As AL Practitioners, we are superbly skilled in the art of imparting information to our learners. We have developed an array of ingenious tools to convey information and foster its retention. So far as I know, though, we have not yet tackled the issue of ‘Meaning’.

The point here is this: Information is worthless unless it is meaningful, significant. Why should anyone learn anything unless it is meaningful and significant for them? This is the information age. Information is over-abundant. The challenge to individually or collectively sort out what is meaningful has never been greater. (Just think of the recent failure of the combined secret services to make sense of all the information they had about the young man from Nigeria who almost managed to blow up the airplane in Detroit.)

As soon as we wake up to the significance of something, though, learning takes place, almost inevitably. Self-accelerating, really. If something is imbued with meaning, it will eventually lead to action, and it will invariably involve the emotions. If something makes you sad or angry or fearful or joyful, that’s when you know it’s meaningful. Meaningful learning is experiential by default.

Of course, meaning is always construed in the privacy of the beholder’s mind. No-one can really tell us what is meaningful for us; the attempt alone is patronising and potentially totalitarian. On the other hand, sometimes it takes just that to alert us to the significance of something that we had not even considered before.

So, again: What do we do to ensure, to inspire and in fact create meaning? What do you do? For the individual, and for groups, and organisations?
For me, this is an open question. I am not quite sure exactly how I go about it in my teaching myself. So obviously, I’d love everybody’s thoughts on this.

This entry was posted on Donnerstag, Januar 21, 2010 at 05:55 and is filed under Viral Questions. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.