A key practice of both Dialogue Education is reflection. This week, I’m asking: Just how important is reflection to learning, development and performance? Why do I ask this? THE PRAGMATIC: I am interested in continuing to deepen learning so that is meaningfully...
The Power of Less
Twice in the last week I heard stories about fewer agenda items leading to better learning and work. The first story was from Jeanette Romkema, GLP Partner. She and Clayton Rowe and Hugh Brewster of World Vision Canada together designed a two-day course on...
Engage! Science & Learning
For Trekies and casual viewers of Star Trek, the command "Engage!" brings memories of that point where the engine-power was unleashed, propelling the Enterprise into light-flash. As teachers we too hope to engage, to engage students most fully, that they too can take...
Dialogue Education and a Systems View
It seems to me that DE offers a systems-approach to adult learning. This is different than a system for adult learning, although I think DE provides that too, to a point. But you decide! Often when we think of a system, we think of linked items, perhaps we might even...
The iPhone vs. Dialogue Education
How many of you facilitators want to frisk your participants before a learning event so you can strip them of their iPhones (or Blackberries or Palm Pilots or . . . )? No more sneaking peaks at e-mail during the warm-up tasks, no checking the weather while another...
Knowing our Work is Worthwhile
We all get our moments of thrill -- when we see the effect of a dialogue-approach on an individual, group or organization. I had one of those moments last week and wanted to share it because it felt extra special. About 14 years ago, I worked with Karabi Acharya...
What’s in Your Pockets?
For the past several years, my husband has been telling our children a continuing story of the time he was two inches tall. The story, which still has not ended, unfolds in his childhood home, and it has taken him from the bathroom sink drain, to rides on a June bug,...
The Capacity to Reflect – Peter Senge on Larger World Learning
Who out there thinks about water while you’re thinking about the future of your business? Anyone? At Global Learning Partners I know we don’t. (A good Scotch, maybe, but not water.)In this compelling clip, Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline – a book that put...
Respecting Others in the Age of Distraction
I have to confess that in a conference call meeting the other day I found myself multi-tasking instead of paying careful attention. I justified it to myself by only doing it during agenda items that didn’t completely involve me. Still, I was clearly distracted! After...
A New Look at the Nature of Resistance in Learning
Awhile back we published a Voices in Dialogue issue on the idea of how we meet and plan for resistance and I’ve found myself thinking about it ever since. What is this thing called resistance and what is it’s value for facilitation and teaching? In one article in that...
The Multi-tasking Brain at Various Ages
Lately, I can’t seem to get enough information about multi-tasking. A comment on an earlier post got me thinking about it. Dwayne Hodgson wrote: I wonder if there is a generational thing at work here? Many of my younger colleagues are very adept at handling multiple...
The Learning Business – Latest Trends
I suppose every age has its excitements and its promise, but it sure does seem as if our present times are bursting at the seams with robust possibility, particularly in the field of learning. Here are a few things that caught my attention in the past two days alone...