Thinking Differently About
Thinking.
Is the experience of learning all in the mind?
A short synopsis outlining the introductory keynote speech by Professor Colin
Beard
Website:Colinbeard.co.uk
What I want to do in my presentation is to explore the experience of
learning in terms of how it is interpreted by the brain in many different
ways. I want to refer to a few books that I have found particularly
interesting in preparing this keynote. Part of the reason for doing this is
that I’m not really sure about the relationship between the reading of
books and experiential learning! The ‘pictures’ of the book covers that I
will show in this presentation hopefully may well be more stimulating
than just a list of references. However what the images don’t show are
my books covered with scribbled notes, the underlining in pen and
pencil of the best bits, the pieces of paper sticking out of certain pages,
and the top corners of the pages folded to locate particular bits of
writing that I am interested in. The books are mine, and I have altered
them, I have of course (re)interpreted them. I have also come here to
the conference to share my thoughts about things I found in these
books. My mother used to go to a shop in her village to buy some very
interesting things for the house and when she handed her bank card
over the shopkeeper used to say I’m just going to send your money on a
little journey from your bank to mine! And so I seek to gradually move
from my experience of the books to my narration and presentation and
then out into your brains and on into conference conversational form.
The resulting diversity of conversational journeys will wind their way
through the brains of many different people and into many other places,
to arrive where we might least expect them to - so let’s see what
happens!
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My presentation is essentially all about thinking about
thinking: fast thinking and slow thinking, thinking with the
old brain and the new brain, thinking with the front of the
brain and the back, the first and second brains, the left and
the right of the brain, thinking negatively and thinking
positively, thinking with feeling (compassion), thinking too
much and just plain not thinking, subconscious and
conscious thinking, thinking with the gut and thinking with
the body, thinking by classifying and thinking in patterns,
thinking with our senses and thinking in different places.
I’m hoping that by the end of this session we will think
differently about thinking! I am hoping that we might use all
these ways of thinking during the conference!
I am hoping that by the end of the presentation you might reconsider
the role that the brain plays in interpreting and processing experience. I
want to challenge the idea that knowledge and knowing is solely the
prerogative of the human brain. I want to relate knowing and thinking
to several other dimensions of human learning, notably doing,
belonging, sensing, feeling, and being. Much of what I will cover in the
talk is to be found in the new 3rd edition of the Handbook of
Experiential Learning which will be available in August.
The presentation will be underpinned by evolutionary thinking after all I
was originally trained as a zoologist! The human brain is a complex
structure and it underwent considerable expansion at a particular time
during its long evolutionary development. Significantly the modern
human brain has of course been gradually built upon and the ancient
wiring still exists. The reptilian brain still has considerable influence on
our human behaviour!
When we look at what we know about human learning over time the
evolutionary picture becomes particularly interesting. I want to show
how our understanding of human learning has shifted from early studies
on animal behaviour (ethology) to a new and complex ecology
consisting of many contributions from many disciplines. This recent
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evolutionary trajectory is important in terms of how we think about
human learning.
The presentation will deal with fast thinking and slow thinking first of
all. This idea is derived from many disciplinary contributions and it has
become more popular through the work of Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel
prizewinner who has recently produced a book called Thinking fast
thinking slow. The book highlights how fast thinking systems essentially
rule much human behaviour. Fast thinking concerns survival and the
human ability to make fast decisions. The fast data is sent to the brain
with an emotional tag attached to it. This quick response function
therefore also has potential dangers for the modern human species if
the decisions are no longer appropriate. Furthermore this quick
response happens largely in the subconscious and we appear to have
little control over the results.
Thinking with the front of the brain and the back of the brain has
similar origins in that the old reptilian brain is at the back section,
whereas the highly advanced cortical areas are at the front of the brain
and this area is considerably enlarged in the human species. The
reptilian brain is said to be where the threat system is located: it is
responsible for much judging and consequent negative behaviour
towards others or towards our self. The counterbalance to the negative
‘threat’ system are positive dynamics operating in the frontal lobes.
There are two aspects of the frontal lobes that are responsible for our
positive feelings: positive feelings are associated with (1) status and
achievement, and (2) positive feelings are associated with belonging
and affiliation and caring.
The presentation will also look at the idea of thinking with the gut, and
with the body as a whole. The brain and the body are of course not
separated. Our gut contains a separate nervous system that is so
complex it has been called the second brain. It comprises an estimated
500 million neurons - about five times as many as in the rat brain and
similar to the brain of a cat! The nervous system around the human gut
can work both with the brain and independently although we are not
conscious of our gut thinking. In an article in New Scientist (15
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December 2012) called Alimentary Thinking, it is suggested that a lot of
information from the gut sent to the brain affects our well-being.
The body-brain connectivity also influences our thinking in many other
ways. Gestures would have played a very significant role in the period
before spoken and written language (the kinetic period). Furthermore
the body also appears to possess a natural GPS system based on
receptors in our ears and in our muscles and on which the brain so
naturally depends. This is highlighted by a human language which is full
of bodily spatial metaphors to assist the brain and its understanding (to
grasp the topic, higher education).
Thinking with our left side and thinking with our right side will also be
covered. I will also explore thinking with feeling (compassion) and the
work of Marshal Rosenberg who developed the notion of
compassionate communication covering four stages: observing, feeling,
needs, and requests. The argument here is that there is a tendency to
observe and then judge and that this judging is the cause of much
human conflict and destruction. It is said that observation (sensing)
without judging is the highest form of human intelligence. I would
therefore argue that sensory intelligence, or thinking through our
senses, may well be particularly important in terms of how we
experience the world. The work of Paul Gilbert is also particularly
interesting in this respect and he argues in his work on compassion
based therapy that many mental health problems are the result of an
imbalance between our negative mind states and the positive mind
states. Excessive negative judgements of others leads to anger and
possibly violence. Excessive negative brain judgements of the self tend
towards anxiety and depression.
There is a positive side to the tendency of the brain to classify and
organise sensory information. In the development of creative thinking
the brain’s ability to organise is useful. I often use a sequence to help
people to get from practice to theory and back to practice. I asked
people to handle and discuss a wide range of commercial products
available in the marketplace. I simply place them on a large table in what
appears to be a jumbled mess. I ask people to handle them and discuss
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the products and through conversation they begin to understand each
item. I then ask people to organise, classify all cluster all of the products
into groups. I then ask that these classifications be analysed yet further
and this in turn leads to an ability to conceptualise (H.D.O.A.C) what is
happening in terms of the high level of thinking. Thus the sequence is
discuss, organise, analyse, and conceptualise. The brain after all has a
natural tendency to organise and classify almost everything.
Well that’s enough text to get through! I’m hoping the presentation may
prove to be a totally different experience! What may become apparent,
possibly, from my presentation is that my exploration of thinking about
thinking has been infused with oppositional spatial-bodily metaphors,
namely left, right, front, back, slower, faster, higher, lower, old, new,
negative and positive …..thinking to name but a few!
In putting together this short synopsis I have used speech recognition
software. Sometimes I find it easier to talk my thoughts as my body in
the form of my fingers, in creating a language of text on a page, cannot
keep pace with my thinking (brain) activity. The words on the page are
also so flat, and one-dimensional. There is therefore a continuous
struggle between the experience that I want to create and the rather
simplistic human language of speech or text: language and experience
are in a continuous struggle! But perhaps it is best to finish with a lovely
description of an experience from Robert Kull who spent a year in
remote Patagonia where he was trying to gain a greater understanding
of the nature of solitude:
I drop the notebook and feel myself sink more deeply into the
world. All desire to write disappears. What has happened to my
flow of language? I fall mute before such wonder and beauty. I try
to describe the delicate shades and patterns of shifting color as
wind swirls water around immovable rock, but my images feel dull
and trite. There is no dance between word and world. What I see
and feel begs a sensuous tango, but my words march static and
stiff in lines across the page.
(Kull, 2008: 184).
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Conferences are all about sharing. In many ways learning is also a form
of food: it sustains us, and it sustains life. Indeed one could argue that
without learning there is no life! A well-known quote from Professor
Charles Handy is: those who are in love with learning are in love with
life! The same might be said of food and cooking.
Enjoy the conference experience.
The reading list I offer is as follows:
1. Abram, D. (1997) The Spell of the Sensuous (New York, Vintage Books).
2. Gallagher, S. (2005) How the body shapes the mind (Oxford, Oxford
University Press).
3. Lakoff, G & Johnson, M. (1999) Philosophy in the flesh (New York, Basic
books)
4. Lindstrom, M. (2005) Brand Sense (London, Kogan Page).
5. Kull, R (2008) Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes, (US, New World
Library).
6. Rosenberg, M (1998) Non-violent Communication /Compassionate
Communication, USA: Wurr.
7. Kahneman, D (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow, (London, Penguin Books).
8. Sadler-Smith, E. (2008) Inside intuition (London, Routledge).
9. Buss, D (2012) (4th Ed.) Evolutionary Psychology, Pearson, Boston, US)
10.Gilbert, P. (2009) The Compassionate Mind. (London: Constable &
Robinson, and Oaklands, CA: New Harbinger).
And two interesting papers………
Baumeister, R. F., and Leary, M.R. (1995) The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal
attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529.
Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C. & Vohs, K. D. (2001) Bad is stronger
than good, Review of General Psychology, 5: 323-370.
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