginning of learning a mature way to tackle risk is first discovered in un-learning traditional safety and re-learning new alternatives to safety indoctrination.
If you are interested in an alternative view that works, is practical and positive, you can download any of the free resources of SPoR here: https://www.humandymensions.com/shop/ or write to us at admin@spor.com.au if you would like to learn a better way to tackle risk.
Dr Rob Long
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