As adults and kids, as old and young we have undergone many learning experiences. We have many established learning processes helping us to get both the education and the skills we need.
Education has to lead the way to acquire good skills, with ease and within the framework of the society we live in.
How do we ascertain that with higher likelihood of success?
Perhaps we do or don’t know that – the awareness of our surroundings, our positioning in this global and connected workplace, our capabilities, and what we can deliver – comes from these two things – Education and Skill – both of which can take newer meanings as the world around us change. With each change, the divides that exist due to imbalances of education and skill may either close or widen or disappear.
However, we still see all types of divides in our societies – like the study divides, reality divides, knowledge divides and skill development divides.
What aspect of learning can make these divides disappear or managed well with each change?
My answer to that is Quadrant learning. But why do I say that? And why is it relevant to 21st century?
To answer these questions, let me elaborate on some of the elements affecting learning in 21st century – knowledge, fake work, technology, chaos and then ground you in quadrant learning.
The knowledge has become more complex and the only way to make it simpler is to subdivide the knowledge into manageable pieces. Even though the knowledge is one, the process of subdivision has created new activities and pushing some of these activities like prioritizing and scheduling into forefront than the knowledge itself.
All these processes are becoming increasingly complex and visible through technology anywhere in the world to anyone giving newer dimensions on how the work is performed, even though the desired end result of the overarching process is still the same. We may call them overheads of subdivided work, but I call them fake work as they may not achieve the desired end result or take more time and resources to achieve the same. This fake work contributes to fake learning.
Technology has got a hand in it, but to a lesser extent. It has driven the work towards efficiency, but then the over-specialization of technology has made the real acquisition of knowledge to take the backseat – creating what I call fake learning. My definition of Fake, whether it is right or wrong, is no progress.
Robert Preston from InformationWeek, in one of his articles says that the 21st century education is ripe for disruption. He says, the education that is being offered at universities in a so-called traditional method is coming to its dreadful end.
We can re-think on the benefits of four-walled learning or break the walls instead to see what is out there on the horizon and go after it with a firm commitment. However, what we don’t want is to get struck in the doldrums between educational systems – traditional or evolutionary – causing chaos.
The push from one side has to be complemented with a pull from the other side to make any situation less chaotic. In absence of this, chaos is going to get amplified.
It is obvious to us that a strongly rooted tree survives the onslaught of Mother Nature – while the shallow one get either blown away or burnt up beyond the possibility of re-growth. But the irony of it all is – it is not going to be obvious for those who were caught in the whirlwind of change. They will keep flying with it to either improve the conditions very slightly or fall apart in one big heap without knowing what hit them.
It is that time now to stop floating in the air and get grounded – before the chaotic nature of the change and growth catches us in the meaningless efforts of process improvements, re-design and re-engineering of same learning methods.
The quadrant learning method instituted by COL is governed by fours laws for the four fundamental processes – acquire, benchmark, connect and discover.
To acquire anything to its maximum understandability we require four types of efforts – Teacher-centered, Self-centered, group-centered and time-centered. This is the first law.
Each of these efforts are affected by the trust levels that are implicit and sometimes inherent in such efforts – self-trust, relationship trust, institutional trust and the societal trust. This is the second law.
The acquisition process needs to go through re-learning stops, un-learning stops, branding stops and resourcing stops, to remain current with the changes. This is the third law.
The underlying methods that are attached to each of these processes for implementation – like acquire process requires apply method, benchmark requires begin, connect requires collaborate, discover requires do – cannot be overlooked or omitted, to achieve the highest success rate possible. This is the fourth law.
It is important to implement these laws within a network of schools, businesses, research centers and societies of professionals to give a deeper meaning to the learning.
The law of efforts, the law of trusts, the law of stops and the law of underlying methods apply equally to the remaining processes that are part of the quadrant learning.
These four laws governing quadrant learning is going to enable the grounding process in the 21st century.
What is beyond quadrant learning?
The quadrant learning supported and sustained by these four laws can then weather any type of storm – to enable a continuous process of learning that I call Circle of Learning. It is the higher form of quadrant learning that encapsulates the four laws and underscores the cyclical nature of learning that strengthens the grounding process.