Stephanie Pace Marshall's book, The Power to Transform--let's talk about it....

[Connie Weber]

In addition to the other book discussion that's going on, I think it'd be great to get a small group talking about The Power to Transform. I'm pretty certain that Mike and Skip would find it to be "along their current interests," also wondering about several others.

Here--I'll start with a quote from the book that will show how different it is... not for everyone...

"A New Context for Learning

Intuitively, I understood that the dynamics, creative processes, and organizing properties of living systems must guide the design of this generative learning landscape--life must be my mentor. So I asked some members of our science team to teach me about living systems. This simple inquiry changed my mind and my life.
It soon became clear abundantly clear that life is about learning and that cognition or knowing is the essential process of life. I was fascinated by the deep patterns of wholeness, order, interdependence, and creativity in the natural world. Needing to probe further, I sought out pioneering thinkers in a variety of fields and disciplines, especially Margaret Wheatley, Myron Kellner-Rogers, Fritjof Capra, Sally Goerner, Dee Hock, Parker Palmer, and Howard Gardner.


"...science (has) changed its mind about how the world works; the natural world is now understood as an interdependent, relational, and living web of connections--inherently whole, abundant, creative, and self-organizing..."

"...our children's learning would thrive if they could learn as life does, by being immersed in environments that are natural living habitats--"learning arboretums," as one of my students called them, for nurturing integral and wise minds.
This understanding of the dynamic relationships, sustaining organization, and boundless creativity of the natural world as context for learning and schooling is fundamental. Because we unconsciously institutionalize our scientific worldview in our beliefs, assumptions, thinking, and behavaior, we shape the structures and processes of our institutions, including our schools, according to the science of our times...."

"...the nature and quality of our minds are powerfully shaped by the nature and quality of the learning environments in which they are immersed, activated, and nurtured. How we are asked to learn matters profoundly. Mind shaping is world shaping."

Who's interested in finding out more about Marshall's ideas?

[Anna Billings]

Hi Connie,
When I viewed your intriguing lay-out of newly purchased books ( I love how enthusiastic you are about books and shared ideas), this is the one that leaped out at me. By the title alone, I would pick it off the shelf as you did. Yes, I'd like to read it and join in the discussion, but can't do so for another couple of weeks or so as I'm off to a week-long retreat soon. "...being immersed in environments that are natural living habitats." "...the nature and quality of our minds are powerfully shaped by the nature and quality of the learning environments in which they are immersed, activated, and nurtured." "Mind shaping is world shaping." "...creative processes, and organizing properties of living systems must guide the design of this generative learning landscape." I love it all. Her words are wonderful. Thanks for sharing this find.
Anna

[Skip Zilla]

I'll be here shortly, when I've got Marshall's text in hand, Connie. I have much interest in learning more about what Marshall has to say and in relating what I've been learning in recent years (and over a lifetime) to it. Initially, prior to reading the text, I'm predisposed to see clearly that each of us is born, not as an unwritten-upon-slate into a vacuous world of abstract and conscious ideas, but as seeds with complex inheritances ready to be unfolded into an ecology of human circumstances--all of it well beyond yielding simply to the linear and limited intentions we delude ourselves into believing are most prominent in living our lives. Given the sociocultural ecology of largely unconscious interests and motives, how can we speak of an education which relates to the "natural" complexity that is the reality of being human, instead of one which attempts to grind the seeds, full of the inherent possibilities we are, into a common meal with which to bake loaves of whitened bread. The ultimate question in my mind is "What do we see social life as being?" Is it the factoried life of an army where servitude to illusions of securing survival through civilized aggression and spartan ideals is the dynamics of reality? Or, is it the creative, pragmatic life of an adaptive community of beings, born wondrously gifted, whose illusion is that the natural ecology, of which it is a part, is an Eden of persuasions and seductions to be celebrated? One illusion focuses its energies on killing what's different so that opinion-ful, unexamined ignorance of the "other" and the dangerous unknown--there is little venturing into the wild body ("belly?) of existence. The other illusion focuses its energies on encountering/finding/connecting/mating with the other in great anticipation of its newness of wonder and the significance it adds to the growing meaning of being related in unsuspected ways to a community living in a complexly simple ecology, whose dynamics are intelligent, but largely beyond any conception of conscious control. The prospect of science is that we will gain an understanding of our illusions--even science-based ones!--of what's happening to us and everyone and everything around us. We can't dispense with our mentality bent on its illusion-making, but we can choose our illusions intelligently--not only to survive the perils our inadequate ones are to our continued survival, but also to live lives blessed with embracing one another as the gifts (seeds of opportunity) we are in a living world more wonderfully ("joyously") connected than our ignorance of it--largely dimmed by training-- allows us to know.

[Mike]

Connie.... count me in!!! mike :)

"...the nature and quality of our minds are powerfully shaped by the nature and quality of the learning environments in which they are immersed, activated, and nurtured. How we are asked to learn matters profoundly. Mind shaping is world shaping."

I really like this and is what i am attempting to play with over at Ideals toward Practices thread!!!


Thanks... mike

[Connie Weber]

Hi Anna, Mike, Skip,
Good--it'll be fun to talk about the book.
I've now read half of it (but don't worry, I'm not "ahead" because it takes me two or three times through to learn a book--). I'm "so wondering" (as my students would say) what others are going to think about the book. I love having a reference point in my thoughts of you all: "How would Anna take that sentence?" "What would Skip have to add about historical context; how does this view fit in with what were considered 'enlightenments' in human history?" "Is the ecological view presented here similar to Mike's Circle?"

One thing--this book is clearly not for everybody. I can see people laughing snidely at the way the author talks--in fact, I get embarrassed sometimes, thinking "Oh please don't say it like that; even though I agree with you, you're not speaking a language everyone can understand. People will think you're... what? Offbeat? Out there? Radical?" (She clearly is radical.)

I'll show you some way-out thoughts, one's that would have plenty shutting the book:

(All I have to do is scout my notes in the margin that say "You can't talk like that.")

"The integral mind's intentional engagement in living encounters enables its deep resonance with life." (pg 50)

"The autonomy and dynamic interdependence of living systems ensure they are continuously self-referencing and in a a cocreative relationship with their environment." (pg 23)

She talks about "generative human systems," "nurturing integral habits of mind," comparisons between "reductive learning and schooling, and "integral learning and schooling," "deep learning," and "project-based, question-based" learning.

Now doesn't that all sound so far-out, abstract, esoteric?

But I have to say, I think Stephanie Pace Marshall is a leader for our time. I think she'll need some emissaries; I think she's at the very forefront of what's possible (and essential) in education now.

She was inspired by "complex-systems" thinkers: Wheatley, and Capra, for instance. I'd say they do better jobs of explaining the dynamics of networks (both in science models and in learning communities) than she does--at least to me. Marshall is convinced we need a new language for discussion of these new concepts; I'm ambivalent about that. I think maybe there's a way to say these things that will get more buy-in; say them simply, give examples.

Here's a connection to Stephanie Pace Marshall's website, which has some great writings, pdf files easily downloadable. Those articles would actually be an easier place to start, I'd say, than her soulful treatise, The Power to Transform.

BTW, I was interested to find that when I googled Marshall, my article at CR2.0 about her article came up toward the top. That discussion is here: "Alfie Kohn, Stephanie Pace Marshall: Global Competitiveness"

Wanted to return to how sometimes Marshall sounds so "out there" that some would dismiss her. Good to keep in mind that's she quite accomplished and is in a position to wield influence--she's "out there doing things."

Before I close for now I'd like to say that the table on pages 60-62 "The Habits of Mind of Integral Learners" would be one of the top few lists of learning qualities and dispositions I've ever seen. Would love to be able to discuss her list in comparison with Ron Ritchhart's Intellectual Character. Both great thinkers, both expansively intelligent people that have great wisdom to share.

Oh wait--one more thing that's always on my mind as I read this work: are we talking about everyone here--every sort of learner? Or are we talking about those who have been nurtured, enriched, empowered... those who are "at their best" or "in the best learning environm

[Connie Weber]

(maxed out the length of response allowed--hey Skip, we can reset this--Steve Hargadon knows how; I'll see if I can remember to ask him. If I find out how, will you do it? --you know I've been party to "blowing out" a network before; we wouldn't want to take that risk, would we? ;-)

anyhow, the end of that response: or "in the best learning environments"? Or could the new model of education she's putting forth work for all?

[Connie Weber]

I've read the Marshall book and two others of similar topis since then, and have come back to Marshall as the strongest. She's still "way out there," in how she sounds, but what she's putting forth actually seems most realistic, most filled with substance. Hargreaves' Sustainable Leadership moved me substantially, I was all excited to really "get into it," but it turns out (to me) he's most powerful in the introductory chapter, then leaves off.

From his intro, sentences and phrases that pertain to the topics of Marshall's book:

He quotes Rachel Carlson: "The central problem of our age...the contamination of man's total environment with substances that accumulate in the tissues of plants and animals and even penetrate the germ cells to shatter or alter the very material of heredity upon which the share of our future depends." (from Silent Spring, 1960s)

Hargreaves says, "Our push to produce more and to control, master, and standardize nature as we do so, she pointed out, is a problem of interrelationships and interdependence: 'We poison the caddis flies in a stream and the salmon runs dwindle and die. We poison the gnats in a lake and the poison travels from link to link o fthe food chain and soon the birds of the lake margins become its victims. We spray our elms and the following springs are silent of robin song.' The coming of such 'silent springs' in education, we will see, is also a looming danger as fast-paced, all-consuming standardized education reform leaves plagues of exhausted educators and joyless learning in its wake." (italics mine)

"Environmental sustainability is a moral imperative on which the quality of our lives and the future of our planet depend..."

"...achieving sustainability in education organizations and other organizations, too: the value of rich diversity over soulless standardization, the necessity of taking the long view..."

"...political pesticide of teacherproof standardization..."

Hargreaves has a lot to say--or a lot to talk "about." I got a lot more out of Marshall's book, a lot more ideas, questions, action plans.

Has anyone gotten into Marshall's book yet? (Anna, you brought the book on your wilderness expedition, right?!)

[Connie Weber]

"A New Learning Landscape," chapter 4

"The design of our current story of schooling often feels like a management contract with our students. We seem to tell our children that in exchange for following the rules of schooling--coming to class on time, paying attention, completing assignments, and passing tests--they will receive a diploma. The design of the new story feels quite different. It is transformational, not transactional. It is a learning covenant with our children--a promise as well as an agreement."

"It is a promise to mentor and help our children develop the fullness of their potentials, invent their own minds, reconnect to life, and wisely engage in cocreating a sustainaable future. By intentionally creating this restorative story of learning and schooling and shaping its generative landscape by design, we will invite children to reclaim what they have lost through the old story and learn the deeper basics of integral thinking essential for lifelong learning...

children become authors of their own lives...

by Carl Sagan: 'Where are our cartographers of human purpose?' Our learning covenant with our children must be our promise to create generative learning environments that prepare them to wisely assume their role as mapmakers for the future."

I love the New Learning Landscape that Marshall talks about. It's what I want to happen. Such a powerful, purposeful view of learning. Marshall gives some examples and I would like to see many others. I'd like to collect examples of generative learning environments, study them, visit them.

Got any examples or visions to share?