Learning Lab Synthesis - March 14-15, 2006
What Supports Successful Learning Communities?
Purpose (In progress):
Learning communities in general cultivate relationships among people who bring diverse experiences, resources and a commitment to transformational change through synergistic learning processes that generate knowledge and collective wisdom that is shared and applied toward a common purpose or vision.
Clarity of Purpose:
Learning communities form and are sustained by a strong sense of shared purpose that:
• Identifies a focus for learning that engages common interests, needs or passions
• Provides opportunities to contribute to and benefit from knowledge generated by collective learning that is not accessible through individual reflection alone
• Produces knowledge and foster relationships that facilitate change
Vision of How Learning Communities Contribute to Change:
Learning Community participants believe that their participation will result in positive change, results, or impact that they hope will be manifested in a variety of ways:
• Thinking differently at a level that creates and sustains change
• Cultivating capacity for new collaboration
• Generating more complete solutions
• Accessing new knowledge and positive relationships that can change communities, fields and the world
Principles or Beliefs that Guide Our Behavior:
Learning Community participants share a set of belief about and aspire to behaviors that will positively influence our capacity to learn and work together by:.
• Honoring the whole person and value authentic relationships
• Valuing diversity of perspectives and experiences
• Aspiring to be generous, open, humble, respectful and courageous
• Committing to the success of one’s own practice, that of others, and of the group
• Making knowledge and resources available and accessible beyond the community
Synergistic Learning Processes:
Learning Communities utilize and develop processes that move us from individual intelligence to collective wisdom by:
• Fostering democratic learning
• Creating a culture of inquiry
• Moving us from individual intelligence to collective wisdom
• Supporting individual and collective meaning making
• Honoring multiple styles of learning
• Strengthening the relationship between theory and practice
• Engaging virtual learning tools that increase access and continuity
A Supportive Container:
Learning Communities require an environment, facilitation, structures and resources that help organize and support the learning work of the Learning Community participants.
• Environment: Creating a safe, welcoming and supportive learning environment
• Facilitation: Hosting participants, engaging synergistic learning approaches, clarifying purpose, developing common language and modeling principles
• Resources: Providing resources that help learning community generate, organize, capture and share their learning, e.g. technology, space, food, and funding
• Structure: Clarifying expectations about what it means to be in the community, levels of participation, commitments of time, how facilitation is shared, how resources are acquired and allocated and how the learning community will assess its progress or completion of its collective work.
Where is the Current Edge in Our Learning?
What is our tolerance for accommodating people who are entering on a continuum of readiness to fully commit and participate in a learning community? What is gained or lost by including people for the sake of inclusion or excluding people for the sake of continuity? How do we hold this balance?
What attention do we need to pay to how learning communities interface with wider communities? What is our commitment to sharing learning with in these wider communities and how do we effectively do this?
What is the self-organizing capacity of learning communities and when and what type of direction and support is most helpful? How do we develop higher tolerance for chaos and trust that order will emerge? Are we being influenced by traditional reward systems that are not aligned with organic processes?
What is the relationship between the whole and its parts? How do we avoid a national office/chapter phenomenon that divides us instead of reflecting our interdependence? Can integration be achieved through strong organizing principles and a statement of purpose that allows for creativity and experimentation in form?
How do resources positively and negatively affect learning communities? When do resources leverage the initiative of participants and when do the replace or diminish the ownership and energy of participants?
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