Knowledge Transfer
Once we have chosen to share rather than hide or keep our knowledge secret, how do we go about transferring our personal knowledge to another Individual?
How do we measure the effectiveness of this Learning & Teaching process? How can we improve it?
My analysis of the Knowledge Transfer process reveals
3 crutial elements, in addition to the knowledge itself, specifically required for Transferring the Knowledge from one Individual to another Individual.
These are universal, regardless of the content of the knowlege being transferred.
- Examples
- Organization of the parts of Knowledge
- Confusion Clarifications
Details:
- Examples - The primary way of transferring ideas from one Individual to another Individual is thru examples. Examples bring abstract ideas to real life, because that is how we first learned to abstract, by looking at individual examples and deciding what parts are similar & what parts are different. Examples are used both for clarity & to train our intuitions.
How well or how poorly examples are selected separates the good from the great teacher.
Examples need to be:
- Relevant - starting from experiences or contexts the learner is familiar with.
- Graded - from Blatent to Subtle.
- Sensory - Audio, Visual, Kinesthetic & Verbal. When possible, presented in the learners preferred sensory mode and sequencing style.
- Organization of the 5 Necessary & Sufficient parts of Knowledge:
How are different smaller ideas, and events connected, to build larger & larger patterns?
I've found 4 primary organizations:
- Sequences - events that need to happen one after the other.
- Loops - Causes sometimes loop back on themselves, often with a delay in time. This is often called feedback.
- Hierarchies - An important 'part' to 'whole' relationship of ideas.
- Metaphors - Comparing one whole set of ideas to another set of ideas.
- Confusion Clarifications - No one comes to any class, lecture, tutor session, etc. with the academic notion of Tabula Rasa, a blank slate. We all overhear things, speculate to ourselves, and come to every subject with preconceived, but often wrong facts & ideas.
For more details on how I define Knowledge itself see:
Knowledge
Individual 2 Individual Knowledge Transfer
Before looking at the massive so-called 'education system', I will start with where it all begins:
One Individual Learning some new Knowledge.
Until we understand that
Learning process fully, it is fruitless to immerse ourselves in other matters like curriculum, the influence of parents, teachers, administrators, politicians, school lunches, building repair etc. It is after all, when policies & practices fail,
regardless of the reason, that Individuals suffer. If, for whatever reason, the process of education fails, it is the student, and only the student, who is less prepared for his or her lifetime.
The primary method for Individual 2 Individual Knowledge Transfer is
Language:
words, phrases, examples, metaphors, diagrams, charts etc.
This process uses several modalities, verbal & non-verbal, written, spoken, acted, etc.
In addition to popular languages like English, British, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Hebrew, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese etc. there is one language that is close to being universal and that is the language of science - Mathematics. A truly delightful language!
The basic sharing process starts with an
Intention
to share something useful.
- We convert that Intention into words, examples, metaphors, diagrams, charts, etc. from our own personal experiences.
- Then we share those words, examples, phrases, diagrams, charts etc. by speaking and/or writing;
- The other person then translates our words, phrases, diagrams & charts using their own private experiences to create their personal private meanings.
- Feedback - until you test whether your meaning was received accurately, you cannot know whether or not the interchange worked!
Generation 2 Generation Knowledge Transfer
Many of us want to leave this planet, after our brief stay, somehow 'better' than we found it. That 'better' can take many forms: more beautiful, as with a painting, a piece of music; safer, more comfortable, etc. Very frequently the way we create that 'better' is with a new piece of Knowledge, or a rearrangement of existing pieces of Knowledge.
How do we share with our kids, and grandkids, what we have learned & created?
For community to community Knowledge transfer, which is commonly, but erroneously, called an educational system, I proposed A Knowledge Industry Model in 1986. If we were to treat Knowledge as an Industry, What might it look like? Which successful industry might we model it after? See:
My Factory - Franchise Education Model
The industry I chose is avaition, & aerospace. In just over 100 years we went from the first flight at Kitty Hawk to commercial flight, jet engines, a trip to the moon and an orbiting space station. Yet in psychology & education we've made little progress at all. Why?
How do we transfer the tremendous
incremental knowledge process of aviation to psychology, & education & more importantly to our own personal lives? How can we learn, think, create & share more effectively, based on proven principles from the aviation, & space industries?
Two basic techniques stand out:
- Precise Terminology
- Incremental Knowledge Growth
Details:
1. Precise Terminology - so we can talk meaningfully to one another, and create group projects. In aerospace we measure things like O-Rings to thousands of an inch. In psychology we have ambiguous terms like 'anxious' or 'depressed'. In education we have vague terms like 'educated', 'degreed', & 'certified'.
When you get a high school diploma, what exactly does that mean? Can you read the diploma itself? A clue is that they are issued & signed by institutions not Individuals. When you get a pilots license, it is signed by a real live Individual who testifies that you know how to fly a plane.
2. Incremental Knowledge Growth - A place & process for testing and improving our answers over time. This has worked well in aviation & aerospace, at a place like the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board).
They maintain their independent analysis & rigorous testing by recommending, not enforcing the application of their findings, which is done by the FAA.
If the NTSB can investigate every plane crash from many, many directions - mechanical failure, pilot error, communications errors, weather, runway length, component stress, etc., etc., etc. Why does the psychological community which dares to call itself a profession, when they have a crash, a suicide, simply bury the evidence and learn absolutely nothing!!!!!
Why when, by almost any measure our 'educational system' is failing our students, do we not create a similar place & process for collecting the best of teaching methodologies, testing them on a wide variety of students, and making them available to all?
How does a
NEEB (National Educational Excellence Board) sound to you?
It would provide a place & process for collecting the best of teaching methodologies & concept examples, testing them on a wide variety of students, and making them available to all? Making available, NOT mandating, followed by financial threats.
It would require a very small percentage of the $ & people in the current Department of Education...
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Last Updated: Sunday, Mar. 4, 2012 5:51 PM
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