TAFE NSW International Centre for VET Teaching and Learning

TAFE NSW International Centre for VET Teaching and Learning

Life Based Learning: Designing Professional Development for the Knowledge Era

Maret Staron

Robby Weatherley

Ph 02 9244 5111 Fax 02 9244 5925 Email [email protected] Level 4, 1 Oxford Street, DARLINGHURST NSW 2010


Knowledge Era – the environment


Learning Ecology – the metaphor

From MACHINE To ECOLOGY


Strength based philosophy – the mindset

Positive Psychology Celebrating what’s right with people and building on that

The positive aspects of human experience – what makes us thrive?

Enabling individuals and organisations to be the best they can be

Flow TheoryMatching skills and challenge for optimal performance - to go beyond

Martin Seligman

Authentic happiness

Signature strengths

Six universal virtues

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi


Strength based philosophy – the mindset

Focusing on what is working well and investing in that

Enabling individuals and organisations to be the best they can be

From an ecological perspective, does not displace what works


Business wisdom – the actions

Strength based – contributes to wellbeing & the common good

Contributes to synthesis – pulls components together

Achievement oriented – guides thinking and actions.

Wise thinking and actionsThe glue that connects the elements of a learning organisation

Contributes to organisations achieving their goals

Helps to link and leverage knowledge, intelligence and experience within an organisation


CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT is the new emphasis for

working and learning in VTE

A STRENGTH BASED ORIENTATION to capability

development is the most effective for change

LIFE BASED LEARNING is a contemporary model for

capability development

Key findings


CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT

Moves beyond professional development

Reclaims the importance of people

It’s about people’s confidence in applying their skills

Integrates a range of strength based strategies

Key findings


Personalised: whatever is needed for the task


Adults learn from multiple sources


All learning impacts on working life


Integrating and progressing familiar models


LIFE BASED = Learning from life

The source of learning and recognition of a person’s

learning contribution to capability development in a

work context

LIFE LONG = Learning forever

The learning continuum and ongoing acquisition of

knowledge and skills

Life based and lifelong learning


Life based learning - three distinguishing features

An emphasis on a strength based orientation rather than strategy

Explicit recognition of underpinning foundation truths and values – eg trust, mindfulness, generosity, consideration and tolerance

Acknowledgement of the learner as a whole person who accesses many sources of learning.


Key benefits of life based learning

1. It expands the perspective of learning and opens up opportunities

2. It legitimises life experiences as a key source of learning and reinforces the transferable nature of learning – it can be harvested from one context and sown in another.

3. It acknowledges the whole person which has potential for utilising individual talents in better and smarter ways. This could benefit both the individual and the organisation.


Life based learning: key characteristics


Key challenge of life based learning

How we recognise, capture, support and utilise this

more open-ended approach for the benefit of both the

individual and the organisation.

This will require a diverse and personalised range of “design-it-yourself” strategies.


The life based learning model


The person: passive, active, whole


Local dynamics but interconnected


Emerging strategies

ConversationsTalent ManagementAppreciative Inquiry (AI)Positive DevianceDisruptive Technology

Evaluation Processes

Appreciative Inquiry

Most Significant Change


Conversations

A process to facilitate communication, build relationships and generate knowledge.

Pask, G (theory of conversation)Zeldin, T (art and history of conversation)Laurillards, D (conversational model for learning online)Jensen and Kolb (conversational learning as an experiential

approach to knowledge creation)


Conversations

World Café – a well documented process for applying conversation as a learning process.

Generate input, share knowledge, stimulate innovative thinking.

Engage people and groups in authentic conversation.

Conduct in depth exploration of key strategic challenges.

Deepen relationships and mutual ownership of outcomes.

Create meaningful interaction between speaker and audience.


Talent Management

‘Businesses rise and fall on the strength of its people. Harnessing these strengths for the benefit of the individual and the business is the goal of talent management.’

Build a winning environment that people want to belong to.

Establish a talent management mindset.

Create tangible means to identify, select and deploy talented people.

Fully engage talent, use it and manage it intellegently.

(Duttagupta 2005)


Positive Deviance

Solutions before our very eyes!Context matters: look local and invest there

The Premise:

In every community there are certain individuals whose uncommon

practices/behaviors enable them to find better solutions to problems

than their neighbors who have access to the same resources

Pascale and Jerry Sternin


Appreciative Inquiry

Searching for solutions that already exist:

– What gives life to an organisation

– Amplify what is working so it becomes more common

– Collaborative conversation with the whole organisation

APPRECIATEAffirming past and present strengths, successes, and potentials;

INQUIRYThe act of exploration and discovery. To ask questions; to be open to seeing new potentials and possibilities.

David Cooperrider


Companion document

A starter kit for implementation


Seven steps to action


“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. We must learn to see the world anew.”

Albert Einstein

Documents

TAFE NSW International Centre for VET Teaching and Learning