Experts explain Unlearning
Experts from across the world try to define #unlearning and some of them have come out with books on unlearning. They have their Western Version but if you want Indian versions of Unlearning, you must read my books. Now I am able to make out how and why Western Ideas look so aliens to us.
What is ‘unlearning’?
Chris Dede: Professional development for transformative change is very challenging because participants not only must learn new skills, but also must “unlearn” almost unconscious beliefs, assumptions, practices, and values about the nature of teaching, learning, and schooling. For example, teachers typically assume that their primary role is to provide students with knowledge via presentation, that when asked a question they should provide an answer, and that students who score high on multiple choice tests have mastered the material. All of these assumptions are questionable in preparing students for life in a global, knowledge-based, innovation-centered civilization.
UNLEARNING. Professional development for transformative change is very challenging because participants not only must learn new skills, but also must “unlearn” almost unconscious beliefs, assumptions, practices, and values about the nature of teaching, learning, and schooling.
What are the challenges associated with unlearning?
Chris: How important is emotional and social support for unlearning? In losing weight (which also involves changing deeply rooted behaviors), affective reinforcement is extremely important – and purely cognitive supports often fail. In effective tutoring, about half the prompts a mentor provides are encouragement rather than intellectual advice. For students being asked to tackle a new type of activity, self-efficacy and tenacity are vital attitudes, and these are built in part through emotional and social interventions. Parallel to these examples of comparable situations, substantial affective/communal support is vital to the success of professional development that requires unlearning.
Marga: We tackle unlearning in three contexts: mindsets, habits, and systems. Changing mindsets involves altering conceptions or mental models. Resistance to changing mindsets emerges as defensive patterns fortifying self-interest, personal identities, traditions, and long-standing assumptions. Changing habits involves shifting individual or group behaviors, once people have “signed on” to any new concepts involved. Resistance to changing habits arises in part from old cues in the environment that re-trigger old behaviors, and is reinforced by stress and time pressure. Sometimes even with alterations in mindset and habit, not much really changes, because the larger system discourages the new ways of thinking and acting. Resistance to change arises in systems through policies, routines, organizational structures, and even shared values and identities that interlock to block unlearning and change.
How do students and teachers benefit from unlearning?
Peter Hutton: Students benefit from unlearning by developing a flexibility in mindset that’s critical in today’s world. This type of creative thinking is crucial to finding the best and most efficient solutions to the constantly changing world. Many industries are constantly trying to adapt to today’s changing world and developing an adaptive mindset will help students better transition into the real world after graduation. Standardized tests teach that there’s only one right answer, but in the real world, there is not only more than one right answer – there are also different ways of getting to that answer. With unlearning, students are encouraged to make mistakes because that’s part of the process of problem solving. If you got it right on the first try, then you probably didn’t get it right.
#unlearn as it saves life. But try to understand #unlearning as I explain in my books. Try to #unlearn as I have explain with the help of 7 Critical Factors. These factors & ideas are so Indian that you find connect immediately.
Student at Applied Statistics, IGNOU
5 年Your unlearning is spreading across the world. You are famous all over the world. We are proud of you.
Award Winning Writer, Thinker & Social Activist
5 年Difficulties Unlearning The first challenge of unlearning is that when something contradicts your current understanding, you are likely to dismiss it. This may be adaptive in a world where many of the things people say or information you encounter are false, or lies constructed to manipulate you. Things that you don’t currently believe are, ceteris paribus, more likely to be false. However, this confirmation bias can make it harder to unlearn when that’s valuable to you. A deeper problem, I believe, is that human beings tend not to deeply represent doubtand uncertainties in a fine-grained way. That is, the things you believe now, you tend to believe completely, even if provisionally. However, whether those beliefs are near-certain or highly-doubtful, the way they are represented in the brain is much the same. It’s true that a more doubtful belief is more likely to be dismissed than a certain one. If I try to argue that the moon is made of cheese, for instance, I’ll be met with a lot more resistance than if I try to argue something you only believed loosely. However, this revision occurs in an active sense—when one is directly assessing reasons for the belief in question. I believe that, when a belief isn’t being actively considered, it can still inform your thinking in other ways and, that, in those cases the relative certainty of the belief isn’t used. If this view is true, then that means that many of the things we learned aren’t dangerous because they are immune to counterargument, but because they can subtly influence our thinking in adjacent areas when we aren’t being vigilant to how likely they are to be true.
Award Winning Writer, Thinker & Social Activist
5 年I define #unlearning?& its my version.
Japanese Language Professional
5 年Great thought