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DEEP LEARNING IN A DISORIENTING WORLD

Much has been written about the escalating intolerance of worldviews other than one’s own.
Reasoned arguments based on facts and data seem to have little impact in our increasingly post-
truth culture dominated by social media, fake news, tribalism, and identity politics. Recent
advances in the study of human cognition, however, offer insights on how to counter these
troubling social trends. In this book, psychologist Jon F. Wergin calls upon recent research in
learning theory, social psychology, politics, and the arts to show how a deep learning mindset
can be developed in both oneself and others. Deep learning is an acceptance that our
understanding of the world around us is only temporary and is subject to constant scrutiny.
Someone who is committed to learning deeply does not simply react to experience, but engages
fully with experience, knowing that the inevitable disquietude is what leads to efficacy in the
world.

is Professor of Education Studies at Antioch University’s Graduate School of

J O N F. W E R G I N
Leadership and Change, USA. He is also an educational psychologist with a professional
background spanning nearly 50 years.
DEEP LEARNING IN A
DISORIENTING WORLD
Jon F. Wergin
Antioch University
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
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Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research
at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108480222
DOI: 10.1017/9781108647786

© Cambridge University Press 2020

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing
agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2020
Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd, Padstow Cornwall

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Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party
internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Contents
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgments

1 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

2 How We Learn: A Short Primer

3 Mindful Learning

4 Constructive Disorientation

5 Critical Reflection

6 The Importance of Others

7 The Influence of Politics on Deep Learning

8 Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

9 The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

10 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

References
Index
Figures

1.1 Sources and outcome of confirmation (myside) bias

2.1 The human brain

2.2 The limbic system

2.3 Experiential learning cycle

3.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

5.1 The development of expertise

5.2 The deep learning mindset

6.1 The deep learning mindset, including the social learning field

8.1 World War II poster

8.2 The deep learning mindset with aesthetic experience added

9.1 The deep learning mindset, complete

Preface
I have approached this book with a sense of urgency, even alarm. I am normally an optimistic
person, believing that yes, the world is always in crisis, somewhere; but I have also believed that
“crises” are often overblown, sensationalized by media looking for ways to increase their
viewership. In recent years, however, I have found my normal optimism shaken by the
disharmony and polarization I witness in our social discourse, nearly every day. There is too
much talking and not enough listening. There is too much dismissal of diverse points of view,
and not enough effort to find common ground. There is too much moral judgment and not
enough nuance. There is too much knee-jerk stereotyping and not enough appreciation of
difference. And all of this, I fear, is getting worse, for reasons I explore in the coming chapters.
What is needed, I submit, is a commitment to deep learning, a way of being that treats incoming
information thoughtfully and critically. Those who learn deeply refuse to be seduced by
messages that feed existing biases, and they embrace challenges to their worldviews. Deep
learners assume that there is always more to learn.
The term “deep learning” has been used in other contexts, most recently artificial
intelligence (cf. Goodfellow, Bengio, & Courville, 2016), not what this book is about, so let me
define at the outset what deep learning is and what it is not:
(a) Deep learning is not stuff that is locked away in the brain and stays there. Deep
learning is learning that lasts, but not vice versa. We all remember a lot of random things. I
have no earthly idea why I remember a particular morning after a childhood sleepover,
when my host told me at breakfast that his family used a spoon rather than a knife to get
the jelly out of the jar.
(b) Deep learning is not the result of doing a lot of research on a topic. Knowing a lot
about something does not necessarily mean that you have learned deeply to get there. Ask
me which garage band recorded “Wild Thing” and when, and I’ll tell you.1 The fact that I
remember a lot of rock and roll trivia doesn’t mean that I engaged in a lot of deep learning
during my undergraduate days in the 1960s. (Far from it, sadly.)
(c) Deep learning is not what is taught in school. I don’t mean to suggest that what we
learned in school is not important. Children need to learn their multiplication tables;
teenagers need to learn the foundations of their local and national governments; medical
students need to learn the biochemistry of the Krebs cycle. Each of these is essential
learning, needed to function in society or, in the case of medical school, the profession.
None are useful, however, unless and until they are linked with lived experience, the
challenges of life and work.
(d) And finally, deep learning is more than getting knocked off stride by an experience that
encourages us to see things differently. Transformative learning, as this is known
(Mezirow, 2000) is a necessary part of deep learning but not the whole of it.
So what, then, am I writing about in this book? Deep learning is learning that lasts, yes. And
deep learning is the result of cognitive and emotional disorientation that makes us want to
examine other ways of viewing the world, yes. But deep learning is also a way of being, a
mindset, an orientation. It is a worldview that our understandings of the world around us are only
temporary understandings, subject to constant inspection and scrutiny. Someone who is
committed to learning deeply does not simply react to experience, but engages fully with
experience, knowing that the inevitable disquietude is what leads to efficacy in the world.
Frankly, most of us don’t do this very well. More than a quarter-century ago, in a widely
reprinted article for the Harvard Business Review titled “Teaching Smart People How to Learn,”
psychologist Chris Argyris (1991) argued that “success in the marketplace increasingly depends
on learning, yet most people don’t know how to learn” (p. 99). This is a startling assertion from
one of the eminent organizational theorists of his day. He argued that the reason for this dilemma
stems from two misconceptions about the nature of learning itself: first that learning is all about
“solving problems,” and second that getting people to learn is all about creating external
incentives, such as compensation programs and performance reviews. Argyris drew upon his
research and professional experience as a consultant to argue that knowing how to learn requires
the ability to reflect critically on one’s own behavior, something people are rarely taught to do,
whether in school or on the job.
An astonishing amount of research on human learning in the intervening years has largely
supported and augmented Argyris’ analysis from decades ago. And yet, his article remains
provocative to this day. Why is this so? Why haven’t schools, colleges, and professional
development practices taken Argyris’ and others’ wisdom to heart? Or, when they have, why are
the effects, if any, often so ephemeral? In this book I address this conundrum and offer some
suggestions, based upon my own research and others’, about how to deal with it.
Along the way I make several claims. First is the mounting evidence exploding the
prevailing myth that people behave rationally, and when they do not it is because they have
become unmoored by their emotions. Instead, available evidence suggests that belief comes
quickly and naturally, and because humans have a low tolerance for ambiguity, skepticism about
one’s beliefs is slow and unnatural (Shermer, 2011). Second, developing skepticism in ways that
lead to deep learning depends on an interaction between thoughts and feelings, cognition and
emotion. Neither can lead to deep learning by itself. Third, critical reflection, both with oneself
and with others, is the key to long-term behavioral change. Fourth, deep learning will often have
political ramifications, requiring sensitivity to political dynamics. And fifth, aesthetic experience
can be a powerful if often unrecognized source of deep learning. I end with some specific
suggestions on steps we can take to facilitate deep learning, both for ourselves and for those with
whom we live and work.
Here is a roadmap to the book.
The first two chapters discuss the challenges to deep learning in a world that is often hostile
to it.
Chapter 1 describes why critical reflection is more important today than ever before, and yet
harder and harder to do. I delve into this apparent paradox, why “facts” and “evidence” seem to
have so little effect on rational behavior, and why this so often leads to bad decisions.
In Chapter 2 I review the basics of cognition, showing how old ideas about learning as
storehouses of information, standing at the ready to address problems, have given way to much
more complex notions about how our brains do not just take in information and store it, but make
meaning of that information by attaching it – or not – to existing mental models. I discuss how
this is not only vital to our survival as a species but also presents a challenge to our cognitive
development. I also introduce the notion of transformative learning, arguably the most important
theory on adult learning in the last half-century.
The next seven chapters describe and explain the keys for facilitating deep learning in the
midst of turbulent social change.
Chapter 3 discusses “mindful learning.” The central message here is Socrates’ dictum,
“know thyself first.” We must know ourselves before presuming to think that we are in any
position to influence others. I explore the now-bulging literature on personal and organization
development and offer some integrating principles for understanding how deep learning can be
developed in ourselves and others.
In Chapter 4 I discuss the power of what I call “constructive disorientation,” and how it can
lead to transformative learning as a tool for constructive change. Constructive disorientation is a
sweet tension between curiosity, an innate human quality, and disquietude, a disturbance in our
perceptual field that demands our attention. Neither alone is sufficient for deep learning, but
powerful given the right balance.
In Chapter 5 I explore in detail the importance of critical reflection on human experience.
Critical reflection is not an innate human quality and so must be cultivated. I discuss how critical
reflection is important throughout all aspects of human learning, including the development of
expertise and the incidental learning that happens every day, usually below our conscious
awareness.
Chapter 6 takes on the importance of relational experience in learning. Despite our typical
school experience, where the expectation is to learn alone and to demonstrate that learning alone,
the research evidence is unmistakable: deep learning is most powerful, and often necessary, in
social discourse. Learning in the presence of others allows us to understand the world as others
see it, and to try on perspectives that we would not have known about otherwise. Learning with
others is perilous, often leading to the hardening of beliefs and attitudes, and so I also discuss
how social discourse can be most productive.
In Chapter 7 I acknowledge the power of politics (small “p”) in making real change. If the
core definition of politics is group conflict over scarce resources, leading to the use and
manipulation of power, then how can politics and learning come together as a developmental
force? Here I revisit philosopher John Dewey’s ideas about a “learning democracy,” presented
more than a century ago, and recast them for the challenges we face today.
In Chapter 8 I look at the role of the arts as a compelling tool for social change: how the arts
can serve to create just the sort of “constructive disorientation” that I write about in Chapter 4, in
ways that probe our innermost values and bring them to the surface. The arts offer paths that are
closed to logic and argument, and as such have enormous potential for promoting deep learning.
Chapter 9 explores “essential tensions” – paradoxes that are not resolvable but require
constant attention if they are to remain in a useful balance. I argue that holding these tensions is
vital for mindful – and hence deep – learning, and that they require a dialectical way of thinking
and being.
Along the way in these chapters I present a model of the “deep learning mindset,” piece by
piece, displaying the complete version at the end of Chapter 9.
In Chapter 10 I offer an integration of the book’s previous chapters, shifting from a review
of prevailing theories and empirical evidence to a more practical set of recommendations. I
address these two questions: How might I become a better deep learner? And, how might I
encourage deep learning in others?
On a personal note: I have approached the writing of this book from the perspective of
neither a neuroscientist nor a cognitive psychologist. My doctorate in educational psychology in
the early 1970s is nearly useless today, except perhaps as a marker of just how far research on
human learning has come. Most of my own learning has come through my work, much of which
is represented here. Still, I am a nonexpert writing both for fellow academics and for those
outside the academy, and thus risk appealing to neither group. I am however an expert
pedagogue: I have spent most of my professional career working to make difficult and complex
ideas accessible to others, both students and practitioners. I have tried to put these skills and
decades of professional experience to use in this book, taking the now mountain of research on
what helps and hinders deep learning and creating with it a guide to putting this research to
practical use.

Note

1 The Troggs, 1966.

Acknowledgments
An essential part of deep learning is accessing the wisdom of others. I am indebted to, and have
learned deeply from, the work of the more than 200 scholars cited here, some of them numerous
times. These include Daniel Kahneman, most notable for his Nobel Prize-winning work on the
frailties of human cognition, pulled together beautifully in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow
(2011); Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi for his groundbreaking work on flow theory (1990); Robert
Kegan for his contributions to adult development theory (1982, 1994), and his and Lisa Lahey’s
ideas on “immunity to change” (2009) (a book that more than any other in recent memory
changed the way I think about learning and change); Jack Mezirow, who revolutionized the
world of adult learning with his transformative learning theory (2000); Peter Vaill, who coined
the term “learning in permanent white water” (1996) nearly a quarter-century ago, and whose
advice is even more pertinent today; and Ron Heifetz and his colleagues for their work on
adaptive learning in organizations (Heifetz, Linsky, & Grashow, 2009). Most of all, I am
indebted to the legacy of John Dewey. His deep and timeless thinking on learning, education,
democracy, and the arts, is cited in nearly every chapter. One of my friends, having read a draft
version of this book, teased me about having a “love affair” with John Dewey. Well, so be it.
For all of that, this book would not be what it is without the generous assistance of friends,
colleagues, and former students. I trusted them to give me honest feedback on early drafts, and
they delivered the goods. This group included colleagues Laurien Alexandre, Richard
McGuigan, and Ron Cacciope, and dear friend and mentor of more than 50 years, Larry
Braskamp. The group also includes a band of former doctoral students and Antioch alumni I
called “critical friends” who read and commented on early drafts of chapters: Jane Alexandre,
Shelley Chapman, Karen Geiger, Lisa Graham, Pat Greer, Sue McKevitt, John Porter, and Tayo
Switzer. Even if they may have taken the “critical” part a bit too literally once in a while, I
benefitted from every comment and the book is immeasurably better for it.
I especially want to acknowledge the contributions of two very special and talented people.
First is Wendy McGrath, educator and visual design genius, responsible for the creative
thinking that went into the diagram of the “deep learning mindset.” Like many readers, I am
easily exasperated by authors’ attempts to “simplify” complex ideas with a maze of boxes and
arrows going every which way. I have been guilty, too many times, of doing the same thing,
disregarding philosopher Abraham Kaplan’s (1964) classic advice that most conceptual models,
instead of oversimplifying reality, do the opposite, namely undersimplifying it. Wendy helped
me break out of that box, so to speak, and I’m grateful to her.
The second is Norman Dale, friend, Antioch alum, editor, and keeper of intellectual
wisdom. Norman is truly one of a kind, as anyone fortunate enough to know him will attest. He
is an astute editor, spotting errors of fact and wording large and small. He is also insanely well-
read, as evidenced by the number of times his suggestions have enriched these pages. Norman’s
droll sense of humor kept my spirits up during the dreaded but inevitable periods of sluggishness
and self-doubt. How many authors can truly say that they look forward to feedback from their
editors? His marginal notes were priceless. Here’s an example. Reacting to a point about how
social systems often need to be “nudged” into creative activity, Norman wrote this: “Popping
into my mind here is a statement attributed to race car great, Mario Andretti: ‘If everything
seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.’”
I’m grateful to David Repetto, editor at Cambridge University Press, who saw potential in
the book, and to Emily Watton, who with endless patience helped this needy author get the
manuscript into publishable shape.
Finally I want to thank Maike Philipsen, wife, fellow scholar, and thought partner, who has
changed my life, sometimes in small but profound ways. For example, she introduced me to the
ritual of “sitting” twice a day, with or without an agenda. At first I would roll my eyes, try to
glance at my watch without her noticing, and think about what I would do when the sitting was
over. Now I sometimes have to remind her to “do the sitting.” My life with her has helped me
realize what it means to love deeply.
1

Ch apter 1

Why Deep Learning Is So Important …

and So Hard

So convenient it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to

find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
Benjamin Franklin

1.1 Why Deep Learning Is So Important

One of the tectonic changes of the early twenty-first century has been
the democratization of information. We are in an era unlike any
before: instead of having access to information limited to libraries and
media conglomerates, the Internet has made information from virtually
every source available to anyone with a computer, smart phone, Wi-Fi
signal, or data plan. At first, I applauded this development, and even wrote
an article in the early 1990s about how expert knowledge that once was
stored in university libraries had now transcended those physical bound-
aries. I predicted that this new “information democracy” would open up
minds everywhere and transform how we learn.
A quarter-century later, it turns out that I was half-right. Learning
indeed has transformed, but unfortunately in the wrong direction. The
fact is that in many ways the Internet has increased closed-mindedness and
made deep learning more difficult. Consider the unintended outcomes of
Twitter. Originally designed as a way to convey brief messages to a net-
work of followers, Twitter has become a form of “drive-by learning” in 240
characters. The US presidential election in 2016 spawned three new entries
in our common lexicon: fake news, inaccurate information propagated by
social media intended to solidify existing beliefs; post-truth, “relating to
or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in
shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief,” the
Oxford Dictionary word of 2016; and truth decay, the blurred line between

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2

2 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

fact and opinion. This latest entry comes from a sobering report by the
RAND Corporation (Kavanaugh & Rich, 2018). The authors write:
Where basic facts and well-supported analyses of these facts were once gen-
erally accepted –such as the benefit of using vaccines to protect health –
disagreement about even objective facts and well-supported analyses has
swelled in recent years. In addition, a growing number of Americans view
the U.S. government, media, and Academics with new skepticism. These
developments drive wedges between policymakers and neighbors alike. (p. 3)
Researchers at RAND have identified four major causes of truth decay: (1)
humans’ proclivity to cognitive bias (which I discuss later in this chapter);
(2) changes in the volume and dissemination of information, led by cable
news and social media, leading to “self-reinforcing feeds of information”;
(3) an educational system that has reduced the emphasis on civic awareness
and critical thinking; and finally, (4) polarization of the electorate into
isolated communities, each with its own narrative and worldview.
This is a toxic brew indeed. The worrisome implications of these trends
for our body politic have been covered extensively by many others. The
consensus opinion, held by social scientists, educators, and professional
journalists, seems to be that we need to learn to become better critical
thinkers (cf. Levitin, 2017), more skeptical of what we read and hear, and
better able to discriminate between truth and falsehood, between the
plausible and the implausible.
This all seems perfectly reasonable and it is backed up by some solid
research. For example, Pennycook and Rand (2019) found that the propen-
sity to think analytically –that is, rational assessment using accepted logic
and objective facts –plays a key role in the ability to ferret out misinfor-
mation and biased reporting, regardless of one’s political ideology. So far,
so good. The question is, where does the ability to think analytically come
from, and under what conditions are people motivated to use this skill –or
not? A convergence of research has demonstrated that analytic thinking,
while good for analyzing arguments, is of little help with what the authors
have called “bull***t receptivity”1 when the BS serves to strengthen one’s
own existing belief, and may in fact simply make us better at arguing our
case and dismissing others’ points of view (Mercier & Sperber, 2017). In
other words, better analytic thinking does not necessarily lead to better
learning, and may even inhibit it. The more important question is: what
has to happen in order for critical thinking to lead to deep learning? The
answers to these questions are complex and often counterintuitive, as we’ll
see shortly.

1.1 Why Deep Learning Is So Important 3

The stakes have never been higher. In his book Thank You for Being
Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, Thomas
Friedman, columnist for the New York Times, argues that the three lar-
gest forces on the planet –technology, globalization, and climate change –
are all accelerating at once (Friedman, 2016). Not just changing, not just
developing, but growing exponentially, all at the same time. For technology
he points to Moore’s Law, which states that the power of microchips will
double every two years. To date, the data bear this out and show no signs
of leveling off. Friedman reports that as of 2017, Intel’s latest microchip
improves performance 3,500 times compared to the first one introduced
in the early 1970s; improves efficiency by more than 90,000 times; and is
60,000 times cheaper!
Friedman (2016) defines globalization, the second of the accelerating
forces, as “the ability of any individual or company to compete, connect,
exchange, or collaborate globally” (pp. 126–127). Because technology has
made it possible to digitize everything, Friedman argues, keeping up with
the flow of information everywhere has become impossible.
Enter the spread of misinformation. In 2016, shortly before the US
presidential election, Aviv Ovadya, chief technologist at the Center for
Social Media Responsibility, saw something fundamentally wrong with
the Internet. Calling it the “Infocalypse,” Ovadya warned of an impending
crisis of misinformation. As reported by Buzzfeed: “Ovadya saw early what
many –including lawmakers, journalists, and Big Tech CEOs –wouldn’t
grasp until months later: Our platformed and algorithmically optimized
world is vulnerable –to propaganda, to misinformation, to dark targeted
advertising from foreign governments –so much so that it threatens to
undermine a cornerstone of human discourse: the credibility of fact”
(Warzel, 2018, n.p.). Due to the combined effects of technology and glo-
balization, the situation is likely to get worse: “ongoing advancements in
artificial intelligence and machine learning … can blur the lines between
fact and fiction … those things could usher in a future where, as Ovadya
observes, anyone could make it ‘appear as if anything has happened,
regardless of whether or not it did’ ” (Warzel, 2018, n.p.).
Ovadya’s alarmist predictions have been verified in a massive study
conducted by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Soroush Vosoughi and his colleagues analyzed about 125,000 of what they
called “rumor cascades” spread through Twitter. These were systematic-
ally sorted using various fact-checking devices into “true” and “false” cat-
egories. The researchers found that not only did false news reach many

4 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

more people than factual news, it also diffused “significantly farther, faster,
deeper, and more broadly” (Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, 2018, p. 4).
More than a quarter- century ago Charles Handy (1994) predicted
that the speed of technology would outpace our collective formation of
values around how to use it, and his prediction has come true. The social
implications of the “Infocalypse” phenomenon, namely continued “truth
decay” and accelerating social polarization, are disquieting, to say the
least. A particularly disturbing example is the recent Facebook scandal,
during which the data of an estimated 87 million people were improp-
erly shared with Cambridge Analytics for partisan political purposes.
The scandal effectively erased the naïve assumption that if Facebook gave
people tools, it was largely their responsibility to decide how to use them.
It was “wrong in retrospect” to have such a limited view, Mark Zuckerberg
later admitted: “Clearly we should have done more, and we will going
forward … Today, given what we know … I think we understand that we
need to take a broader view of our responsibility … [namely] that we’re
not just building tools, but that we need to take full responsibility for the
outcomes of how people use those tools as well” (BBC News, 2018).
The third of Friedman’s three accelerating forces is climate change.
Temperature and sea-level records are being broken every year. Wildfires
in California during the summer of 2018 broke all records for damage and
loss of life. As Friedman notes, while the power of information flow is
“reshaping the workplace and politics and geopolitics and the economy,
and even some of our political choices … the acceleration in Mother
Nature is reshaping the whole biosphere, the whole global ecological
system” (Friedman, 2016, p. 173).
Friedman’s advice on how to deal with these three accelerating forces
might initially seem counter-intuitive: he suggests that we hit the psycho-
logical equivalent of a pause button –that we stop and reflect, question
our assumptions, and entertain fresh questions that might lead to a change
of perspective. Thus the title Thank You for Being Late, inspired by the
author who realized he was given the gift of time while waiting for some
friends who were late for a breakfast date.
His advice, while provocative, is hardly new. As I will show later in this
book, making critical reflection a routine part of one’s life is an idea that
has been around for centuries. Socrates, in particular, source of the axiom
that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” believed reflection to be the
most important value in life. Philosopher Immanuel Kant (1998) wrote
in the eighteenth century that humans are distinguished from animals
by self-consciousness and the ability to reason. (As we’ll see shortly, this

1.1 Why Deep Learning Is So Important 5

Enlightenment notion of humans as rational creatures, for all its benefits,
has led to some of the most enduring myths about our “specialness” as a
species.) A quarter-century ago developmental psychologist Robert Kegan,
in his book In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life
(Kegan, 1994), wrote that the complexity of modern culture is evolving
faster than the capacity of our brains to deal with it. In other words, the
failure of our society to encourage the development of higher levels of con-
sciousness retards our ability to keep pace in any meaningful way with the
complex roles of modern life, as workers and learners, parents and part-
ners. To continue Kegan’s metaphor, the best and in fact the only way to
keep our heads above water, he argues, is to step back, adapt and reframe,
and to see all of these life forces as part of a larger system. While Kegan’s
focus is on individuals’ ability to cope with the larger social systems around
them, parallels to organizations are easy to make.
A good example of this is the work of Peter Vaill (1996), a central figure
in organization development, who popularized the metaphor “permanent
white water” as the continual state of turbulence facing most modern
organizations. Permanent white water has five characteristics, according
to Vaill:
1 . Permanent white water conditions are full of surprises.
2. Complex systems tend to produce novel problems.
3. Permanent white water conditions feature events that are “messy” and
ill structured.
4. White water events are often extremely costly.
5. Permanent white water conditions raise the problem of recurrence.
In his book Learning as a Way of Being, Vaill asserts that the most
important way to deal with white-water conditions is to become a more
effective learner, because otherwise we experience “feelings of lack of direc-
tion, absence of coherence, and loss of meaning” (pp. 16–17).
Being effective in permanent white water requires, primarily, a different
perspective about learning itself. The dominant educational model in
Western society, what Vaill calls “institutional learning,” is characterized
by several dubious assumptions:
1 . Learning is a means to a socially desirable end, not an end in itself.
2. Those in authority are in the best position to know what the means and
ends should be.
3. A subject matter is “out there” to be learned, and this subject matter
expands in predictable ways.

6 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

4. The major task for the learner therefore is to absorb this subject matter
as efficiently as possible.
Recall my reference to Chris Argyris’ article on “teaching smart people
how to learn” (1991) from the Preface to this book: the very success leaders
and other professionals have experienced with schooling helps explain the
problems they have with learning! Permanent white water poses lethal
challenges to the assumptions of institutional learning and requires a
different kind of learning altogether. Accelerating forces for change, causing
the sensation of being “in over our heads” in “permanent white water,” require
a different perspective about learning itself. Later on in this book I will
describe this different perspective in detail. But first I need to make the
case that getting there will not be easy.

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard

1.2.1 Farewell to the Rationalist Philosophy

Rationalist philosophers, going all the way back to Plato, then repopularized
during the Enlightenment, believed that solving problems was a matter of
employing rigorous logic and critical thinking. It turns out that rationalist
philosophers simply had it wrong. Pure reason, that is, thinking logic-
ally and drawing conclusions based upon the principles of empiricism,
is simply not how the brain works. We do not learn to understand the
world that way. Contrarian Enlightenment philosopher David Hume
([1739–40] 1969, p. 462) had it right when he claimed that “reason is, and
ought only to be, the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any
other office than to serve and obey them.” Hume believed that reason can
be understood only within the context of studying human nature itself.
Michael Shermer in his book The Believing Brain captures what we have
learned from research on human cognition in the past half-century: “We
form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, personal, emotional, and
psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family,
friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs
we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of intellectual
reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first;
explanations for beliefs follow” (Shermer, 2011, pp. 261 ff.).
Realizing that most beliefs have a nonrational basis, and that rationality
is introduced mostly to justify these beliefs, has been a hard pill to swallow
for me personally. I spent much of my adult life convinced that beliefs

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 7

are formed, and then revised, based upon facts and evidence. I believed
tacitly in what Jonathan Haidt (2012) has called the “rationalist delusion”–
the notion that reason and emotion are separate and incompatible, and
that truth will be served only when passion becomes the servant of the
logical mind. For years I took to heart John Adams’ dictum that “facts are
stubborn things.” Sure, I thought, people can get things wrong based upon
first impressions, but if you simply lay out the facts of the matter, minds
will change. I spent a lot of time during the early years of my career doing
evaluations of educational programs, and I learned about the limits of evi-
dence the hard way, seeing how, in case after case, decisions were made that
had little to do with the amount or quality of evidence presented. One par-
ticular case stands out in my mind. I was asked to be the external evaluator
of a professional development program for university faculty. I followed
all the usual procedures: pre-post surveys, observations of workshops,
follow-up interviews of participants. I provided carefully worded feedback
to the project team, which adopted some of my recommendations –the
supportive ones –and ignored the recommendations suggesting that they
ought to rethink some of the premises on which the program was built.
Looking back, I realize today that team members were too invested in
their ideas to change them in any significant way. “You’re the evaluator,”
I remember one of them telling me, “not one of the creative people.” It
took me years to develop a significantly different and distinctly more
nuanced view of the role of evidence in decision-making. It has been a
difficult, even painful, learning curve.

1.2.2 Why Personal Belief Systems Are So Resistant to Change

Understanding why we so resist changing our beliefs is critical to our
understanding of deep learning and how to effect it. The roots of this
understanding go back to the mid-twentieth century and Leon Festinger’s
cognitive dissonance theory (1957). Through a series of experiments,
Festinger demonstrated that we humans have a strong need to search for
internal consistency, so that whenever we experience inconsistency – for
example, discovering that the new car we just bought has been poorly
rated by Consumer Reports –we are highly motivated to reduce the mental
stress this causes by engaging in one of several adaptive responses. We
don’t like having the sneaking suspicion that we may have made a mis-
take, and so we ignore the report, or remember the time we followed the
consumer agency’s recommendation and purchased something we later
regretted. Another example is smokers who routinely experience cognitive

8 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

dissonance when they are exposed to information that reminds them just
how dangerous smoking is to one’s health –or when they are forced out-
side in freezing weather to take a smoke break. They might do the difficult
thing and quit smoking. Or they might:
• Justify their behavior by downplaying the source of the dissonance, e.g.,
“it’s ok to smoke once in a while.”
• Justify their behavior by adding new conditions, e.g., “if I stop smoking
I’ll just gain weight and that’s just as bad.”
• Ignore or deny the dissonant information altogether, e.g., “my grand-
father smoked like a chimney and he lived to be 95.”
As anyone who has ever tried to quit smoking knows all too well, it is
much easier to justify or ignore the behavior than to change it. In his
best-selling book Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), a masterful compil-
ation of decades of research on human cognition, Nobel laureate Daniel
Kahneman puts to rest the view held for centuries that humans will behave
in ways consistent with their economic interest. Kahneman demonstrates
the myriad ways we humans default to the “automatic,” fast and easy ways
of thinking –System 1 –rather than to the “effortful,” slow, and diffi-
cult System 2. System 1 is innate and required for survival. It allows us to
develop implicit understandings of the world around us, telling us what to
notice, including potential threats, and giving us the capacity to respond
without thinking. Imagine for example that you’re driving along a busy
street and notice out of the corner of your eye that the car approaching
the stop sign on your right appears to be going too fast to stop in time.
You do not construct a mental equation factoring in the car’s velocity and
distance to the intersection before you react –no, you realize instinctively
that the driver may not stop in time and if you do not hit the brakes there
is likely to be a collision. Your instincts keep you from potential harm.
The problem is that because System 1 is automatic, fast, and easy, we do
not let the effortful, slow, and difficult System 2 kick in often enough,
and this can lead to foolish and even dangerous decisions. We act as if all
decisions we face involve an impending crash. Moreover, as Kahneman
(2011) points out, we often lull ourselves into a kind of seductive compla-
cency: “We identify with System 2, the conscious, reasoning self that has
beliefs, makes choices, and decides what to think about and what to do,
[when in fact System 1] is where the action is” (p. 21). Contrary to our
smug assumptions about how rational we are, the “conscious, reasoning
self ” that we are so proud of takes over only when we make a conscious
effort. In the above example, someone might suggest to us that we may be

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 9

DISCORDANT
Risk INFORMATION
Patternicity appraisal

PERCEIVED Intuitive Cognitive CONFIRMATION

EXPERIENCE belief dissonance ("MYSIDE") BIAS

Causality Reductive
assumptions thinking Belief
persistence

Figure 1.1 Sources and outcome of confirmation (myside) bias

stopping too suddenly and risking a rear-end collision. We are then forced
into System 2, which considers whether we might be overreacting.
Kahneman and others have catalogued all of the cognitive mischief that
can result when we do not step back and question what is happening at
a subconscious, System 1 level. One source lists as many as 36 different
variations (Shermer, 2011, pp. 261 ff.). Luckily, many of these overlap, and
all are interconnected (see Figure 1.1). In the center is confirmation bias,
“the mother of all cognitive biases” (p. 259). To the left are the enablers
of confirmation bias and its underlying dynamics, and to the right are its
effects, including its most pernicious, the polarization of group attitudes.
Confirmation bias is likely “the most widely accepted error to come out
of the literature on human reasoning” (Evans, 1990, p. 41). The term was
coined, most believe, by psychologist Peter Wason (1960) in an experiment
testing the willingness of subjects to question their own hypotheses about
the mathematical rule governing a series of numbers, such as “2–4–6.” He
found that when provided with additional information, subjects were able
to build upon and complexify their initial hypotheses, but they hardly
ever tried to disconfirm these hypotheses. Wason termed this phenomenon
“confirmation bias.” Defined by Michael Shermer (2011) as “the tendency
to seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing
beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirming evidence” (p. 259), con-
firmation bias is a term that 10 years ago almost no one other than cogni-
tive psychologists had ever heard of, and now it is seemingly in everyone’s
vocabulary. (There’s a joke about this, of course, along these lines: “Since
I learned about confirmation bias I now see it everywhere.”)
Like so many other deep insights about the human condition, the
phenomenon of confirmation bias was recognized centuries ago. Back in
the early seventeenth century, Sir Francis Bacon was an early pioneer of
empiricism. In his book Novum Organum (New Instrument), he wrote:

10 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion … draws
all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater
number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it
either neglects or despises … in order that by this great and pernicious pre-
determination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.
(Quoted in Shermer, 2011, p. 294)
In an early and now-famous experiment on confirmation bias (Lord, Ross, &
Lepper, 1979), researchers recruited American undergraduate students
who either strongly supported or strongly opposed the death penalty and
presented them with two fabricated studies of its effectiveness. One study
showed the death penalty to be an effective deterrent, the other did not.
Supporters of the death penalty found the study that was consistent with
their belief to be convincing and well conducted; they judged the other
one to be poorly designed and carried out. Students who opposed the
death penalty had –you guessed it –the opposite reaction.
Numerous examples of confirmation bias exist in history. Among the
best is the “Dreyfus Affair.”2 In the late nineteenth century French officer
Alfred Dreyfus was accused, on the flimsiest of evidence, of giving military
secrets to Germany, a rival power at the time. All it took was an incrimin-
ating note that appeared to have handwriting similar to his. The fact that
Dreyfus was the lone high-ranking Jew in an anti-Semitic military culture
did not help matters any. He was convicted of treason, stripped of his
officer’s rank, and sentenced to life on Devil’s Island off the coast of South
America. The espionage continued, however, and evidence uncovered later
pointed to another officer, whose handwriting was a perfect match for the
note. On appeal none of this mattered. Dreyfus, it was argued, had had
the foresight to train others to carry on if he were caught, and had even
coached them in how to mimic his handwriting! It took the persistence
of a fellow officer who was willing to put aside his own anti-Semitism in
search of the truth to finally exonerate Dreyfus, but only after Dreyfus
had suffered in exile for more than four years, between March 1895 and
June 1899.
Other historical examples of confirmation bias have been shown by
people who are otherwise famed for their intelligence and creativity.
Thomas Edison, for example, continued to argue the superiority of his
invention, direct current (DC), well after alternate current (AC) had been
shown to be more powerful and efficient. Even more striking is the case of
Nobel laureate Linus Pauling. Pauling had long believed in the supposed
power of vitamin C to treat a variety of health problems, including ser-
ious diseases (Mercier & Sperber, 2017), and he was persuaded by a study

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 11

that seemed to show the effectiveness of vitamin C on cancer patients.
Pauling’s credibility as a scientist enabled a series of large-scale, tightly con-
trolled studies, none of which found any evidence to confirm the findings
of the earlier study. Nevertheless, instead of acknowledging that his initial
hypothesis might have been wrong, Pauling instead attacked the method-
ology of these follow-up studies, and he and his wife continued to take
high doses of vitamin C daily. Ironically, both eventually died of the very
illness they were convinced that vitamin C could prevent.3
As the Linus Pauling story so graphically illustrates, pure intelligence
and reasoning ability is no protection against confirmation bias. Neither is
being a respected social scientist. Robert George (2019) cites several cases
of studies where coding errors or outright fabrication somehow escaped
the vetting process prior to publication of research articles, and even when
discovered took years to retract. His culprit is confirmation bias:
Confirmation bias –and its converse, the aggravated denial of unfavored
results –flourishes when there is a lack of viewpoint diversity in schol-
arship. As such diversity has waned in the American academy, scholarly
journals and federal funding agencies have too often become intellectually
inbred. They sometimes constitute an academic version of interlocking
directorates on corporate boards, in which decision makers who share the
same outlook tend to view each other’s work with an insufficiently crit-
ical eye. Research that pleases everyone in the club sometimes doesn’t get
enough scrutiny, even when its results are strikingly implausible. (George,
2019, p. A15)
Available evidence suggests that reasoning ability can make confirmation
bias even stronger (Stanovich, West, & Toplak, 2013). This makes sense,
because as we will see shortly, we use our reasoning skills to justify existing
beliefs and to pick holes in those that differ from ours.
Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber conducted a systematic review of the
research on confirmation bias and concluded –convincingly, to my mind –
that a more accurate term would be “myside bias”:
People have no general preference for confirmation. What they find difficult
is not looking for counterevidence or counterarguments in general, but only
when what is being challenged is their own opinion … Reasoning system-
atically works to find reasons for our ideas and against ideas we oppose.
It always takes our side. As a result, it is preferable to speak of a myside
bias rather than of a confirmation bias. (Mercier & Sperber, 2017, p. 218,
emphasis in original)
Confirmation (or myside) bias helps us understand the persistence of belief,
that is, holding onto one’s original belief –such as avoiding vaccinations,

12 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

purchasing guns for “protection,” and drinking unpasteurized milk –in
the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. In their provocatively
titled book Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us,
Sara and Jack Gorman (Gorman & Gorman, 2017) cite these and many
other examples. Why, one might rightly ask, are people so stubborn?
Consider the flow of Figure 1.1. An individual experiences cognitive
dissonance; it is not just a mental puzzler but a gut-level sense of dis-
orientation that leads to a desire for resolution and a return to homeo-
stasis. I have given several examples already of cognitive dissonance; here
is another. A young mother sees a posting on Facebook from a close
friend that is linked to a website purporting to show the link between
childhood immunization (specifically the vaccine for measles, mumps,
and rubella, or MMR) and the development of autism. Alarmed by the
mental image of her young son becoming autistic, she thanks her friend
and clicks on a link to a video featuring a Hollywood celebrity who has a
child with autism. The celebrity interviews other parents of autistic chil-
dren, all of whom have been immunized, and points to a “scientific” study
claiming to establish a cause–effect relationship. The video ends with a
chart showing the profits pharmaceutical firms make from manufacturing
the vaccines, darkly insinuating a conspiracy to suppress the evidence of
harm. “That does it,” the mother thinks, “I need to protect my children
from Big Pharma.” She now has an intuitive theory about the relationship
between MMR and autism, made stronger by the desire to protect her
son, setting her up for probable confirmation/myside bias. Some months
later the child’s pediatrician suggests that it’s time for the boy to get the
MMR vaccine. The mother declines, whereupon the physician warns her
about the risks of these diseases, giving her data showing how dangerous
and even life-threatening they can be. Immediately, the young mother
experiences the same sensation she had when she saw the video of autistic
children and recalls how she imagined her own son suffering the same fate.
She does not have a similar image of her son with measles and holds firm
to her decision. After the office visit she watches the video again, and does
not look for any readily available materials challenging the validity of the
video. The mother’s fear speaks louder than data.
This vignette is an example of what has become known as the “Dunning-
Kruger effect”: the failure of those who lack expertise to accurately appraise
their own knowledge compared to the expertise of experts (Dunning, 2011).
A study reported in 2018 on the influence of the Dunning-Kruger effect on
beliefs about the relationship between childhood vaccination and autism
contains some illuminating findings (Motta, Callaghan, & Sylvester, 2018).

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 13

After surveying more than 1,000 US adults, the authors discovered that
more than a third of respondents thought they knew as much or more than
either doctors or scientists about the subject; those with the highest levels
of overconfidence also knew the least about it! Researchers also found that
overconfidence was related to opposition to mandatory vaccination policy
and increased support for the role that nonexperts should play in deter-
mining such policies. The authors did not find that overconfidence was
significantly related to a loss of confidence in experts, but rather that it
tended to give more credence to the testimonies of celebrities and other
nonexperts. Still, the researchers concluded that Dunning-Kruger effects
should be “carefully considered in future research on anti-vaccine policy
attitudes” (Motta et al., 2018, p. 274).
As Figure 1.1 indicates, intuitive theories can arise from a variety
of sources. I have just illustrated one of these, the formation of causal
assumptions. Humans specialize in reasoning about how the world works,
about causality: why something happened, what caused it. Other sources
include lived experience, patternicity, and reductive thinking. All of us
experience seeing the sun “coming up” in the morning and “going down”
in the evening; for some this leads to a mental model of the sun revolving
around the earth, despite what we learned in elementary school. Our per-
ceptual experience can easily override conceptual models.
Another contributor to intuitive theories is “patternicity,” or “the ten-
dency to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaning-
less noise” (Shermer, 2011, p. 60). We are hard-wired to find patterns in
incoming data. The idea that some things are random is hard to handle.
And yet, the laws of probability make even unlikely events happen rather
often. There’s a clever little law called “Littlewood’s Law of Miracles”
(Lane, 2018). It goes this way: imagine the odds of something happening
are a million to one; now imagine that we perceive one bit of information
per second. If you calculate the number of seconds in a month, more than
a million, this means that you will experience a “miracle” on the average
of once a month! You run into someone from your high school graduating
class 20 years ago on a street in Paris; you see the image of the Virgin Mary
on a piece of toast; and so on.
Patternicity is often quite benign, as when we say a basketball player
has a “hot hand,” when in fact the laws of probability dictate that sooner
or later that player will hit five shots in a row. Patternicity becomes more
serious when the suggestion that an event is “random” creates the uncom-
fortable feeling that we lack control over our environment. We therefore
have evolved to look for cause–effect relationships, even where none exist.

14 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

Given incomplete or unrepresentative data, we tend to jump to invalid
conclusions. A common rule in statistics is that correlation does not equal
causation. Some years ago, when teaching a research methods course,
I decided to test the students’ comprehension of this principle, and so
brought in a newspaper article from the day before, stating that researchers
had found a relationship between children’s reading scores and whether
they normally had breakfast in the morning. I casually asked the students,
“So what are the educational implications of this finding?” You guessed
it: Make sure kids have breakfast so they’ll learn better! Now just imagine
how many other explanations, how many potential intervening variables,
there might be for this.
Our discomfort with the random and uncontrollable is why terrorism
works: the fear that something that could strike anywhere at any time is
more acute than the worry that we might be involved in a traffic accident,
even though the latter is much more likely. In their book Denying to the
Grave, the Gormans provide a number of examples of how we persist-
ently overestimate small risks and underestimate large ones. One of these
is the widespread concern over the Ebola virus, which posed a negligible
risk to those living in the Western Hemisphere. One can almost feel their
exasperation when they write, “How many people smoked a cigarette or
consumed a sugary breakfast cereal while reading about the threat they
faced in catching Ebola?” (Gorman & Gorman, 2017, p. 2).
Another contributor to intuitive belief is reductive thinking. The propen-
sity to default to System 1 leads to the avoidance of complexity. As Steven
Sloman and Philip Fernbach put it, “We ignore complexity by overesti-
mating how much we know how things work, by living life in the belief
that we know how things work even when we don’t” (Sloman & Fernbach,
2017, p. 35). This leads to the Dunning-Kruger effect –the “illusion of
understanding,” tolerating complexity by failing to understand it –and
thus, for example, the seductive appeal of Twitter, reducing complex issues
to a series of sound-bites, not that hard to understand in this era of com-
plexity and rapid change.
Again, Daniel Kahneman’s research (2011) helps explain the pervasive-
ness of reductive thinking in our lives. Our natural drive to make meaning
of the world around us (which I explore more fully in the next chapter)
leads to forming mental models of how the world works. Inevitably,
because these mental models represent our constructions of reality, they
lead us to think in terms of categories: “chairs,” “buildings,” “planets.”
We get into trouble when we assume homogeneity within categories and
ignore the diversity, which leads to stereotyping.

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 15

Intuitive beliefs, as Andrew Shtulman notes in his book Scienceblind, are
a “double-edged sword”:
On one hand, they broaden our perspective of the phenomena they seek to
explain and refine our interactions with those phenomena because holding
an intuitive theory is better than holding no theory at all. On the other
hand, they close our minds to ideas and observations that are inconsistent
with those theories and they keep us from discovering the true nature of
how things work … To get the world right, we cannot simply refine our
intuitive theories; we must dismantle them and rebuild them from their
foundations. (Shtulman, 2017, p. 11)
To review the chapter to this point: Intuitive beliefs arise from perceived
experience. We attempt to make easy meaning of experience through
patternicity, causal assumptions, and reductive thinking. When presented
with information that is discordant with these beliefs we experience cogni-
tive dissonance, which System 1 thinking encourages us to resolve through
confirmation bias.
Confirmation bias is not, unfortunately, a one-off phenomenon. As
suggested earlier in this chapter, and as indicated in Figure 1.1, confirm-
ation bias promotes belief persistence, holding on to one’s original belief
in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. In their fascinating book,
The Enigma of Reason (2017), Mercier and Sperber explore what they
call a “double enigma”: why did human reason evolve to be so complex
and different from other animals? And if evolution is the result of useful
adaptations to the environment, then why did human reason evolve in such
a flawed way? Mercier and Sperber, both cognitive scientists, argue that
intuition and reasoning are not separate phenomena but that reasoning
is a kind of “intuitive inference.” “Reasons,” they write, “play a central
role in the after-the-fact explanation and justification of our intuitions,
not in the process of intuitive inference itself ” (Mercier & Sperber, 2017,
p. 117). Reason, therefore, is intuition about reasons, used in interactions
with others for the purpose of producing arguments in favor of “myside”
and evaluating critically the reasons of the “otherside.”
So how is this environmentally adaptive? Mercier and Sperber argue that
humans are unique in how we have evolved complex forms of cooperation.
Using what they call an “interactionist” perspective, they point to a body
of research undertaken by them and many others to argue that human
reasoning is ineffective, even counterproductive, when done alone. As we
have seen already, solitary reasoning often fails to correct intuitive beliefs,
and, due to various forms of confirmation bias, can even make matters
worse. Reasoning works best when it takes place when interacting with

16 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

others. “Take reason out of the interactive context in which it evolved,” the
authors note, “and nothing guarantees that it will yield adaptive results”
(Mercier & Sperber, 2017, p. 10).
But how can “cooperation” emerge from interactions characterized by
one side generating arguments for their own beliefs, while also criticizing
the validity of beliefs on the other side –and while the other side is doing
the same thing? Mercier and Sperber (2017) point to a substantial body of
evidence that if a group has a common interest in finding the “truth,” or
has a shared interest in solving a problem, argumentation generally arrives
at the “best” decision. But this, I would argue, is a big if. Jonathan Haidt,
psychologist and expert in moral reasoning, has demonstrated how imper-
vious moral judgments are to opposing arguments. No matter how strong
they are, rebuttals of one’s moral judgments by others will seldom change
their minds (Haidt, 2012). As persuasive as arguments for the interactionist
approach may be, they fail to account for how reason might deal effectively
with intuitive beliefs that have a strong affective basis. When someone is
emotionally invested in a belief, especially when that belief is part of one’s
identity, pure rationality fails to deliver.
Belief persistence is reinforced in two ways, according to Mercier and
Sperber (2017): by the “lazy production” of supporting reasons and the
“strong production” of opposing reasons. Just as we are not very good at
acknowledging our own biases, we are very good at recognizing biases in
others. We are able to come up with justifications for our beliefs quickly
and easily. For example, if one opposes capital punishment s/he will be
able to generate a list of reasons for that view with little trouble: it’s not
an effective deterrent; it costs the state more than life imprisonment; it
systematically discriminates against those without means to hire quality
legal representation; it forestalls the possibility of correcting a potential
injustice; it is a barbaric practice that most civilized nations have foresworn
long ago. (As an opponent of capital punishment myself, I generated this
list in less than a minute.) I have a much harder time critiquing my pos-
ition, and it takes longer. In the amount of time it took to generate all of
the supporting reasons, I could come up with only one in opposition: that
the state ought to have an ultimate penalty available for the most heinous
of crimes. If, on the other hand, I were in a discussion with someone on the
other side, I’d be able to shoot down virtually all of that person’s arguments
(at least to my satisfaction), and feel pretty good about doing so.
A point that I will make over and over in this book is that we overempha-
size the role of cognition and downplay the role of emotion, both in how
we learn and in how we change. Belief persistence is not just a function of a

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 17

highly evolved ability to argue in a social context. It is also a function of psy-
chological defense mechanisms that protect our egos from attack. One of
these is what Ori and Ron Brafman have called “loss aversion” (Brafman &
Brafman, 2008). Simply stated, “we experience the pain associated with a
loss much more vividly than we do the joy of experiencing a gain” (p. 18).
Loss aversion explains why casino owners make so much money: they count
on customers chasing rather than cutting their losses. Loss aversion also
accounts for what Zachary Shore calls “exposure anxiety,” one of several
reasons he cites for why otherwise-smart people make dumb –and in some
cases disastrous –decisions. Shore explains: “Exposure anxiety is more than
just a fear. It is a belief that the failure to act in a manner perceived as firm
will result in the weakening of one’s position” (Shore, 2008, p. 14). It is, in
other words, fear of loss of face. I leave the reader to imagine just how many
times this very fear has led political and military leaders to blunder into
decisions that history has judged to be complete disasters.4
Developmental psychologists Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey have done
some groundbreaking research on the psychological mechanisms behind
the emotional grip that irrational beliefs have on us. They call these
mechanisms, collectively, “immunity to change (ITC),” arguing that real
change is not just a matter of overcoming old beliefs but rather unearthing,
naming, and facing what they call “competing commitments” (Kegan &
Lahey, 2009). Kegan and Lahey chose the term “immunity” deliberately,
intending to show that just as our bodies have complex immune systems
designed to protect us from disease and other threats to our physical well-
being, we also have psychological immune systems that serve to ward off
anxiety. These immunities, Kegan and Lahey argue, are often dysfunc-
tional, keeping us from making the developmental changes we sincerely
want to make. Because immunities are subconscious, we are unaware of
their existence and their power over us, and we thus experience anxiety,
not just from change but also at the thought of change. Thus, when we
engage in a self-improvement effort such as losing weight, we find our-
selves unable to stick with the goal we have set for ourselves, ending up
with frustration and self-blaming.
Kegan and Lahey demonstrate how these immunity systems can be
changed, situating their model in constructive- developmental theory
and sharing examples, both personal and organizational, from their own
practices. They introduce a five-step exercise designed to uncover the
unconscious immunities, make them conscious, and create experiences
that mitigates their hold on us. I will be exploring this process as a tool for
deep learning later in this book.

18 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

Kegan and Lahey’s work, along with that of the other scholars cited in
this chapter, should reveal the critical importance of paying attention to
the role of emotion in learning. We need to become more critical thinkers,
yes: in both school and in our adult experience we need to learn how to
step back, evaluate facts, and form evidence-based conclusions. But we
also need to learn that we will not always behave that way in real life. Much
of what cognitive science has taught us over the years is what individual
humans can’t do –what our limitations are. Ignoring the power of these
limitations leads to the sort of self-delusion that in turn leads to myside
bias, belief persistence, and ultimately the pernicious effects of polarized
attitudes, of the sort described at the beginning of this chapter. What we
need are useful, research-based ways of dealing with and overcoming these
limitations, the central focus of this book. First, however, I want to review
how the brain works.

Notes
1 The authors reference Frankfurt’s (On Bullshit, 2005) intriguing distinction
between lying and bullshit: “Whereas lying involves a deliberate attempt
at concealing the truth, which implies a concern for the truth, bullshit is
constructed absent concern for the truth” (p. 9). The idea of doing something
about the creation and spread of BS seems to be catching on, exemplified by
a popular course at the University of Washington, “Calling Bullshit: Data
Reasoning in a Digital World” (McWilliams, 2019).
2 The Dreyfus case has been cited in several sources as a dramatic illustration
of confirmation bias. One of the most engaging is a TED talk by Julia Galef
(2016).
3 Pauling did however live to be 93.
4 A good place to start would be Barbara Tuchman’s classic, The March of Folly:
From Troy to Vietnam (1984).

Ch apter 2

How We Learn
A Short Primer

Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.

Mark Twain
So far in this book I have argued that understanding deep learning and
how to promote it is both important and difficult, especially in today’s
turbulent world and with the seductive appeal of drive-by learning. In this
chapter I go back to the basics of human learning, focusing less on its flaws
and more on the process itself. My goal is to lay the groundwork and pro-
vide an evidentiary basis for proposals I make later in the book.
In many ways, what we know today about how people learn has
been a matter of rediscovering some old truths. Consider the following
maxims:
Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself. Chinese proverb
What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing. Aristotle
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within
himself. Galileo
Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
Benjamin Franklin
Think about these for a moment. What do they have in common?
If you are like most people, you will observe that all four statements
speak to learning as an activity that requires intentionality and action, and
is best achieved when that learning is facilitated more than dictated. Recent
research in human cognition has largely confirmed the ancient wisdom,
but has also challenged it in two ways: first it has exposed the limits of
rationalism, as we saw in the previous chapter; second and relatedly, it
has demonstrated the critical partnership between cognition and emotion.1
I will get to both of these shortly; first I need to provide a very brief foun-
dation with some basic neuroanatomy.2

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20 How We Learn
Frontal lobe Parietal lobe
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l gy
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Precentral gyrus
fro us
gyr

rus
rior
upe on tal

l gy
S
dl e fr Occipital lobe

tra
Mid

opercularis

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Sup

Pars
tri ram

Ang
an Par

st
a
gyr rginal

Po
gu s

ular
la us
P ris
orb ars

occipital gyrus
ita
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lis
yr
Superior temporal gyrus
us
Inferior

Lateral
frontal
gyrus Middle temporal gyrus

Inferior temporal gyrus

Dorsal (superior) Temporal lobe

Anterior Posterior

Ventral (inferior)

Figure 2.1 The human brain

Source: Blackbum and Hwozdek (2016). Licensed under CCO 1.0,
creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.

2.1 Inside Your Brain

For an organ that consumes so much energy, generates such enormous
activity, and holds the keys to our individual identities, our brains are
smaller than most people think: they weigh only about four pounds in
the average adult, and are small enough to hold in the palm of your hand.
Thanks to developments in positron-emission tomography (PET) and
magnetic resource imaging (MRI), today’s neuroscientists are better able
to connect structure with function. The largest portion of the brain is the
cerebrum, responsible for thinking, body movement, interpreting stimuli,
and memory. The cerebrum has four regions, or lobes, each with a specific
function. (See Figure 2.1)
The occipital lobe, at the very back of the brain, is where visual stimuli
are processed; the temporal lobe, near the ears, deals with language, sound,
and understanding speech; the parietal lobe, at the top of the brain and
the back of the head, handles motor skills, movement, and orientation;
and the frontal lobe, right behind the forehead, deals with intellectual
tasks, planning, and decision-making. It is the last to develop, not fully

2.1 Inside Your Brain 21

Caudate nucleas

Mammillary
body

Figure 2.2 The limbic system

Source: Image courtesy of PublicDomainPictures, Pixabay.

until early adulthood. The thin outside surface of the cerebrum, about the
thickness of a grapefruit skin, is the cerebral cortex containing about 100
billion neurons, which essentially manage the work of the brain.
Deep inside our brains is the limbic system, which manages emotions
(see Figure 2.2).
Among the key structures of the limbic system, two are most respon-
sible for learning. One is the amygdala, which seeks to make meaning of
experience, mostly at an unconscious level. In situations of uncertainty it
stimulates the frontal lobe to kick in, encouraging us to think it through.
The other is the hippocampus, which is more concerned with memory. It
takes in information from the senses, packages and processes the separate
stimuli, and then sends them to the cortex where the information becomes
part of long-term memory.

22 How We Learn
Finally, just below the cerebrum is the cerebellum, the primary source
of motor control (Wright et al., 2016). The cerebellum is where som-
atic learning resides, the source of “muscle memory.” When a behavior is
practiced over and over again, the sequence of actions required becomes
automatic, such as typing on a keyboard, driving a car with a manual
transmission, or staying upright on skis.
This has been a drastically truncated tour of the brain, and here is
why: While technology has enabled scientists to map various sensations to
certain regions based on analyses of neural firings, as the technology has
become more sophisticated, linking regions with functions has become
murkier. For example, the cerebellum used to be thought of as almost a
separate organ, representing more primitive evolutionary stages; now it
appears to play a role in various aspects of cognition, including language.
This makes understanding the interplay between sensation and meaning-
making a more complex challenge. For example, where do emotions come
from? How are they triggered? How are they regulated? The answers to
these questions are still a matter of debate, and some of the evidence may
seem counterintuitive. More on this shortly, but first I want to provide
some further context.

2.1.1 The physiology of learning

Here are some amazing statistics about how we learn to make meaning of
the world around us. A child is born with about 100 billion neurons, all
he or she will ever have. If these neurons are energized they will become
part of the brain’s circuitry, but they will die if unstimulated. A newborn’s
neurons have relatively few connections, or synapses, between them, but
these increase rapidly as a function of the child’s experience with his or
her environment. In the first years of life a child will have created many
thousands of synapses with each neuron, so that by the age of 2 he or she
will have already created the same number of synaptic connections as a
fully-grown adult. Now here is the amazing part: by about age 6 our brains
have created twice that number, and are twice as active; but then after age
8 or 10 or so, the number of synapses gradually decreases, until by about
age 18 we’ve gone back to the same number we had when we were age 2.3
(Not that we go back to thinking like a 2-year-old, of course: the adult
brain retains a remarkable degree of flexibility, and if exercised, continues
to mold its physical structure well into old age.) So, I ask, why is this? How
does this happen? Why is so much synaptic pruning going on after early

2.1 Inside Your Brain 23
childhood? My guess is that the reader’s first response is, “school!” Formal
schooling indoctrinates us on what to think and how –basically what is
important to know. And yes, there is certainly some truth to this. But
there is a biological answer, demonstrated by a lot of cross-cultural research
(Shatz, 1992). Consider for a moment the life of a 6-year-old. Everything is
interesting, everything is important. Kids that age are veritable sponges of
information, as every parent knows. Now imagine what it would be like if
adults had the same synaptic connections they had at age 6, and imagine
the mental chaos. Our brains use middle and late childhood to figure out
how the world works by reinforcing some networks and letting others die
out. Only those that are reinforced survive. We create individual mental
models, the key to survival dating back to our earliest days as humans, to
make meaning out of chaos.
Unfortunately, meaning making can take us in strange directions, as we
saw in Chapter 1. Here are some more examples:
In 2008 the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific
Literacy at the University of Michigan put together a short quiz and
administered it to a random sample of 2,500 US citizens. One of the
questions was, “How long does it take for the earth to go around the
sun?” The three choices were: “one day,” “one month,” and “one year.”
Only 67% of respondents had the correct answer. The clear inference here
is that about one person in every three walking down the street doesn’t
know a basic fact about our solar system –that the earth is a planet
taking a year to revolve around the sun –even though virtually every kid
in school has to make a model of the solar system at one time or other.
(King, 2015)
Now in case these researchers just picked an unusually dull group to survey,
consider this: A researcher gets the bright idea of going around with a video
camera after Harvard’s commencement exercises, when new graduates are
standing around looking smug, taking photos with their parents. She sticks
the camera in their faces, asking common-sense questions like, “Why is
it warmer in the summer than in winter?” Out of 23 randomly chosen
graduates (plus some alumni and faculty), 21 were factually incorrect, most
stating that seasons are caused because the earth is closer to the sun in the
summer and further away in the winter. One of the students answering
incorrectly had taken several physics courses at Harvard, including one in
“planetary motion”! (Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 1987).
These people learned the same stuff about the solar system in elementary
school that the people in the Michigan survey did, so what is going on?

24 How We Learn
It turns out that when asked to reconsider their answers, most did in fact
get it right; but they had seized upon the first mental model that came
to mind, which is the simple principle that the closer an object is to a
heat source, the hotter it will get. Retrieving a more complicated mental
model, about how the earth is tilted on its axis, which affects the angle of
the sun’s rays, is harder. These people were, in essence, relying on System
1 thinking, when what they really needed to do was to pull up System 2
(Kahneman, 2011).
Here is a short thought experiment. Read through the following care-
fully. What is being described?
A newspaper is better than a magazine, and on a seashore is a better
place than a street. At first, it is better to run than walk. Also, you
may have to try several times. It takes some skill but it’s easy to learn.
Even young children can enjoy it. Once successful, complications are
minimal. Birds seldom get too close. One needs lots of room. Rain
soaks in very fast. Too many people doing the same thing can also cause
problems. If there are no complications, it can be very peaceful. A rock
will serve as an anchor. If things break loose from it, however, you will
not get a second chance.

Give up? The answer is in the endnote.4

Now it all seems obvious. The reason it was not so obvious right away is
that a mental model did not exist in which to put the description.
The above example illustrates how important the process of meaning-
making is. Every time we are presented with new information, we first
attempt to fit it into an existing knowledge structure, a whole net-
work of categories that our brains have organized for us. If a category
immediately occurs to us, that is where the new information goes,
and that is what Daniel Kahneman (2011) means by “thinking fast,”
or System 1. The same principle applies to recalling information, such
as in the Harvard example above. Without any clues, however, our
brains scramble to find a connection, and System 2 thinking kicks in.
As Kahneman points out, System 2 makes our brains work harder, and
so our usual preference is to default to System 1 whenever possible;
therefore, he advises, we must learn to recognize situations in which
mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when
the stakes are high.
Fair enough; but the problem is, how can we do that when our intui-
tive biases exist at a subconscious level? How do we keep from becoming
ensnared by cognitive traps without even knowing it?

2.2 Experiential Learning Theories 25

2.2 Experiential Learning Theories

Key to addressing these questions is the nature of human experience. The
central role of experience in learning, as shown by the quotes that opened
this chapter, has been appreciated for centuries. Paradoxically, how-
ever, the period known as the Enlightenment, ushered in by Galileo and
others in the seventeenth century, also ushered in one of its more dubious
achievements, what is known as “Cartesian thinking,” named after phil-
osopher Rene Descartes’ notion of dualism, that “there is a great difference
between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible,
and the mind is entirely indivisible … the mind or soul of man is entirely
different from the body” (quoted in McNerney, 2011, pp. 1–2).
We have already seen in Chapter 1 the mischief this kind of purely ration-
alist thinking can cause. Some serious cracks began to appear in dualistic,
Cartesian thinking in the late nineteenth century with the writing of phil-
osopher William James, and later John Dewey, both pioneers of American
pragmatism. In a landmark essay, “What Is an Emotion?” James debunked
the thinking that emotion is simply a by-product of cognition:
Our natural way of thinking about standard emotions is that the mental
perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and
that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My thesis
on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of
the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the
emotion. (James, 1884, pp. 4–5, emphasis in original)
In other words, how we feel about something is not determined by how we
think about it, but just the reverse. The sensation –the experience –comes
first, followed by the brain’s interpretation and meaning-making of that
experience. With his anticipation of the function of the amygdala as the
chief interpreter of sensation, James demonstrated in this essay a remark-
able ability to foresee advances in neuroscience by nearly a hundred years.
He also understood the key role of emotion in human judgment, and
how it can often lead us astray. In the uniquely Victorian vernacular of his
time he wrote, “peculiarly conformed pieces of the world’s furniture will
fatally call forth most particular mental and bodily reactions, in advance
of, and often in direct opposition to, the verdict of our deliberate reason
concerning them” (p. 4).
Later in the early twentieth century philosopher/ educator/engaged
citizen John Dewey laid out a comprehensive theory of experien-
tial learning, first in 1916 (Dewey [1916] 1985) and revised 22 years later

26 How We Learn
(Dewey, [1938] 1997). Dewey, too, recognized the key role of emotion in
human judgment, seeing it as the main entry into what he called “a life of
thought.” He envisioned the human mind not as a storehouse of ideas but
as how humans make meaning of experience, and thus manage and lead
lives of useful activity. Early in his career, spurred by such social upheavals
as the Pullman Strike in 1893 –a widespread work stoppage and boycott of
the railways that turned violent –Dewey turned to schools as democracy’s
best hope. Children’s “inner nature,” he felt, grows from within but must
be completed through relationships, and thus schools must be a reflec-
tion of life. To the degree that schools are laboratories for living, society
progresses toward greater democracy and social justice. Dewey’s ideas were
central to what became known as the “progressive education” movement
(Martin, 2002). In the late 1930s, following attacks on freedom of expres-
sion in schools and universities in the United States, Dewey published
Experience and Education (1938), a powerful restatement of the role of
experience in learning. First he debunked the misunderstood notion that
children, and people generally, “learn by doing.” Some experiences, he
averred, can be “mis-educative,” that is, can be “unintelligent doing” that
results in learning the wrong things. An “educative” experience, on the
other hand, “arouses curiosity, strengthens initiative, and sets up desires
and purposes that are sufficiently intense to carry a person over dead places
in the future” (Dewey, [1938] 1997, p. 38). In this one sentence, Dewey
encapsulates core ideas of deep learning, and I will be returning to his work
extensively later in this book.
Part of what Dewey meant by “educative experience” is what has become
known as experiential learning theory, introduced by psychologist David
Kolb (Kolb, 1984). In his “experiential learning cycle,” Kolb essentially
turned formal education upside down: Instead of building knowledge by
learning abstract concepts and then applying them, what radical educator
Paulo Freire (1970) called the “banking model” of formal education, what
the learner does in real life is to build knowledge by experiencing an event,
reflecting on it, developing an abstract interpretation of it, and finally
acting on this interpretation, thus generating further experience, reflec-
tion, theorizing, and action (Figure 2.3).
This model, probably because it is simple, plausible and easy to grasp,
has been used and adapted thousands of times in every conceivable
learning context over the years, and, inevitably, due to its simplicity and
intuitive appeal, has also been the target of harsh criticism. Still, Kolb’s
learning cycle, with its clear connections to neuroscience research and to
emerging models of adult development, has had an enormous impact on

2.2 Experiential Learning Theories 27

Figure 2.3 Experiential learning cycle

how we think about learning and about connecting learning with action,
and has led to such paradigm-changing epistemologies as action research
(cf. McNiff, 2017), and practice-based research (Jarvis, 1999).
One offshoot of the renewed interest in the interaction between action
and cognition is research into embodied cognition, “the idea that the mind
is not only connected to the body but that the body influences the mind”
(McNerney, 2011). The key to understanding embodied learning that we
do not just learn from experience, we also learn in experience. It is a felt
reaction to experience that feels “right” or “wrong,” and in adults this reac-
tion can be quite nuanced. For example, the positive feeling created by
the friendly behavior of a gracious hostess may lead someone who doesn’t
know her well to perceive her as “sincere,” while in contrast, someone who
has experienced her cordiality as superficial in prior experiences would
think of the same conduct as “smarmy.” Cognition that does not occur
from and in experience will not create learning for experience. Sharan
Merriam and her colleagues cite as an ironic example college courses that
take on issues of social justice but only in an abstract, disembodied way,
leading to students becoming quite sophisticated in critical social analysis
but unable to apply these skills in real life –or even in simulations of real
life (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007).
Aristotle understood the importance of embodied learning centuries ago,
when he described three kinds of knowing: episteme, knowing what and
why; techne, knowing how; and phronesis, knowing when. Quite simply, we
may know a lot about issues of power and inequality, for example, and be

28 How We Learn
skilled at knowing how to analyze them, but we may not know when and
in what context to use these skills most effectively. One of the most dra-
matic examples of phronesis is the story of a nomadic tribe of “sea gypsies”
in Thailand (Freiler, 2008). Most were able to survive the catastrophic tsu-
nami of 2004, unlike thousands of others. When asked how they survived
when so many others did not, they replied that they sensed a change in
their environment, both in the sea and in other living things, that caused
them to take higher ground before the tsunami actually struck. Another
example is what is known in mining as “pit sense.” In the dangerous setting
of a coal mine, miners must learn to detect minute changes in their envir-
onment as a way of constantly assessing their safety; tellingly, this way
of knowing depends not only on the miners’ individual perceptions but
also the senses of others in the mine (Freiler, 2008). Note how in both of
these examples knowing when is triggered by a sensory experience, which is
interpreted intuitively as a potential threat. Knowing when an experience
feels “right” can be powerful as well. In baseball an experienced base-stealer
will often know when to try for second base because it just “feels” right. An
expert poker player will know when it is “right” to bluff with a weak hand.
Phronesis is, in essence, practical wisdom, the ability to know when to rely
on intuition (System 1) and when to make the effort to dig more deeply
(System 2) (Kahneman, 2011). Practical wisdom is a topic I will return to
later in the book.
Intuition, as I have pointed out numerous times already, is necessary for
our survival; and it can also keep us from making wise choices. Given that
intuitive biases exist at a subconscious level, what then has to happen in
order for them to surface and be acted upon?
It turns out that we do have a solid theory about this, known as trans-
formative learning theory, developed about the same time as experiential
learning theory, and now arguably the dominant theory in adult learning.
According to its originator Jack Mezirow, adults learn to become “crit-
ically aware of how and why our presuppositions … constrain the way
we perceive, understand, and feel about our world; of reformulating these
assumptions to permit a more inclusive, discriminating, permeable, inte-
grative perspective, and of making decisions or otherwise acting upon these
new understandings” (Mezirow, 2000, p. 14). And what transcends the
cognitive traps that block the critical awareness that Mezirow describes?
What nudges us from System 1 into System 2? Mezirow (2000) asserts that
adults can learn deeply only by experiencing what he calls a “disorienting
dilemma,” a problem that does not fit into existing mental models (or
“meaning schemes,” as Mezirow called them). You experience something

2.2 Experiential Learning Theories 29

that catches you off guard, off balance, something you can’t quite make
sense of, something you can’t easily make meaning of. And it is too
disturbing to ignore. The disorientation causes System 2 to kick in and you
are forced to examine your assumptions and create, through reflection, a
new mental model, thus transforming your set of knowledge perspectives.
Mezirow suggests that while transformative learning can happen within
the individual, it is most powerful in group dialogue, where people can
try on the perspectives of others. Disorienting dilemmas can be small,
like having to find your way around a strange city when your GPS isn’t
working, or they can be large, such as facing life-changing events like the
loss of a job or a serious health or relationship problem.
Mezirow’s theory has been exhaustively studied and criticized. Available
empirical evidence does support the notion that changes in one’s meaning
perspectives are triggered by a disorienting dilemma, followed by a set of
learning strategies that involve critical reflection and exploration of options
in a social relationship (Taylor, 1994). Two criticisms are leveled most com-
monly at the theory. First is that his theory puts too much emphasis on
rationality –that more intuitive and holistic views of learning are needed.
In an exhaustive review of empirical studies of transformative learning,
Taylor (1994) concluded that “transformative learning is not just ration-
ally and consciously driven but incorporates a variety of nonrational and
unconscious modalities for revising meaning structures” (p. 48). (Note the
connection here to the role of emotion in creating and protecting beliefs,
as discussed in Chapter 1.) The second criticism is that the theory pays
insufficient attention to transformation in the service of social change, the
focus of the great emancipatory educator Paulo Freire. Oppressed peoples,
Freire believed, become empowered to change the world through critical
reflection in a community of learners (Freire, 1970). Praxis, the combin-
ation of reflection and action, is the key to overcoming oppression. True
education, according to Freire, is always a political act.
I will be covering transformative learning on both an individual and
group level much more extensively in later chapters. For now, I want to
make two points about how useful this theory is to our understanding of
cognitive bias, and more importantly, how it might help us deal with the
challenges that bias poses to deep learning.
First is Mezirow’s emphasis on the importance of group dialogue. Recall
from the previous chapter how private reflection on one’s strongly held
beliefs usually does not only not change these beliefs but can even make
them stronger. With some exceptions, reflection and argumentation with
others is what matters. I explore this in more depth in Chapter 6.

30 How We Learn
Second, we would not have a disorienting experience in the first place
were it not for an emotional trigger. Without that an unusual experi-
ence is just a puzzle, one that we may be curious about and even want
to explore. We may wonder, for example, how the magician David
Copperfield could make the Statue of Liberty “disappear” in front of a
thousand spectators, but our beliefs about the laws of physics are never at
risk, because everyone knows that it’s a trick. On the other hand, feeling
“tricked” is bound to create disorientation. Recently I was waiting for
a connecting flight at New York’s Newark airport, browsing in a shop
along the concourse. I was approached by a disheveled-looking young
man who asked if I “traveled a lot.” He then proceeded to give me a long
story about how he was a recent college graduate who had been stranded
overnight by a canceled flight to Pittsburgh and could not get on another
flight until the next day. He showed me his original and “new” boarding
pass as evidence, along with a driver’s license and the business card of an
executive in the company he was about to join. He was desperate for a
place to stay overnight (and he certainly looked like he needed it), but he
had no credit cards as yet and had to pay for everything in cash. Could
I please loan him money for meals and hotel room? He took my address
and promised to pay me back right away. I took pity on him, withdrew
some money from an ATM and gave it to him, and he scurried away with
lavish thanks for how I confirmed his belief that “there were still good
people in the world.” Now, I would not be relating this story if he had
paid me back. Instead, the experience gave me a disorienting dilemma
and led to a modest shift in my self-concept, from “generous person” to
“easily duped person.”
Much of the research on human learning, particularly in adults,
supports the basic tenets of transformative learning, without necessarily
acknowledging so. Here is an especially impressive example. Higher edu-
cation researchers Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini conducted an
exhaustive investigation into learning in college, covering 35 years of
research and more than 5,000 books, journal articles, and miscellaneous
reports (Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991). The product of this work was so
massive that their students referred to it, with grudging admiration, as
“Moby Book.” The authors published an equally massive update, ten
years later (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Reflecting back on decades
of research, Terenzini compiled a list of six “experiences that promote
student learning” (Terenzini, 2014). Note how similar these six optimal
learning experiences are to what has been reviewed so far on adult
learning:

2.3 The Role of Emotion in Learning 31

Experiences that promote student learning:
1. Almost uniformly involve encounters with difference, both with people different
from themselves and with ideas different from those currently held. Because
they challenge existing beliefs these encounters create cognitive dissonance.
2. Require active engagement with these challenges. Deep learning will not
occur if the learner does not address the cognitive dissonance.
3. Occur in a supportive environment, offering opportunities for reasonable
risk-taking without fear of failure.
4. Emphasize meaningful and real-world activities, including dealing with
unstructured problems.
5. Involve other people and interpersonal activities that will spark a challenge.
6. Invite and encourage reflection and analysis.

2.3 The Role of Emotion in Learning

As should be evident by now, learning is not just a cognitive process. Most
experts now agree that without emotion, deep learning is at best hit-and-
miss. Unless learning has an emotional component it is not likely to last.
If you want to be sure that learning will stick, you have to be sure that the
learner cares about the learning.
A landmark book by moral philosopher Martha Nussbaum explores how
emotions shape the “landscape of our mental and social lives” (Nussbaum,
2001, p. 1).5 Emotions, she wrote, “involve judgments about important
things, judgments in which, appraising an external object as salient for our
own well-being, we acknowledge our own neediness and incompleteness
before parts of the world that we do not fully control” (p. 19). Thus, far
from having to be bottled up or pushed aside, emotions are essential if we
are to engage the world and allow deep learning to occur.
This philosophical view has been backed up by recent research, captured
beautifully by Lisa Feldman Barrett’s pioneering work (2017) on how the
brain creates emotions. From her research Feldman demonstrates that, con-
trary to conventional –and intuitive –thinking, sensations do not trigger
certain “emotion centers” in the brain. Rather, emotions are constructed
by the brain, in the same way that cognition constructs mental models of
reality. Barrett defines her theory of constructed emotion this way: “In every
waking moment, your brain uses past experience, organized as concepts, to
guide your actions and give your sensations meaning. When the concepts
involved are emotion concepts, your brain constructs instances of emotion”
(p. 31). The brain constructs emotions in the moment, as part of the way it

32 How We Learn
makes meaning of sensory stimuli. It makes meaning of a situation so that
we will know what to do in that moment. The brain will make meaning
of the same visual stimulus in vastly different ways. Approaching the first
drop of a roller coaster will produce physiological responses similar to those
when approaching the edge of a steep cliff; the former will be constructed
as “excitement,” while the latter will be constructed as “fear.” Further,
emotions are socially constructed and culture specific. Feldman states:
[Y]‌our familiar emotion concepts are built-in only because you grew up in
a particular social context where these emotion concepts are meaningful
and useful, and your brain applies them outside your awareness to con-
struct your experiences. Heart rate changes are inevitable; their emotional
meaning is not. Other cultures can and do make other kinds of meaning
from the same sensory input. (p. 33)
Today the key role of emotion in learning is clear and largely uncontested.
Emotion does not only stimulate learning, it is part of the learning process
itself. Emotion can be a force for deep learning, as when a disorienting
dilemma leads to reflection and perspective transformation; it can also be
a significant barrier to deep learning, as when someone encounters infor-
mation counter to his or her belief system and reduces the anxiety this
produces by resorting to myside bias.
So where, then is that sweet spot, that level of disorientation where
people experience just enough discomfort with the status quo that they
are able to reflect on what’s going on and try something new? That point
where we experience not just a felt need to change but also a desire to
change? What is the right balance between the body’s need to regulate
stress and maintain homeostasis, as neurologist and neuroscientist Antonio
Damasio (2018) has described it, and taking a creative risk that will upset
that homeostasis, at least temporarily? To address these questions, I turn
now to what we know about motivation to learn.

2.4 Motivation and Learning in Adults

I invite the reader to think for a moment about why you have chosen
to read this far into the book. Is it because you are concerned about the
amount of drive-by learning that goes on in the face of the accelerating
challenges we face as a society? Because you are curious about the positive
steps we might take to meet these challenges? Or, I hope, maybe both?
Whatever the reason, you are demonstrating right now a motivation to
learn (I am assuming that the motivation is intrinsic,6 even if you’re reading

2.4 Motivation and Learning in Adults 33

this as a required text!) As we’ve already seen, this simple question: why do
people behave the way they do? leads to complex, often counterintuitive,
and sometimes paradoxical answers.
Motivation is the link between emotion and action. It is purposeful
behavior focused on accomplishing a goal. Part of the challenge in
understanding motivation, as Wlodkowski (2008) points out in his com-
prehensive treatment of the subject, is that because motivation is an
abstraction, a construct, we cannot measure it directly but must instead
rely on observing someone’s behavior. Nonetheless, the prodigious lit-
erature on human motivation over the years has led to some common
understandings:
First, the drive for humans to make meaning of the world is innate (Chater
& Loewenstein, 2016). “The brain has an inherent inclination for knowing
what it wants … We are compelled to pay attention to things that matter
to us. Every moment of our lives is a competition among our senses to
perceive what matters most” (Wlodkowski, 2008, pp. 17–18). Sensations
accompanied by emotion get preferential treatment. Motivation is thus a
complex interplay of sensations, emotions, and thoughts that are mixing
and remixing in any given moment, in the body’s constant attempts to
achieve homeostasis (Damasio, 2018).
Second, motivation is not an inherent part of our character. Labeling
someone as “unmotivated” is unhelpful and wrong (Ahl, 2006).7 The cul-
ture we grew up in and the networks of which we are a part have a huge
influence, as does the immediate context. A recent study found that one’s
identity –that is, the amalgam of what we understand about ourselves and
understandings assigned to us through social position –is a major factor
in motivation to learn, and is always socially negotiated. In their study of
motivation to learn among novice teachers, researchers found that identi-
fication had two major consequences:
First, as might be expected, when teaching practices resonated with novices’
extant identities (i.e., they saw them as valuable and feasible), they engaged
more readily and deeply in learning them … Second, when teaching
practices did not resonate with novices’ extant identities –but messages in
the environment linked them to desired identities –then novices overrode
their initial concerns and persisted in learning them anyway. (Nolen, Horn,
& Ward, 2015, p. 238)
Third, despite the importance of culture and social context, certain sources
of motivation are, if not innate, certainly cross-cultural. These include curi-
osity about the world; the desire to belong and to feel valued; and to feel

34 How We Learn
efficacious,8 quite simply, the feeling that what we do matters, that we have
had a desirable impact on the world around us. Each of these motivators
has roots in other somatic-neurological processes. Curiosity arises from
the need to make meaning, a drive that remains largely undiminished
throughout the lifespan. The desire to belong and feel valued stems from
an innate need to feel safe, in a community that accepts us and that will
help protect us from harm. The need for efficacy stems from an innate
disposition to not only make meaning of the world but to interact effect-
ively with it. Together, these universal “motivators” help ease what Parker
Palmer has called the “pain of disconnection” from the world around us
(Palmer, 1998).
These universal sources of motivation will of course manifest them-
selves differently, depending on the social and cultural context. My own
research on the factors that affect motivation among university faculty, for
example, turned up four: autonomy, community, recognition, and efficacy
(Wergin, 2001). “Autonomy” was closely related to curiosity: the freedom
to experiment, to follow one’s own leads wherever they may go, and to do
so without fear of the consequences. “Community” was related to the need
for belonging, to feel as if one is part of a professional community that
cares about them. “Recognition” was the need to feel valued by that com-
munity, to know that others see their work as worthwhile. And, “efficacy”
in an academic community meant that faculty had a sense that their work
had an impact on their scholarly disciplines.
Fourth, motivation not only mediates learning but is a consequence of learning
as well (Wlodkowski, 2008). The more motivated someone is to learn, the
more enjoyable the learning, and the greater the motivation is to learn more.
At the same time, no matter how high, motivation will not help someone
accomplish a learning task that is significantly beyond their skill level or their
ability to cope with the increasing complexity of modern life. In fact, due to
the frustration and anxiety this causes, the likely result will be paralysis or a
desire to escape. Finding examples of this in one’s own life is, sadly, far too
easy. I was clumsy and overweight as a youngster, but I wanted desperately
to fit in with the other guys, so I went out for football. The coach used the
daily practice as a way to act out his fantasies as an army drill instructor, and
he made my life miserable. Not only did I stop going to practice, I developed
an “unathletic” identity, one that lasted into early adulthood, and led me to
avoid participating in competitive athletics of any kind.
Given this landscape, what then motivates adults to learn deeply? I have
sprinkled a few clues throughout this chapter and will now make them
more explicit.

2.5 Conclusion 35
Adults want to learn lots of things, for all kinds of reasons, related
mostly to what is seen as practical and relevant to their lives. They want
learning to be self-directed, not dictated by what others think they should
learn (Knowles, 1984). They want to build new learning from life experi-
ence, to test this new learning, and to integrate it into their own lives. They
want the learning to be enjoyable, but not necessarily easy: they seek com-
petence but also value the challenge (Wlodkowski, 2008).
All of the above are necessary for deep learning to occur, but only
the last one distinguishes deep learning from the others. Deep learning
happens when existing beliefs are challenged, but only within the limits
of a person’s perceived ability to handle the challenge. To put it another
way, deep learning is achieved when an optimal tension exists: between
a perceived challenge to one’s existing belief system on the one hand, and a
perceived level of confidence in one’s ability to create new meaning in that
system on the other. Note the interaction of the “universal motivators” in
this definition, how they are not independent and additive but intertwined
and conflicting! A disorienting dilemma should make us curious, but not
so curious that we put ourselves in a place that feels isolated and unsafe.
We want to make meaning of and interact with the dilemma, but only
within socially sanctioned limits. We need to feel that changing our belief
system will make us more competent in dealing with our environment, as
long as doing so will not threaten our important social networks (and our
cherished self-images).

2.5 Conclusion
My goal in this chapter has been to lay the groundwork and provide an
evidentiary basis for proposals I make later in the book. Whereas Chapter 1
focused on the challenges to deep learning, Chapter 2 has considered the
necessary ingredients for deep learning to occur. They can be summed up
this way:
Deep learning depends on how we make meaning of experience. Most of
the time, this occurs at a level below conscious awareness, and most of the
time this is appropriate and necessary. Using existing mental models, our
brains interpret sensations based on prior experience, judge their import-
ance, and when necessary construct an emotion that leads to a behavioral
response. Small deviations from expected experience are handled smoothly.
For example, while driving we constantly monitor other motorists’ behavior,
and have learned how to detect variations from “normal.” Behavior that is
interpreted as abnormal will lead to a response dictated by the emotion the

36 How We Learn
brain constructs: say, either contempt (“where’d that idiot learn to drive”?)
or fear (“that car isn’t going to stop at the red light!”). The first leads to an
action of (real or imagined) eye-rolling, the second to hitting the brakes.
Sometimes, however, making meaning using existing neural networks and
mental models is insufficient: something feels particularly discordant or
“off”; something creates enough cognitive dissonance that it elevates an
experience to a conscious disquietude. For example, while reading the op-
ed page of the newspaper we glance at the headlines of various columnists.
For the familiar ones we have formed mental models of their views. We
read with pleasure the views consistent with ours, and with irritation those
that are not. If, however, a cherished pundit expresses an opinion that
is significantly different from our own, cognitive dissonance ensues, and
depending on the valence of the emotion constructed around that disson-
ance, we either choose to examine our beliefs or stop reading and write
off the essay as an aberration. This is easy to do if we are reading alone
but harder if the piece becomes a topic of discussion with others and we
are forced to explain why we dismissed the op-ed piece so quickly.9 Our
motivation to examine and possibly change our beliefs will then depend
on the balance between the strength of the experienced challenge and the
sense of our own competence in the moment. If the sense of challenge is
too strong we experience anxiety and the motivation to escape the discus-
sion. If the sense of competence is too strong we reinforce existing beliefs
by constructing counterarguments. In either case the opportunity for deep
learning disappears. If, however, the disorientation is experienced in a safe
social space, safe enough to unlock our innate curiosity and allow us to
imagine that changing our perspective will help us become more com-
petent in dealing with our environment, the gate to deep learning opens.
In the seven chapters that follow I explore seven keys to opening
that gate.

Notes
1 For more extensive accounts of the neuroscience of learning, cf. Changeux
(2009) and Swart, Chisholm, and Brown (2015).
2 See Vanderah and Gould (2016) for a fuller treatment of neuroanatomy.
3 Much of the material in this section is adapted from Shatz (1992).
4 Flying a kite. Thanks to Dr. Shelley Chapman for the example.
5 Nussbaum takes her title from Proust, who called the emotions “geological
upheavals of thought.”
6 Defined as, “whenever people behave for the satisfaction inherent in the
behavior itself ” (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 4).

Notes 37
7 Ahl (2006) argues that motivation should not be regarded as something that
lies within the individual; it is rather “a construct of those who see it lacking in
others” (p. 385).
8 See Bandura (1977) for a full treatment of efficacy and learning.
9 A great example of this is the famous TV newscast by respected American jour-
nalist Walter Cronkite who, after a trip to cover the Vietnam War in the late
1960s, concluded that the war was at a stalemate, and unwinnable. Historians
have pointed to Cronkite’s announcement as a pivotal moment, leading millions
who had supported the war to then have grave doubts about it.

Ch apter 3

Mindful Learning

There’s something I must do first. I must educate myself.

Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
Deep learning should not occur only when we experience a disorienting
dilemma. It should not just be a passive process kicked off by an unex-
pected experience. Deep learning requires active, mindful agency of the
sort that not only reacts to, but also seeks out new ways of being –ways
that encourage us to step out of our comfort zones just far enough to allow
our innate curiosity to take over. As I argued earlier, this is neither natural
nor easy, but, rather, is a learned perspective on how we are to be in the
world. And as I’ll show in the chapters that follow, this capacity to learn
deepens and becomes more complex. Hence, those who seek to facilitate
deep learning in others, or to take on any leadership role for that matter,
must follow Socrates’ advice from centuries ago and learn how to know
themselves first.1 Any discussion of how to facilitate deep learning begins
here. I will first set the stage with a brief discussion about the nature of
the “self,” followed by some adult development theory; I will then turn to
research on developing oneself in an organizational context, starting with
the now-classic works of Peter Vaill and Peter Senge. Then I loop back to
the challenges facing deep learning and how research on adult develop-
ment can help address them. And finally, I discuss mindful learning as one
of the key linchpins of deep learning.

3.1 The Self and Development

If we are to take seriously Socrates’ admonition to “know thyself,” we first
have to get straight what is meant by “self.” Like many everyday expressions,
“self ” is harder to define than may at first appear. How to find one’s “real”
or “true” self has been a source of debate in both Eastern and Western
cultures for centuries. Is it a unifying core of existence, our essential

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39

3.1 The Self and Development 39

Figure 3.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Source: Adobe Stock.

character, revealed by the narratives we tell ourselves and others? Or is it

a self that, as Donna Ladkin put it, “mediates a relationship between an
internal personal realm and the external world” (Ladkin & Taylor, 2010,
p. 66)? As Morris Rosenberg (1979) observed drily: “In a scientific field
generally undistinguished by the precision of its terminology, the ‘self ’
stands as a concept foremost in the ranks of confusion” (p. 5).

3.1.1 Essentialist Views of Self

The essentialist view of self is rooted in psychoanalytic theory and human-
istic psychology. The most well- known spokesman for this school is
Abraham Maslow, whom most readers will recognize by his namesake,
“Maslow’s hierarchy” (1998). Maslow was concerned with the development
of needs, also referred to as motives. In the familiar hierarchy shown in
Figure 3.1, at the bottom are motives regulating the body’s homeostasis by
relieving hunger and thirst, seeking warmth and shelter, and so on.
These must be satisfied before other motives emerge, such as desires to
discover and understand, to give love to others, and to push for optimum
fulfillment of inner potential. All but the latter operate from a “deficiency”
model, staving off disease or unhappiness. In contrast, fulfilling one’s

40 Mindful Learning
potential is a “being” motive and what Maslow called “self-actualization.”
After studying those few adults who seemed to have risen to the top of the
hierarchy, Maslow concluded that complete self-actualization was quite
rare and happened only relatively late in life.2 He did, however, find many
adults who had at least some of these qualities: an accurate perception
of reality; acceptance of self and others; spontaneity and self-knowledge;
problem centering (vs. self-centering); freshness of appreciation; and having
peak experiences, deep and loving relationships, creativity, and a sense of
humor. Those whose environments did not satisfy lower-level needs did
not demonstrate a press for self-actualization and thus showed few of these
qualities. In his final works Maslow described self-transcendence, going
beyond any sense of separate self and merging with a higher purpose, a
being without any sense of an individual, “smaller” self.

3.1.1.1 Self-Development  Theory

Maslow’s model of human development has sparked interest in recent
years in what has been called the “positive psychology” movement,3
moving away from a deficiency model of human motivation and develop-
ment and toward a focus on satisfaction, optimism, and happiness. One
of these applications is self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017).
According to this theory, development of self is based on how well we
have developed inner resources for growth and integration. In order for
adults to experience eudaimonia – a sense of integrity and well-being –
a state similar to Mazlow’s notion of self-actualization, three needs, for
competence, autonomy, and relatedness, must be met. “Competence” refers
to a feeling of effectiveness in dealing with one’s environment, roughly
equivalent to Bandura’s (1977) notion of self-efficacy. This does not neces-
sarily mean that one must become constantly better at one thing; more
important is having the agency to choose which activities to become better
at, and being able to redirect one’s resources accordingly. “Autonomy”
refers to having the sense that what we do, we do voluntarily, under our
own volition, not sticking doggedly to someone else’s agenda. Even while
in dependent states, such as illness or infirmity, it is important to be able
to make independent choices. Finally, “relatedness” refers to the feeling of
connection with significant others in one’s life, people who care about you
and “have your back,” so to speak. (Note how similar these ego needs are
to the sources of adult motivation discussed in the last chapter.)
Notable about research on self-determination theory is the amount of
empirical research it has generated in the last few decades. Research has
found that environments that do not foster all three needs will compromise

3.1 The Self and Development 41

a sense of well-being. For example, competence without autonomy –such
as performing a task well only for the sake of external rewards, or to meet
only the goals of others –does not lead to the development of self. Research
has also demonstrated that the form of each of these basic needs changes
with age. For example, regarding the need for relatedness, as one gets older
the quality of contact with others becomes more important than the quan-
tity of that contact (Kasser & Ryan, 1999).

3.1.1.2 Reflected Best Self

Another significant contribution of positive psychology has been to the
work environment, notably research on how best to engage one’s “best
self ” at work, conducted by Laura Morgan Roberts and her colleagues,
scholars of positive psychology in organizations (Roberts, 2015). They have
developed the concept of “reflected best self ” (RBS), a subjective sense of
well-being that one is performing at his/her best in a particular situation.
The RBS “represents a fusion of the reality of lived experience (who I have
been at my best) with the idealized sense of possibility for who one can
be(come) when one fully embodies his or her best self ” (Roberts, 2015,
p. 3). RBS is fully situated in a social system, in which social experiences
help define an individual’s role in and contributions to that system. Thus,
our sense of who we are when we at our best is not a fixed aspect of our
personality but rather constantly changes and, one hopes, develops.
Consciously refining one’s understanding of these qualities is a necessary
first step to making them accessible for use in the moment.
Aligning one’s RBS at work consists of four pathways, all of which are
grounded in research on human motivation. The first is purposeful engage-
ment, connecting work-related tasks to one’s own personal values, even if
these tasks seem mundane or repetitive. For example, someone employed
as a hospital janitor could see his job as helping to promote an envir-
onment conducive to healing. The second is strength-based engagement,
which leads to a greater sense of vitality and contribution to the organiza-
tion. The third is authentic engagement, “increasing the subjective experi-
ence of alignment between internal experiences and external expressions”
(Roberts, 2015, p. 8). Authenticity depends on the alignment between
one’s culture and values and those of the organization. As Roberts notes,
this is an especially critical element for people who differ from the dom-
inant or majority culture of their organizations, who face the challenge
of integrating their values and perspectives in ways that strengthen rather
than subvert organizational effectiveness. The fourth and final pathway
to enhancing one’s reflected best self is relational affirmation, “the act of

42 Mindful Learning
enhancing another person’s sense of being known and understood for what
he or she contributes to a relationship and to the social environment more
generally” (p. 10). When people feel that others know and understand
them, they are more likely to seek out feedback from others, which can
include not only affirmation but also “jolts” that help develop more honest
self-appraisal.
Putting these two “inside” views of self together –self-development
theory and reflected best self –suggests that we reach optimal integrity
when we feel that:
• we have the wherewithal to deal effectively with our environment;
• we have meaningful choices for how to do this;
• our dealings are consistent with our values; and
• we are recognized and valued for our contributions.

3.1.2 Interactionist Views of Self

While those aligned with the humanistic psychology tradition acknow-
ledge the importance of one’s environment for the development of self,
others take a more “interactionist” view, that one’s “true self ” develops as
we interact with an external context, mediated by our interpretation of
experience (Wilson, 1988). As we experience the behavior of others toward
us, both verbal and nonverbal, including the messages we get from fam-
ilies, cultures, and organizations, we develop a sense of who we are. This
sort of “interactionist” view of self is critical, as it implies that our sense of
who we are in the world evolves.

3.1.2.1 The Legacy of John Dewey

Most insights on the nature of human learning and development since
the mid-twentieth century, whether philosophical, psychological, or bio-
logical, can be traced to the writings of John Dewey. Yes, that is an over-
statement, but not by much. In his book Experience and Education (1938) he
devoted an entire chapter to the “criteria of experience.” Dewey proposed
that in order for experience to be a source of learning (deep learning, in
my terms), two criteria must be met, what he termed continuity and inter-
action. Regarding continuity, Dewey took what today would be described
as an interactionist view of the development of self: “The principle of con-
tinuity of experience means that every experience both takes up some-
thing from those which have gone before and modifies in some way the
quality of those which come after” (Dewey, [1938] 1997, p. 35). As not

3.1 The Self and Development 43

all experiences are of equal value, one must learn to discriminate among
them. Experience must lead to growth, yes; but it must be growth of a
particular sort: “Does growth create conditions for future growth, or does
it set up conditions that shut off the person from … continuing growth
in new directions?” (p. 36). That is, a quality experience “arouses curiosity,
strengthens initiative, and sets up desires and purposes that are sufficiently
intense to carry a person over dead places in the future” (p. 38).
Dewey’s second criterion for experience is interaction: “An experience is
what it is because of a transaction taking place between an individual and
what, at the time, constitutes his [sic] environment [that is] … whatever
conditions interact with personal needs, desires, purposes, and capacities
to create the experience which is had” (p. 44). Interaction and continuity
are, in essence, the immediate and longitudinal aspects of experience.
A fully integrated person, Dewey suggested, is one who is able to inte-
grate successive experiences with one another: he or she is able to use the
learning from previous situations to deal more and more effectively with
the situations that follow. Thus, the single most important attitude one can
form, according to Dewey, is the desire to go on learning.

3.1.2.2 Constructive Developmentalism

Dewey’s perspective has been expanded and articulated most clearly by
those aligned with what is now known as “constructive developmentalism,”
pioneered by psychologist Robert Kegan. Beginning with his ground-
breaking book The Evolving Self (1982), he built upon earlier developmental
theorists –especially Jean Piaget –to argue that cognitive development
(as well as social and emotional development) does not end with ado-
lescence but rather continues throughout adulthood. In this book Kegan
takes the interactionist view of self, suggesting that adults are faced with
a constant struggle between two dialectic forces, connection and independ-
ence, a developmental oscillation of sorts. (Compare these terms with
John Dewey’s notions of “continuity” and “interaction”: the continuity
of experience encourages independence; the interaction of experience
promotes connection.) As with self-determination theory, people need to
feel accepted and nurtured by others who are important to them and by
the culture in which they live; they also need a sense of autonomy and an
ability to act successfully on their own. But Kegan adds this twist: Because
the needs for connection and independence can never exist comfortably
together, first one tends to dominate, then the other, in what Kegan called
“fundamental alteration.” Development occurs as individuals shift back
and forth. Those who are most successful with this gradually appreciate

44 Mindful Learning
the importance of having a strong personal identity with connection –and
independence surrounded by a nurturing community.
Kegan’s view is that development is the expanding ability to make
meaning of experience; thus, how people interpret a situation or event
depends on their developmental level. In essence, Kegan takes Mezirow’s
theory of transformative learning (2000) and attaches a developmental
perspective to it: we do not just create new schemes of meaning but do so
in a way that these new frames of reference represent increasingly complex
ways of knowing. As Kegan puts it, two processes are at the heart of trans-
formative learning:
The first is what we might call meaning-forming, the activity by which
we shape a coherent meaning out of the raw material of our outer and
inner experiencing. Constructivism recognizes that reality does not happen
preformed and waiting for us merely to copy a picture of it. Our perceiving
is simultaneously an act of conceiving, of interpreting …
The second process … is what we might call reforming our meaning-
forming. This is a metaprocess that affects the very terms of our meaning-
constructing. We do not only form meaning, and we do not only change our
meanings; we change the very form by which we are making our meanings.
(Kegan, 2000, pp. 52–53, emphasis in original)
How does this happen? Kegan argues that one’s current form of knowing is
at least in part the result of moving from “subject” to “object”:
That which is “object” we can look at, take responsibility for, reflect upon,
exercise control over, integrate with some other way of knowing. That
which is “subject” we are run by, identified with, fused with, at the effect of.
We cannot be responsible for that to which we are subject. What is “object”
in our knowing describes the thoughts and feelings we say we have; what is
“subject” describes the thinking and feeling that has us. We “have” object;
we “are” subject. (Kegan, 2000, p. 53)
“Development” is the gradual process by which what was once “subject”
becomes “object.” What we were once controlled by, we are now able to
step back from and see as part of a larger and more complex whole. Here
is an example. “Beth” is a young woman who has been brought up to
have an identity that is defined in large part by a set of strict social norms,
including gender roles. Part of this culture scripting is that her worth as
a woman will be determined by the social status of the man she marries.
She meets and marries a young man from a wealthy family and almost
immediately is subjected to verbal and physical abuse. She feels depressed
and helpless, but with the help of others in her social network, including
an insightful therapist, she begins to realize that her life does not have to

3.1 The Self and Development 45

be this way, that she has agency. Beth dissolves the marriage and builds a
new life for herself. She is now able to look back, understand her earlier life
choices, and see the world of relationships in a whole new light.
Constructive developmentalists would argue that navigating one’s “life
curriculum” is what “real” transformation is all about. The central devel-
opmental task of adolescents is to develop what Kegan calls a “socialized
mind,” building an identity by internalizing social norms and finding a
place within the existing social structure so that one is able to live suc-
cessfully as an adult. According to Kegan’s research this is about as far
as most people get. However, he argues, if we hope to cope with the
“mental demands of modern life” (Kegan, 1994), with its multiple and
often conflicting strains on us as parents, partners, workers, and life-long
learners, we need to transform our socialized mind to a “self-authoring”
mind. In the example above, Beth has found herself confronted with
contradictory social expectations in her social network that are impossible
to resolve. She is only able to escape from this by moving from a script
written for her to one she writes herself.
What then is the catalyst for this developmental shift? Not all
disorienting dilemmas lead to developmental transformations, even when
they would make for more efficacious experience; not all examples of
disequilibrium between “subject” and “object” lead to a more complex,
more self-authoring developmental state. Sometimes the disequilibrium is
resolved with no movement at all, as when various forms of confirmation
bias kick in as a response to cognitive dissonance. Moreover, as Mezirow
(2000) emphasizes, not all perspective transformations are of equal scope
or consequence. Most of the time, perspective transformations are small
movements from the status quo, and only after they have had a cumula-
tive effect does one recognize a qualitative change. It would be ludicrous
to suggest that one goes from a conventional, socialized mind to a post-
conventional, self-authoring mind in one giant leap. These are not pure
states of existence and one does not become a self-authoring learner over-
night.4 Instead –and this is probably a familiar refrain to the reader by
now –developmental steps are most likely to occur when the experience of
disorientation is just enough to energize stepping away from our comfort
zone and into a slightly more challenging space.

3.1.3 Essentialist or Interactionist?

The difference between these two perspectives is partly one of focus.
Essentialists argue that our true selves are “in there,” waiting to be shaped

46 Mindful Learning
and molded by our environments, in the same way that Michelangelo noted
that a sculptor’s job is to take away that which prevents the sculpture from
emerging. The degrees to which one experiences competence, autonomy,
and relatedness (in self-determination theory terms) will determine the
extent to which this happens. Interactionists argue that the self evolves,
constantly changing and transforming itself in an oscillation between the
self and its environment. My position leans toward the interactionists,
namely that knowing oneself is less a matter of congruence between one’s
“true self ” and his/her environment than a constant tension between the
two, out of which development takes place. I also like what Ladkin and
Taylor (2010) say about how one’s self is best revealed, not by what goes on
in our heads but by what happens in our bodies:
The ground for a person’s awareness of self … is negotiated, made sense of,
and then expressed through the body. Enacting that self is dependent on
awareness of the somatic clues the body gives us about how we are experi-
encing a given situation … Our kinesthetic sense of ourselves is our most
primordial, [and] this would suggest that the body is a more trustworthy
ground for revealing individuals’ deeper, perhaps “truer,” motives and
emotions. (p. 66)

3.2 Self-Development in Organizations

3.2.1 Action Inquiry

Some psychologists, such as Kegan, have made extensive use of their work
in organizational settings. Others have taken the basics of constructive-
developmental theory and embedded it entirely in organizational contexts.
Probably the best known of these is the work of Bill Torbert and his model
of “action inquiry” (2004) as the key to learning and development in
organizations. Torbert defines action inquiry as “a way of simultaneously
conducting action and inquiry as a disciplined leadership practice that
increases the wider effectiveness of our actions” (p. 1), viewing it as a form
of transformational learning and development, and from a perspective that
is very similar to Kegan’s. Torbert views action inquiry as a disciplined
way of gradually learning how to take advantage of the present moment
as an opportunity to “learn anew, in the vividness of each moment, how
best to act now” (p. 2). In the spirit of those who preach the importance
of mindfulness as a way of “waking up” and engaging in fully conscious
living (for example Tart, 2001), Torbert (2004) urges that we “carefully
attend from the inside-out to the experiences we have, hoping to learn

3.2 Self-Development in Organizations 47
from them and modify our actions and even our way of thinking as a
result” (p. 4). Like Kegan, Torbert sees deep learning in adults as a process
through developmental stages, which he calls “action logics,” embedded
and largely subconscious aspects of self for dealing with the world around
us. “Conventional” action logics correspond roughly to Kegan’s “socialized
mind”; these are, in order of complexity, the opportunist, the diplomat, the
expert, and the achiever. Each relates to ways in which we make meaning
of experience:
• opportunist, how to manipulate our environment to our own
advantage;
• diplomat, how to curry favor with others;
• expert, how to master a world of thought; and finally
• achiever, how to put these first three action logics together to accomplish
something useful within existing social norms.
According to Torbert’s research (2004) more than 90 percent of organiza-
tional managers hold one of these action logics and only 7 percent operate
from “postconventional” action logics beyond these four, or in Kegan’s
terms, have developed beyond the socialized mind. Whereas those holding
conventional action logics are motivated by similarity and stability, those
with postconventional action logics are motivated increasingly by diffe-
rence and creative experimentation. People at these levels are more likely
to see their environments as complex, changing systems presenting com-
plex problems for which there are no clear solutions; they recognize the
importance of collaboration with others; and they actively seek out both
confirming and disconfirming feedback on their actions. While Torbert
does not put it this way, deep learning is a particular challenge for those
operating out of conventional action logics, because they prefer order and
stability over uncertainly and disorientation.

3.2.2 Permanent White Water

In Chapter 1, I introduced my former Antioch colleague Peter Vaill,
a leading scholar in organization development for nearly the past half-
century. In his book Learning as a Way of Being (1996) he popularized the
term “permanent white water” as the continual state of turbulence facing
most modern organizations. Because Vaill understood and foresaw this
turbulence a quarter-century ago, and because his ideas on learning in
organizations are among the pillars on which this book rests, I will cover
his work in some detail here.

48 Mindful Learning
As I noted earlier, Vaill asserts that the most important way to deal with
white-water conditions is to become a more effective learner. What makes
the phenomenon of permanent white water so important for learning?
Vaill (1996) sums it up this way: “Permanent white water is the meaning
we attach to our experiences. We experience both surprising, novel, messy,
costly, recurring and unpreventable events and feelings of lack of direction,
absence of coherence, and loss of meaning” (pp. 16–17). Note the similarity
of Vaill’s ideas to Mezirow’s and Kegan’s: organizations confronted with
continual white water are presented with one disorienting dilemma after
another, which, if not handled in a way that makes meaning of them, puts
those in the organization at risk of feeling overwhelmed and paralyzed.
Being effective in permanent white water requires, primarily, a different
perspective about learning itself. As I noted in Chapter 1, what Vaill calls
“institutional learning” is the dominant educational model in Western
society (similar to what Freire (1970) called the “banking model,” which
assumes that learning is simply a matter of depositing information in the
brain). Institutional learning5 is simply inadequate to deal with perpetual
white water, which requires a different kind of learning altogether. Vaill
maintains that learning in perpetual white water should have seven qual-
ities, each building on the previous ones:
• It should be self-directed. Self-directed learning is the antithesis of institu-
tional learning. One cannot be effective in creating environments con-
ducive to deep learning in others without self-direction.6
• It should be creative, characterized by a spirit of experimentation and
exploration and driven by a sense of both freedom and competence to
try new things. A creative spirit, Vaill notes, also requires that we self-
impose a sense of discomfort with the status quo –in a way to create our
own disorienting dilemmas.
• It should be expressive, interacting actively with one’s environment and
linking experience to what has come before and to what will come next.
This relates directly to John Dewey’s principles of continuity and inter-
action as criteria for deep learning. As I have noted earlier in this book,
experience can also be a barrier to deep learning, what Dewey ([1938]
1997) called “mis-education.” The meaning-making schemes that develop
to help us make meaning of experience can also block incoming infor-
mation that is dissonant with these schemes. Dewey called this “routine
action,” and it narrows the usefulness of new experience. Dewey warned
that routine habits can possess us and prevent “intelligent action.” He
could have been foretelling the challenges of permanent white water!

3.2 Self-Development in Organizations 49
• It should include both thinking and feeling, recalling the central theme of
Chapter 2, namely that reflective cognition leading to deep learning is
always stimulated by emotion. Material that has no emotional resonance
for us is a signal that at an intuitive level we do not have a strong need
to know about the subject of that material. Unless something piques
our curiosity or knocks us off balance and creates disorientation, we are
unlikely to pay much attention to it. Vaill (1996) implies that we must
develop a consciousness about feeling: “Probably none [of the three pre-
vious qualities] are possible for us if we are not able to feel learning
happening within ourselves and honor it, respond to it, build on it”
(p. 73).
• It should occur in the moment. Vaill (1996) avers that learning in per-
manent white water requires that we “find ways for as much learning
as possible to occur on the job and in all other aspects of a learner’s
life” (p. 76). One should, in other words, cultivate Torbert’s (2004)
habits of “action inquiry.” Peter Jarvis provides some details on how to
do this in his book The Practitioner-Researcher (1999). Jarvis holds that
professionals learn by reflecting on practice and by “incorporating into
their reflection any professional updating or reading they have under-
taken” (p. 133). They use this synthesis to then develop their own theories,
which they test in the next practice situation, and so the loop repeats.
(Recall my discussion of the experiential learning model from the pre-
ceding chapter.) This process embodies Freire’s (1970)concept of praxis,
an interaction between action and reflection; Donald Schön’s (1983)
“reflection in action”; and his and Chris Argyris’ notion of “double-loop
learning” (Argyris & Schön, 1978): that is, not just solving problems but
also assessing the assumptions we make about what the problem is. I will
have more to say about each of these writers in coming chapters.
• Learning should be continual. Continual learning is more than “life-
long learning,” a term that has become a vacuous cliché. Vaill’s (1996)
provocative point is that permanent white water “makes perpetual
beginners of us all. Almost nothing we have learned is immune from
challenge and change … We do not need competency skills for this
life. We need incompetency skills, the skills of being effective beginners”
(p. 81, emphasis in original). Vaill’s point is much like Torbert’s urging
to use the “vividness of each moment” to “learn anew,” as quoted above.
Vaill suggests that leader/learners in permanent white water adopt the
persona of a “reflective beginner”: someone who is able to check his or
her ego at the door, seek the advice of others, and accept failure as a
learning opportunity.

50 Mindful Learning
• And finally, reflexive learning for Vaill incorporates all of these qualities
because reflection permeates everything a leader/learner does in per-
manent white water. Vaill promotes continuous reflection on each of
the six qualities, asking honest questions about each: Are we directing
our own learning or are we depending on others? Are we absorbing the
learning of others or are we exploring new territory? Are we just “sitting
there” or are we taking in what is to be learned in the moment? Are we
ignoring our feelings as clues to what is important, or are we infusing
them into our learning? Are we isolating ourselves from learning oppor-
tunities in our immediate environment, or are we taking good advantage
of these opportunities? Do we view learning as a series of disconnected
challenges, or do we seek growth with an appropriate mixture of
challenge and support?

3.2.3 Senge and The Fifth Discipline

Management guru Peter Senge, in his now-classic book The Fifth Discipline
(2006), includes “personal mastery” as the first of five “disciplines” that
must be mastered by any organization that aspires to be a “learning
organization”: “Organizations learn only through individuals who learn.
Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But
without it no organizational learning occurs” (p. 129). Despite making
few if any references to the developmental psychology literature or adult
learning theory, Senge promotes the notion of personal mastery in ways
faintly reminiscent of Dewey’s “fully integrated person” ([1938] 1997),
Kegan’s “self-authoring mind” (1994), Torbert’s “postconventional action
logics” (2004) and particularly Vaill’s (1996) seven principles of “learning in
perpetual white water”: “ ‘Personal mastery’ is the phrase we use for the dis-
cipline of personal growth and learning. People with high levels of personal
mastery are continually expanding their ability to create the results in life
they truly seek. From their quest for continual learning comes the spirit of
the learning organization” (p. 131).
By “discipline” Senge means an activity that we integrate into our daily
lives in such a way that becomes habitus as Bourdieu (1977) explained
the term, that is, part of the values and dispositions acquired through
the activities and experiences of everyday life. Personal mastery has two
components. The first of these is regular clarification of what is important
to us, that is, a vision of what we are trying to accomplish, without getting
sidetracked by the inevitable daily problems. It is a matter of focus. (As

3.2 Self-Development in Organizations 51
I write these words I find myself getting distracted by political news
popping up on my computer. I make a note to turn these off.) The second
component of personal mastery is “continually learning how to see current
reality more clearly” (Senge, 2006, p. 129). This part, I would assert, is
much harder. Our reaction as humans to cognitive dissonance is to reduce
the dissonance with a minimum of effort, resulting in all of the varieties
of self-delusion I described in Chapter 1. Here is a common organiza-
tional example. Once upon a time, strategic planning was all the rage,
and still is in some quarters, despite mounting evidence that it does not
work very well, and in fact is often counterproductive (cf. Buller, 2015).
Strategic planning is based on three shaky –at best –assumptions: first,
that change is predictable; second, that change is linear; third, that change
occurs as a result of rational rather than political decision-making. Each
of these assumptions is demonstrably false. This does not mean that stra-
tegic planning is inherently a bad idea; the problem is that once a plan
is in place there is every incentive –if you hold one of Torbert’s conven-
tional action-logics –to stick with it and not, in Senge’s terms, make
regular assessments of the current reality and change course accordingly.
I have seen this repeated over and over again in higher education: a lot of
planning –and no change.
Those with high levels of personal mastery share several qualities,
according to Senge: they have a strong sense of purpose, they are “deeply
inquisitive” about the current reality, they feel deeply connected to others,
they “live in a continual learning mode,” and –especially reminiscent of
Vaill’s (1996) notion of the “reflective beginner” –they are acutely aware of
how much they have to learn.
Now here is where Senge’s ideas intersect with a key theme threading
throughout this book. Senge (2006) argues that juxtaposing vision (“what
we want”) with a clear picture of current reality (“where we are relative to
what we want”), results in what he calls “creative tension, a force to bring
them together, caused by the natural tendency to seek resolution.” “The
essence of personal mastery,” he notes, “is learning how to generate and
sustain creative tension in our lives” (p. 132). Why, one might ask, would
someone want to be in a constant state of creative tension on purpose?
Senge’s response, somewhat unhelpfully, is, “We want it because we want
it” (p. 135), presumably because we are operating at a post-conventional
stage of development. There is a better answer to the question of why one
would want to seek out creative tension and I will explore this apparent
paradox in the next chapter.

52 Mindful Learning

3.3 Integrating Principles

For now I will pull together what I have discussed in this chapter into a set
of principles on what it takes to develop one’s “self ” into a deep learner.
Each point is backed up by the science of learning presented in Part I of
this book.
• Developing a disposition to learn deeply is a process. It is not learning
“what” (which Aristotle called episteme, or learning content); it is not
learning “how” (which he called techne, or learning a skill); and it is not
even learning “when” (which he called phronesis, or learning the appro-
priate times to employ knowledge and skills, often used as a definition
of wisdom). Deep learning is not bound by time or circumstance. Deep
learning is instead a disposition driven by a sort of humble curiosity that
there is always more to know, and that the result of that knowing will
make for a more satisfying and efficacious life.
• Deep learning requires a certain level of consciousness that routinely
pays attention to feelings, especially feelings of disorientation. Those
who learn deeply have learned to follow that disorientation.
• Deep learning occurs as the result of opposing forces or dialectics, always
in tension. How someone lives with, acknowledges, and manages these
tensions will determine in large measure how he or she develops the
capacity to live effectively in the world. (I develop these ideas more fully
in Chapter 9.)
• Becoming one who learns deeply is not just a solitary process. Deep
learning happens through interaction with others, with enough confi-
dence in oneself that others’ perspectives are valued as tools to one’s own
development.
• A deep learner accepts the reality that making meaning out of chaos is
only temporary and that turbulence is ongoing and inevitable. A deep
learner finds forming and reforming meaning perspectives to be a cre-
ative challenge and thus intrinsically rewarding.
• The key to all of the above is to develop a spirit of reflexivity as hab-
itus: pausing regularly to ask ourselves fresh questions about our experi-
ence, and entertaining other ways of making meaning of that experience.

3.4 Mindful Learning

Deep learning faces deep challenges. I have stressed the great difficulty
of changing our worldviews (see Figure 1.1 in Chapter 1). A firmly held

3.4 Mindful Learning 53
intuitive belief, when confronted with discordant information, produces
cognitive dissonance and disquietude, and we are tempted to take the easy
course of engaging in confirmation/myside bias, which serves to make the
intuitive belief even more persistent. We are more likely to do this than
not: even those at post-conventional levels of development will find them-
selves experiencing cognitive dissonance that is distinctly aversive. If the
dissonance is powerful enough we experience a true disorienting dilemma;
resolving the dilemma depends on how we make meaning of the disorien-
tation, and this in turn depends on our level of cognitive and emotional
development. If we are perceiving the world in a manner consistent with
the “socialized mind” or “conventional action logics,” we are likely to fall
back on internalized social and cultural norms, finding safety there. If we
are perceiving the world in a manner consistent with the “self-authoring”
or “post-conventional” mindset, on the other hand, we are more likely to
follow the disorientation, treating it as “object” rather than something we
are “subject” to.
In this book I argue for a proactive approach to deep learning, one that
does not depend on having to respond to a disorienting dilemma powerful
enough to breach our usual cognitive defenses. I call it mindful learning,
borrowing from Ellen Langer’s book of the same name (Langer, 2016).
In her view, mindful learning has three characteristics: “the continuous
creation of new categories; openness to new information; and an implicit
awareness of more than one perspective” (p. 4). While my conception of
it is consistent with hers, my take is based more on East Asian philosophy,
namely that mindfulness is a state of heightened alertness, one that is con-
scious of body sensations, accepting these without judgment, and focused
more on the present moment than ruminating about the past or worrying
about the future. Buddhist teacher Bhante Gunaratana captures it well:
Mindfulness registers experiences, but it does not compare them. It does
not label them or categorize them. It just observes everything as if it [were]
occurring for the first time. It is not analysis [that is] based on reflection and
memory. It is, rather, the direct and immediate experiencing of whatever is
happening, without the medium of thought. It comes before thought in the
perceptual process. (Quoted in Davis & Thompson, 2015, p. 48)

Ponder this last sentence for a moment: that mindfulness “comes before

thought.” How does that square with one of the key points in this book,
namely that deep learning requires us to think and reflect, not just to react?
The answer is that mindfulness allows us to interrupt knee-jerk reactions
to stimuli that might lead to the assortment of cognitive biases that stand

54 Mindful Learning
in the way of deep learning. One of the best illustrations of this is the nas-
cent practice of using mindfulness as addiction therapy. Judson Brewer and
his colleagues have extensively studied ways of using mindfulness training
to help those with addiction disorders (including alcohol, smoking, and
drugs) overcome their cravings. They assert that, for example, a smoker’s
craving for a cigarette is a form of “affective bias.” They write,
Affective bias underlies emotional distortions of attention and memory,
preventing individuals from accurately assessing what is happening in the
present moment and acting accordingly. Mindfulness functions to decouple
pleasant and unpleasant experience from habitual reactions of craving and
aversion, by removing the affective bias that fuels such emotional reactivity.
It is the absence of emotional distortions, we suggest, that allows mindful-
ness practitioners to “see things as they are.” (Brewer, Elwafi, & Davis, 2014,
pp. 74–75)
So, when a smoker gets a craving for a cigarette, whether that craving has
a positive affect, such as looking forward to the pleasure of a cigarette after
a meal, or a negative affect, such as stress or irritability, s/he associates
smoking with satisfying that craving: it is in essence an intuitive belief, that
the way to respond to the craving is to light up. Breaking the pathological
chain works like this:
Mindfulness training teaches individuals to instead step back and take a
moment to explore what cravings actually feel like in their bodies, however
uncomfortable or unpleasant they may be. Two important insights can be
learned from this process. First, individuals learn that cravings are phys-
ical sensations in their bodies rather than moral imperatives that must be
acted upon. Second, they gain first-hand experience with the impermanent
nature of these physical sensations. (p. 78)
Patients therefore learn to make new associations with body sensations,
so that instead of thinking, “I need a cigarette to settle my nerves,” they
think, “I’m feeling anxious; what do I do about it?”
Imagine how mindful learning can serve similar purposes for the quo-
tidian matters of everyday life, unrelated to addictive behavior. Here are
some examples:
• You read that a habit of grabbing a daily latte from a coffee shop can add
up to a cost of about $1,000 per year. You realize that getting a daily latte
is exactly what you do. Your intuitive belief has been that, in the larger
scheme of things, spending a couple of dollars on a latte is a pittance.
Still, you experience some cognitive dissonance. You could brush this

3.4 Mindful Learning 55
off as a minor annoyance, rationalizing that you could be engaging in
much more expensive indulgences than this; or you could recognize this
sensation as a signal that you might want to consider how you might
otherwise spend that $1,000 if you made your lattes at home.
• You are meeting with your primary care physician for your annual
checkup. She asks about alcohol consumption. Your answer is, “about
two drinks a day.” You experience a pang of guilt, knowing that you are
fudging a bit, given that your physician told you at your last visit about
recent research tying even moderate alcohol consumption to increased
risk of stroke for those over 50 (and you are well past that). You could
react silently with, “everyone has a small vice and this one is mine,” or
you could interpret the “guilt” emotion as something you need to pay
attention to.
• You are in a business meeting and a close associate, one with whom you
have a valued relationship, makes a comment that could be interpreted
as racist. Something about the remark is disturbing. You could interpret
it as a one-off exception and dismiss it; or you could recognize that the
disturbance you felt is telling you something, and that you may want to
speak to the colleague about it.
• You are attending a soccer game and the goal keeper on your favorite
team has successfully blocked a succession of shots on goal. You think,
wow, this guy is really on his game today –and then he fails to block the
shot that wins the match. In your disappointment you could be upset
with the goal keeper for failing to come through at a critical moment,
just when he was playing so well. Or you could stop to wonder where
your anger came from: could it be a case of expecting what is likely a
random streak of saves to continue?
• As an administrator of a small college you become embroiled in a dis-
pute with faculty members over a proposed institutional initiative. You
could fume about how “faculty are always resisting change,” or you stop
and wonder whether you are engaged in reductive thinking, that pos-
sibly more complex dynamics are at work.

All of these examples, and countless others, may or may not lead to the kind
of disorientation that could result in transformative learning. They may or
may not, in other words, rise to the level of disorienting dilemmas. Getting
them into that space requires a conscious, mindful awareness that broadens
the potential for deep learning. I explore what that potential might look
like in the next chapter.

56 Mindful Learning
Notes
1 As my friend and colleague Ron Cacciope reminded me, the phrase “know thy
self ” comes from the inscription on the temple at Delphi, the spiritual retreat
outside of Athens.
2 More recent research suggests that these numbers may be higher than Maslow
thought, depending on the cultural context. See Chapter 9.
3 See for example Seligman’s book, Learned Optimism (1991).
4 This is the problem I have with “andragogy” as espoused by Knowles (1984) and
others, that adults are “self-directed learners”: sometimes they are and some-
times they aren’t, depending on both the learning context and their own devel-
opmental stages.
5 Thanks to my friend and colleague Richard McGuigan, who pointed out that
“institutional learning” assumptions are not reflective of current approaches to
adult education. Vaill was referring to typical curricula in professional schools,
and professional development programs in organizations.
6 The reader may notice an apparent contradiction with a previous note about
“andragogy.” While it’s a mistake to assume that all learning in adults should be
self-directed, developing oneself to be self-authoring and thus self-directing is a
requirement for deep learning.

Ch apter 4

Constructive Disorientation

There is no right not to be offended.

Lynn Davies
In this chapter I develop in detail a theme I have been alluding to in pre-
vious chapters: that the path to deep learning begins with tension, but
tension of a positive sort. I call it constructive disorientation, a feeling of
arousal brought about by a perceived disconnect between the current and
a desired state, accompanied by a sense of efficacy that one is capable of
dealing with that disconnect. I make no claim that the concept is at all
new. It goes back at least as far as John Dewey ([1938] 1997), who wrote that
successful learning for life is a function of both curiosity and disquietude,
neither one of which alone is sufficient. Solving the Sunday crossword
puzzle in the New York Times may satisfy a temporary desire to figure it out
and it might provide a momentary sense of accomplishment, but it is not
likely to affect your ability to navigate your world in any significant way
(aside, perhaps, from keeping your mental faculties sharp). Feeling uneasy
about a personal relationship does not by itself create energy to resolve
that unease. Interpretation of experience must have an awareness of both
an interruption in homeostasis and confidence that, despite having been
pushed beyond the comfort zone, one is capable of making new meaning
of that experience. This is the wonderful way in which Dewey uses the
term “curiosity,” as an inherently positive drive to learn.
Dewey is not the only one to have described this phenomenon. Here are
some others: In the last chapter I described Peter Senge’s (2006) notion of
“creative tension,” what he referred to as a natural tendency to seek resolution
between what we want and the current reality. What Senge did not do was
to go deeper into the literature on human learning to explore what optimal
creative tension looks like and how to stimulate it. Similar to Senge’s “creative
tension” is a key element of what Ron Heifetz (1994) calls “adaptive learning.”
Individuals and organizations like to stay in their comfort zone, but:

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58 Constructive Disorientation
When you raise a difficult issue or surface a deep value conflict, you take
people out of their comfort zone and raise a lot of heat … Your goal [as a
leader] should be to keep the temperature within what we call the productive
zone of disequilibrium (PZD): enough heat generated by your intervention
to gain attention, engagement, and forward motion, but not so much that
the organization (or your part of it) explodes. (Heifetz et al., 2009, p. 29,
emphasis in original)

I will have more to say about adaptive learning and its relationship to deep
learning later on; for now, I will make this distinction between PZD and
constructive disorientation: the former refers to the management of system
disruption, the latter to individual experience. Trying to create a pro-
ductive zone of disequilibrium in an organization will fail if individuals in
that organization do not themselves experience constructive disorientation.
A third term similar to constructive disorientation is the “zone of prox-
imal development,” coined by developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky
in the 1930s (Vygotsky, 1978). Something of a pariah in his country’s edu-
cational establishment because of his progressive views, Vygotsky argued
that the most effective means of educating children is not to load them
up with information but rather to identify the difference between what
they are able to learn on their own and what they are able to learn with
adult help, and then create the appropriate pedagogical structure or
“scaffolding.” Like Dewey, Vygotsky maintained that deep learning is a
function of experience and supportive interaction with one’s social envir-
onment. While Vygotsky’s focus was on young children, we can readily
apply his thinking to adult learning: individuals need an appropriate mix
of challenge and support if they are to learn effectively.
Enter flow theory, one of the most important concepts in human motiv-
ation and learning to emerge in the past few decades, developed through the
research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced, roughly, “chick-sent-
me-high-ee”) (1990). Based on a fascinating series of studies of intrinsic
motivation, Csikszentmihalyi discovered an optimal state of being, which
he called flow. A person in a state of flow is completely focused on the task
at hand, enjoys a sense of competence and control, and often loses track of
time. Csikszentmihalyi discovered that flow experiences have eight essen-
tial components: a succession of clear goals, immediate feedback to one’s
actions, an alignment between challenges and skills, a merger of action
and awareness, intense concentration and a focus on the here and now,
loss of self-consciousness and fear of failure, a sense only of a “continuous
present,” and activity that becomes “autotelic,” that is, doing something
that becomes an end in itself. Csikszentmihalyi also discovered something

Constructive Disorientation 59
counterintuitive: that even those doing work many would consider to be
repetitive and boring, such as working on a factory assembly line, would
report experiencing flow in their jobs. They would approach their work as
a process of discovery, finding new ways to fine-tune their skills and con-
tribute to the larger whole. In short, it turns out that it is not what people
do that counts, but how they do it.
Csikszentmihalyi (1997) hypothesizes that the drive to discover and
create is a product of our evolution as humans. We have evolved not only
to learn from the past but also to prepare ourselves to deal with unpre-
dictable change. This impulse, however, exists in tension with what
Csikszentmihalyi calls the “effort imperative,” the need to wind down and
conserve our energy to face the unexpected. Too much of a focus on dis-
covery leads to exhaustion; too much focus on conserving efforts leads to
listlessness and entropy.
Most of us have experienced flow: we are working on a project and
everything seems to click; we are playing tennis and at the top of our
game, seemingly able to anticipate where the next shot is going; we are so
engrossed in a book that we suddenly realize that we have been up half the
night. Not surprisingly, we are most able to learn deeply when in a state
of flow. The obvious question then becomes, what can we do to make the
experience of flow more likely? The answer, according to Csikszentmihalyi,
is to imagine flow as a state of balance between the challenge of a task, on
one hand, and a sense of competence, on the other. Flow results when an
optimal balance exists between the two, when the challenge is just beyond
the reach of a person’s competence, but close enough to grasp with effort.
Flow is also a developmental state: A novice piano student might experi-
ence flow by being able to play a “C” scale perfectly for the first time; but
maintaining flow requires another and slightly and increasingly more dif-
ficult challenge. (Note the similarity here to Vygotsky’s zone of proximal
development.)
Flow is difficult to maintain, and so we spend most of our days in less
optimal states. We find either that the tasks we are performing lack appro-
priate challenge, resulting in boredom, or that the challenge is perceived
to be too great, resulting in anxiety, or at worst, the impulse to escape the
situation altogether. Being in flow, however, is not “good” in an absolute
sense. Imagine how annoying it would be to be around someone who
was “in flow” all of the time: this person would be completely and con-
tinuously self-centered, focused on fulfilling current goals, oblivious to
the need for new learning. Csikszentmihalyi (1990) himself recognizes the
danger of flow’s “addictive potential” (p. 62). A self-centered self cannot

60 Constructive Disorientation
become more complex, and thus a slide back into a “normal” state of con-
sciousness is necessary in order to allow for other constructive disorienta-
tion opportunities.

4.1 What Makes Disorientation “Constructive”?

Just as flow states are not sufficient for deep learning, not all disorienta-
tion is constructive. A mild state of cognitive disorientation may simply
be experienced as irritation, and easily swatted away. An extreme state of
disorientation will not lead to deep learning, either. So what, then, defines
that sweet spot, that space most conducive to constructive disorientation
and deep learning in an organization? Necessary criteria include a situation
requiring “adaptive learning” and three interacting sources of intrinsic
motivation –autonomy, efficacy, and relatedness, terms I have modified
slightly from self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017). I describe
each of these four criteria in turn, below.

4.1.1 A Situation That Requires Adaptive Learning

A term first introduced by Ron Heifetz (1994), adaptive learning is the
learning required when a gap exists between the values people stand for
(those that constitute thriving) and the reality that they face (their current
lack of capacity to realize those values). The challenge is such that neither
the problem nor its solution is clearly defined, and thus there are no easy
answers or singular solutions. As tempting as it might be to hope that
existing perspectives will lead to a solution, addressing the challenge is pos-
sible only through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loy-
alties. Achieving agreement on a course of action means that participants
must suspend assumptions, entertain fresh questions, and try on the
perspectives of others. They must realize that a solution is not a matter
of applying technical solutions more expertly, but rather one of framing
problems differently. In other words, space must exist for deep learning
to occur.
Creating this space is not easy. The tendency will always be to default
to technical solutions, what Donald Schön (1983) called “technical ration-
ality.” Why is this so? Consider the insidious influences of cognitive bias,
explored in Chapter 1 of this book. When faced with cognitive disson-
ance, in this case the disorientation produced by an adaptive challenge,
continuing the tried and true is far more comfortable than leaping into
the unknown. Back in 2000 the now defunct Blockbuster video rental

4.1 What Makes Disorientation “Constructive”? 61

chain scoffed at a proposal from then start-up Netflix to integrate their
services within the Blockbuster model. It would have cost the company
about $50 million then; Netflix is worth about $10 billion now (Lucas,
2012). More recently, the traditional hotel industry mostly ignored the
threat of Airbnb. I can only imagine the dismissive attitude of corporate
executives: “People staying in a stranger’s bedroom, rather than enjoying
all the benefits of a hotel? A cottage industry at best, catering only to
a niche clientele.” Thus, rather than understanding the adaptive threat,
the hospitality industry focused on improving their “hotel-ness” rather
than understanding the emergent market appeal of homey, low- cost
accommodations and adapting accordingly.
But even when the threat becomes consciously real, adaptation may still
not occur. Heifetz and his colleagues (2009) maintain that the common
thread explaining failure to adapt is fear of loss. Organizational leaders
may recognize the need for adaptive change and even set strategic goals
accordingly, and still nothing substantial happens. Adaptation is not a
normal response for most organizations, which have structures that opti-
mize production, not innovation. Recall the concept of “immunity to
change” (Kegan & Lahey, 2009) introduced in an earlier chapter. Forces
for stability in the face of pressures for change lead to immunities kicking
in at both the individual and organizational levels. Imagine the competing
commitments: protecting an organization’s identity and one’s role in it,
holding on to a carefully cultivated skill set, having the security of a known
culture, and so on. The “big assumption,” namely that major adaptive
change will upset and destabilize and lead to an organizational landscape
littered with victims, is simply too hard to face.
Loss aversion, and the desire of most organizations to keep turbulence
under control in order to maximize productivity, leads to what complexity
theorist Mary Uhl-Bien (2018) has called the “order response,” in the form
of structures we know as “bureaucracies.” Organizations are set up for sta-
bility, and disturbances to that stability are met with pressure to return
to order. Uhl-Bien and her colleagues argue that while an administrative
lattice of some kind is necessary, adaptive learning should coexist with it.
Complexity theory holds that organisms, including organizational systems,
are “complex adaptive systems” with rich patterns of interaction. These
interaction patterns create a constant state of disequilibrium in the system,
which leads to “nonlinear, emergent dynamics” (Uhl-Bien, Marion, &
McKelvey, 2007, p. 293). Rather than suppress these dynamics, healthy
organizations should strive to “structure and enable conditions such that
complex adaptive systems are able to optimally address creative problem

62 Constructive Disorientation
solving, adaptability, and learning” (p. 293). These complex systems are
kept healthy by fostering interaction and interdependency, while also
injecting tension sufficient to keep the energy going. As counterintuitive
as it may seem, without what Lynn Davies (2015) calls “educative turbu-
lence,” organizations and other complex systems will die. Turbulence,
therefore, is a productive force. To evolve and thrive, she writes, “a system
has to experience turbulence, to get to the edge of chaos, before settling
into a new fitness landscape. Simple perturbations can nudge a system
into creative activity” (p. 451). Note Davies’ choice of words here: simple
and nudge, not overwhelming and force. As would be predicted by flow
theory, turbulence is most likely to be a force for positive change when
it is perceived as requiring a series of incremental moves from the status
quo, in an atmosphere that values experimentation and learning. Sources
of healthy turbulence can come from both internal and external sources.
External sources would include information about the organizational
environment and how it is changing. Internal sources would emerge from
a culture that creates a welcoming environment for diversity of ideas,
honest dialogue and conflictual conversation, leading to what Young calls
“enlarged thought”:
If dialogue succeeds primarily when it appeals to what the participants
already share, then none need revise their opinions or viewpoints in any ser-
ious way in order to take account of other interests, opinions or perspectives.
Beyond this, even if we understand that we need others to see what we all
share, it can easily happen that we each find in the other only a mirror for
ourselves. (Young, 2000, quoted in Davies, 2015, p. 453)

I will come back to the power of dialogue in deep learning in Chapter 6,

and the role of conflict in Chapter 7.

4.1.2 Intrinsic Motivation

As I have described in previous chapters, humans have evolved to be
curious, active, deeply social creatures. We have an intrinsic drive to be
deeply interested in and to have control over our internal and external
worlds. When these needs are met we have the potential to develop
increased complexity and more integrated functioning. When these needs
are not met, development is stalled, defensive and other dysfunctional
behaviors emerge, and human flourishing is compromised. More directly
to the point of this book, people will select optimal challenges leading to
deep learning when, and only when, they are intrinsically motivated. Decades

4.1 What Makes Disorientation “Constructive”? 63

of research point to these three determinants of intrinsic motivation, all
interrelated:

4.1.2.1 Autonomy
Situations leading to the potential for adaptive learning will go nowhere
without both individuals and groups experiencing autonomy. Autonomy,
the first of three necessary elements in self-determination theory (Ryan &
Deci, 2017), is having the sense that what we do, we do voluntarily, under
our own volition, and not under external control. Without autonomy,
individuals feel powerless to do anything about what is happening to them,
a mere cog in a wheel, reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin’s hapless character
on the assembly line in Modern Times. In their book on self-determination
theory, Ryan and Deci (2017) describe an autonomy-control continuum.
At the pure autonomy end, individual volition is total, behavior emanates
from one’s sense of self, and motivation is purely intrinsic, a situation rem-
iniscent of flow. At the other end is pure control, wherein the individual
is forced to act in a manner incongruent with self, and so the motivation
is purely extrinsic. A great deal of research over the years has extolled the
virtues of intrinsic motivation as a means to personal development and well-
being. In self-determination theory the matter is more complex: extrinsic
motivators can, over time, become internalized and integrated with one’s
own sense of self, and thus become intrinsic. Religious beliefs, for example,
begin as extrinsic values taught by parents and/or the larger society, but
over time can become so integrated into one’s belief system that the motiv-
ation for their expression becomes intrinsic. (Consider the satisfaction
experienced by religious missionaries as they deliver the Word around the
world.) Thus, in self-determination theory, optimal motivation is “autono-
mous motivation,” a combination of one’s intrinsic motivation, driven by
innate curiosity about the world, and well-integrated extrinsic motivation.
Autonomy, Ryan and Deci (2017) note, adds an important variable to
flow theory. Flow is not just the optimal balance of challenge and compe-
tence: one could be presented with a situation having exactly this balance
and still not be motivated to act. I might be invited to play a video game,
something I am perfectly capable of doing, and still not be motivated to
participate. I need to feel curious, and that I am playing of my own vol-
ition, not because of social expectation.
In my research on motivation in university faculty (Wergin, 2001),
I found professional autonomy –the freedom to experiment, to follow
one’s own leads wherever they may go, and to do so without fear of the
consequences –to be the single strongest predictor of faculty productivity.

64 Constructive Disorientation
I also found, however, that when the value placed on autonomy is taken
to an extreme, it becomes more a matter of personal privilege rather than
social obligation. When John Dewey (1981) defined freedom as “the power
to grow,” he did not include the power to be accountable only to one-
self. In any professional context, therefore, the responsible expression of
autonomy is the freedom to contribute to the common good.

4.1.2.2 Efficacy
Efficacy is universally regarded as a core element in motivation. The term is
closely related to competence, one of the two key elements leading to flow,
and the second of three key elements in self-determination theory, where
competence is defined as “our basic need to feel effectance [sic] and mas-
tery. People need to feel able to operate effectively within their important
life contexts” (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 11). Those who have a sense of effi-
cacy, in addition, not only feel that they are able to operate effectively,
they also feel that they are having a significant effect on their environment
(Bandura, 1977). In other words, while competence refers to confidence
in the doing, efficacy refers to a sense of confidence in the effect of the
doing, and is therefore more powerful. Competence is necessary for effi-
cacy, but not vice versa. In my research on university faculty, efficacy was
another key motivational driver. Even faculty members with long lists of
publications did not always feel efficacious: there also had to be the satis-
faction of believing that they were having an impact on their disciplines.
In an organizational context, efficacy is what gives our work meaning; it
is a feeling that what we do matters. Efficacy is the difference between
coming home from work and asking yourself, “just what did I accomplish
today?” and knowing that something you did that day made a difference
for the better. Just as volitional action is necessary for deep learning, so is
the feeling that such action will have a tangible result.

4.1.2.3 Relatedness
The third key element in self-determination theory, relatedness means feeling
socially connected and cared for by others. But in addition, “relatedness is
also about belonging and feeling significant among others … [thus] experi-
encing oneself as giving or contributing to others. Relatedness pertains,
moreover, to a sense of being integral to social organizations beyond one-
self ” (Ryan & Deci, 2017, p. 11). This last point is critical, as it ties related-
ness with efficacy. One feels not only cared for but also impactful. More
than 30 years ago, researcher Barry Staw (1983) identified two key factors
that lead to what he called “organizational motivation.” He suggested that

4.2 Constructive Disorientation in Others 65

individuals are motivated to behave in ways befitting the interests of their
organizations when two conditions are met optimally: when they identify
with their organizations (having a sense of “community”) and when they
see tangible evidence that they are contributing to their organizations in
meaningful ways (“efficacy”). Note how community and efficacy together
become “relatedness” in self-determination theory.
Back in the late 1980s, several of my colleagues and I did a study of
career satisfaction among senior faculty members in five diverse institutions
(Caffarella, Armour, Fuhrmann, & Wergin, 1989). We wanted to know
which factors most contributed to satisfaction among these faculty. What
proved to be the most important factor separating high-and low-satisfaction
groups across all institutions was what we called a sense of “niche,” a per-
ception that individual faculty had a place in their academic community
that was theirs and no one else’s. A niche has two characteristics: it is
connected to a larger whole, and it is constantly evolving. We examined
the difference between a niche and a “rut”: the former has a warm, com-
fortable, three-dimensional feel, defined by a larger space. A rut is some-
thing one gets stuck in. A niche promotes growth and change; a rut does
not. Looking back on that research today, I am struck by how closely
our findings parallel self-determination theory: “niche” communicates
autonomy, it requires a community context, it provides a tacit recognition
of worth, and it is a mark of efficacy. What was missing from our discus-
sion of niche 30 years ago, was the importance of disorientation as a force
for growth and development. Now it is clear, even if counterintuitive, that
being comfortable in a niche requires being amenable to change. We need
to know that our organizational niche will, sooner or later, require redec-
oration, renovation, or even relocation –but we also need to know that
change will at least in part be on our own terms, that we have a sense of
autonomous motivation.

4.2 How to Enable Constructive Disorientation in Others?

As I noted earlier in this chapter, two organizational theorists, Ronald
Heifetz (Heifetz et al., 2009) and Peter Senge (2006), have introduced
concepts similar to constructive disorientation, namely “productive zone
of disequilibrium” and “creative tension,” respectively. Each of these
concepts is based on practice experience, and both have resonance with
organizational leaders, what psychometricians call “face validity.” Both also
have serious limitations. First, they focus on organizational conditions, not
individuals’ experience of disequilibrium or tension. Second, both authors

66 Constructive Disorientation
provide limited advice on how to stimulate these conditions. And third,
neither has situated his concept in learning theory or informed it with
existing empirical evidence. In the remainder of this chapter I will address
these limitations with suggestions that are grounded in motivation theory
and backed up by empirical research –not just from a few isolated studies
but from a convergence of findings that cut across cultures and organiza-
tional settings.
In order to achieve a state of constructive disorientation one must be
confronted with an experience that creates cognitive dissonance, perceived
as a slight imbalance of challenge over support (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990),
leading to a “creative tension” (Senge, 2006), a “productive zone of dis-
equilibrium” (Heifetz et al., 2009), or “zone of proximal development”
(Vygotsky, 1978) fueled by autonomous motivation (Ryan & Deci, 2017)
and one’s belief that the effort will be efficacious (Bandura, 1977). This is
about as close as it gets to theoretical and empirical consensus. We should
be able to recognize constructive disorientation in ourselves. But how do
we promote it in others? The evidence points to four key enablers:

4.2.1 A Clear But Manageable Challenge

This is the essence of constructive disorientation. There must be a clear
sense of disconnect between the current and a desired state. In order for
this disquietude to be constructive it must be accompanied by the belief
that the challenge is manageable, that one has both the competence and
the social support needed to meet the challenge. Recall that in flow theory
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), the challenge must be balanced by support in
order to have the optimal conditions for “flow.” When these are out of
whack, when the challenge is perceived as too great, anxiety reduces effi-
cacy and the desire to learn. One of the common mistakes made by cor-
porate trainers is to assume that all performance problems are “training
problems” (Mager & Pipe, 1983): that is, if individuals are not performing
at a level appropriate to the task, then what is needed is a training program
to fill the learning gap. While this may make intuitive sense, the problem is
that at any more than a moderate level, anxiety is detrimental to learning.
Under these conditions the impulse is to do whatever is necessary to
reduce the anxiety, and this takes priority over the desire to learn, even if
in the long run learning will increase competence and restore an optimal
balance.1 Just as in trauma surgery, where the first priority is to stop the
bleeding, in adult learning the first priority is to reduce the learner’s anxiety

4.2 Constructive Disorientation in Others 67

to manageable levels and then focus on building competence. This point
leads to the second enabler:

4.2.2 A Flexible Structure

Consistent with self-determination theory and autonomous motivation,
constructive disorientation is enabled when participants have the ability
to increase or decrease the level of challenge so as to match skills with
requirements for action. A flexible structure is one of the cornerstones
of self-directed learning (Knowles, 1984) and is also a key feature of both
problem- based learning, which originated in medical education and
now enjoys widespread use in other academic disciplines (Fredrickson,
McMahan, & Dunlap, 2013), and action learning, developed initially for
the workplace (Scott, 2017). The two approaches, while developed inde-
pendently, have so much in common as to be nearly indistinguishable.
Each one follows a similar process. Small groups are formed and presented
with a complex, ill-structured problem taken from real life, for which the
solution is unknown. With the help of a coach or facilitator, the group
sets learning goals, defines the problem, identifies information needed
to address the problem, engages in self-directed learning both individu-
ally and collaboratively, meets together to ask questions and challenge
assumptions, revisits how the problem has been defined, and identifies
solutions. Participants then reflect on their actions and what they have
learned, and receive feedback from the coach or facilitator (or in the case
of action learning, other members of the organization). Note how this
process incorporates the principles of adaptive learning (by focusing on
complex, ill-defined issues), Vygotsky’s (1978) notion of proximal devel-
opment (by having a facilitator help identify what people are able to
learn on their own and where they need help), Kolb’s (1984) experiential
learning (by beginning with real-world problems the learner can identify
with), and Dewey ([1938] 1997) and others’ insistence on the importance
of drawing upon the learner’s innate sense of curiosity as a driver of deep
learning. Further, the evidence about the effectiveness of problem-based
learning and action learning suggests that the process works best when
problem difficulty is balanced by prior knowledge (as per flow theory)
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), and when intrinsic motivation is blended with
internalized extrinsic motivation, leading to autonomous motivation
experienced both by the individual (Ryan & Deci, 2017) and the team
(Yeo & Marquardt, 2010). This last criterion may be the most important of

68 Constructive Disorientation
all. The team must perceive an organizational climate supportive of team
control over its learning and problem solving.

4.2.3 A Setting for “Deep Work”

Coined by Cal Newport (2016) in his book with the eponymous
title, deep work refers to “professional activities performed in a state
of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities
to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and
are hard to replicate” (p. 2). Newport recounts how some of the most
productive figures in history, from Emily Dickinson and Mark Twain
to Carl Jung and Bill Gates, carved out and made space for long and
uninterrupted chunks of time. In modern terms, this means being able
to fight off the temptation to check one’s email or access social media –
something many people find very difficult to do. As Newport notes,
“the rise of [internet tools], combined with ubiquitous access to them
through smartphones and networked office computers, has fragmented
most knowledge workers’ attention into slivers” (p. 5). This gives rise to
“shallow work: noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often
performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new
value in the world and are easy to replicate” (p. 6). Shallow work can be
extraordinarily seductive. Situations requiring adaptive learning are by
definition unsettling, and as Heifetz and his colleagues (2009) point out,
can lead to “work avoidance.” Think for a moment about how on almost
a daily basis we are “thinking fast” when we should be “thinking slow,”
in Kahneman’s (2011) terms. About how, when faced with a challenging
task, we check our email inbox one more time … and then again. (In
terms of my own behavior when doing the deep work of writing this
book, I reserve the right to remain silent.2) A point I have made earlier
in this book is that drive-by learning encouraged by network tools, a
sort of “Twitterized” learning, is an impediment to deep learning. So
are the new power dynamics in organizations, introduced when man-
agers “ping” their employees and expect an immediate response. What
is needed are more opportunities for deep work, and as Newport (2016)
points out, in our postindustrial and knowledge-based economy, these
opportunities have become both increasingly rare and increasingly valu-
able. Settings conducive to deep work cultivate the kind of deep concen-
tration that produces flow –stretching just beyond one’s comfort zone
and losing oneself in an activity –and, therefore, conditions that lead to
deep learning.

4.2 Constructive Disorientation in Others 69

4.2.4 Clear Criteria for Performance, Concrete

Feedback, and “Freedom to Fail”
Recall that clear criteria for performance, concrete feedback, and lack of
fear of failure are three of the common markers of flow (Csikszentmihalyi,
1990). An individual or working group must believe that failure is not only
permissible but is also an essential aspect of learning. I have done a lot
of work over the years in program accreditation and evaluation in higher
education, and one of the persistent myths is that “accountability for
results” should be a hallmark of program assessment. I recall giving a talk
on the nature of quality at a professional conference in 2006, suggesting
that holding a program accountable for results was exactly the wrong thing
to do –and seeing the aghast expressions on the faces of people in the
audience! I hastened to add that paying attention to results is, of course,
important, but what programs should be held accountable for is learning
from results in ways that lead to program improvement. Persistence in
valuing accountability for results has, in my experience, led to a lot of
stifled creativity and many missed opportunities. The evidence discussed
in this chapter suggests why this is so: under conditions of overemphasis
on accountability for results, autonomous motivation disappears and is
replaced by “goal displacement” (Welner, 2013): replacing a shared goal
with quantitative, externally imposed indicators purporting to measure
goal achievement. This is what happens when schools are held accountable
for improving children’s performance on standardized test scores, or when a
nonprofit’s effectiveness is defined by financial contributions or number of
people served. Should we then be surprised when schools reduce emphasis
on the arts and physical education, or when a nonprofit hires a chief execu-
tive with little experience related to the mission of the organization but
is known for fund-raising skills? One of the most egregious examples of
accountability for results run amok is the knee-jerk embrace of strategic
planning as a management tool, despite the mounting evidence of its inef-
fectiveness (Buller, 2015). As I argued in the previous chapter, strategic
planning is based on three dubious assumptions: that the future is pre-
dictable, that change is linear, and that decisions are made rationally. The
future is in fact highly unpredictable and nonlinear –leading to the need
for adaptive work (Heifetz, 1994) –and organizational choices, especially
the most important ones, are made for political and not solely empirical
reasons.3 Let me emphasize that nothing is inherently wrong with strategic
planning as long as the organization does not fall into the trap of reifying
the process and holding units accountable for achieving strategic goals.

70 Constructive Disorientation
Instead, strategic planning can be helpful if and only if it is undertaken as
an organic process within a larger strategic vision, encouraging a culture
of reasonable risk-taking and staying alert to serendipitous opportunities.

4.3 Conclusion
In this chapter I have made the case for constructive disorientation as a con-
dition necessary for deep learning. Learning that does not stem from dis-
orientation deepens one’s knowledge perspectives and increases technical
competence, and I do not mean to make light of this kind of learning: it is
not the same as what I have referred to dismissively as “drive-by learning”
or, in Newport’s (2016) terms, “shallow learning.” Just as being in a con-
stant state of flow is not an altogether good thing, neither is it possible or
desirable to be in a constant state of deep learning. Learning what, how,
and when (Aristotle’s episteme, techne, and phronesis) must of course occur;
otherwise constructive disorientation would never lead to anything con-
structive. My point, made repeatedly in this book, is that the increasingly
complex nature of the challenges we face as a society requires going beyond
technical rationality to engage in deep learning. And for this we must rec-
ognize and create opportunities for constructive disorientation, a perceived
disconnect between where we are and where we need to be, accompanied
by a sense that we are capable of dealing with that disconnect.
In order for disorientation to be constructive it must have four essential
qualities.
First, the situation must be one that makes this disconnect clear, one
that requires adaptive learning (Heifetz, 1994). Whether it relates to an
individual or a group, there must be a perception of a gap between what
is valued and the reality that what is valued is not being realized in the
current environment. This is exactly what Mezirow (1990) meant when
he conceived of a “disorienting dilemma” as the key to transformative
learning. The disorientation must be strong enough to encourage sus-
pension of assumptions and beliefs and the willingness to entertain fresh
perspectives, but not so strong that a response to the preexisting order is
triggered, as well as various immunities to change (Kegan & Lahey, 2009),
all of which relate to fear of loss.
Second, the situation must be conducive to autonomous motivation, an
amalgam of intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivators that have become
internalized and integrated. Being aware of an adaptive challenge is not
sufficient for constructive disorientation and, eventually, deep learning.
As important as flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990) has been to our

4.3 Conclusion 71
understanding of intrinsic motivation, one is not necessarily motivated to
engage in learning when faced with an optimal balance of challenge and
support: the learning must have a volitional quality, driven by curiosity, an
innate human need to explore.
Third, the situation must empower a sense of efficacy, a feeling that not
only is one competent to engage in a learning task but also that the effort
will have a tangible result of value to the learner.
And fourth, the disorientation must occur in an environment where
one feels socially connected, cared for by others, and confident that they
are contributing to their social or organizational environment in healthy
and valued ways.
Promoting constructive disorientation in others also has four necessary
and distinctive features.
First is a clear but manageable challenge, the essence of constructive dis-
orientation. One must experience a sense of disquietude, accompanied by
the belief that one has both the competence and social support needed to
meet the challenge. The key to maintaining this balance is not to attempt
to reduce the disorientation through increasing competence, but rather
to manage the inevitable anxiety. Anything beyond a moderate anxiety
inhibits motivation to learn.
Second, building upon the previous point, individuals –and groups –
must be able to increase or decrease the level of challenge so as to match
skills with requirements for action. These learning strategies use models
embedded in problem-based learning and action learning: small groups
define the presenting problem, identify learning needs, set learning goals
and strategies, meet together regularly to share and reflect on what has
been learned, seek feedback, discuss how the problem should be redefined,
and continue the process, all under the guidance of a facilitator who keeps
the process going and the disorientation at a constructive level.
Third, the learning should be in an environment free from distractions,
one conducive to “deep work” (Newport, 2016) and “thinking slow”
(Kahneman, 2011).
Fourth and finally, consistent with flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990),
the learning activity should have clear criteria for performance, concrete
feedback, and freedom to fail. The first two of these criteria are commonly
understood; the third is not. The trend toward holding individuals and
groups accountable for measurable results, and the ubiquity of strategic
planning in organizations, left unchecked, stifles creativity, ignores seren-
dipitous opportunities, and leads to the displacement of valued goals by
quantitative benchmarks. In order for constructive disorientation to occur

72 Constructive Disorientation
the organizational culture must support experimentation and reasonable
risk-taking.
Constructive disorientation must go somewhere: one must know how
to follow it and what to do. In the next chapter I turn to the third key to
deep learning, critical reflection on experience.

Notes
1 The deleterious effects of anxiety on learning are well documented (cf.
Sogunro, 1998).
2 A humorous if unsettling diversion about such pains is Edward Gorey’s The
Unstrung Harp: Or Mr. Earbrass writes a novel (1999). Thanks to Norman Dale
for the reference.
3 See Chapter 7 for a full elaboration of this point.

Ch apter 5

Critical Reflection

In searching for the truth, it may be our best plan to start by criti-
cizing our most cherished beliefs.
Karl Popper
In this chapter I explore the importance of critical reflection to deep
learning. Knowing oneself and facilitating constructive disorientation are
both necessary but insufficient conditions. Who would want to be in an
organization full of people who spend their days as learning dilettantes,
flitting from one moment of intellectual curiosity to the next, without ever
pausing to do the deep work of challenging existing ways of thinking and
potentially integrating new insights? As Kahneman and Renshon (2007)
pointed out, even in a healthy state of disorientation we scramble to find
a connection with existing perspectives, and because “System 2” thinking
makes our brains work harder, we have to make a conscious and deliberate
effort to resist defaulting to System 1 thinking. Thus, the necessity for crit-
ical reflection. In Chapter 2, I wrote about the importance of reflection
on experience as a way to develop phronesis, or the ability to know when
to rely on intuition (System 1) and when to make the effort to dig more
deeply (System 2). Deep learning, therefore, depends on how humans
make meaning of experience –on whether or not that experience will
become, in John Dewey’s ([1938] 1997) terms, “educative.”
Reflection, a “turning back on experience,” can take many forms: “Simple
awareness of an object, event or state, including awareness of a perception
thought, feeling, disposition, intention, action, or of one’s habits of doing
these things. It can also mean letting one’s thoughts wander over some-
thing, taking something into consideration, or imagining alternatives.
One can reflect on oneself reflecting” (Mezirow, 1998, p. 185)
John Dewey ([1938] 1997) was one of the first to affirm the import-
ance of reflection on experience in human learning, separating “intelligent

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74

74 Critical Reflection
action” from “routine action.” For Dewey, “true” reflection meets four cri-
teria (Rodgers, 2002):
First, reflection is a meaning-making process that moves a learner from
one experience to the next with deeper understandings of its relationships
with and connections to other experiences and ideas. Recall from Chapter 3
that for Dewey, experience is more than just participating in events; it is
active interaction with one’s environment in a sort of dialectic that results in
change on both sides. As I have argued throughout this book, while experi-
ence is the basis of learning, it can also be a barrier to learning: the schemes
that help us make meaning of experience can also serve to block incoming
information that is dissonant with those schemes. Reflection is the thread
that makes continuity of learning possible, ensuring the progress of the
individual and, ultimately, society. It is a means to socially desirable ends.
Second, reflection for Dewey is a systematic, rigorous, disciplined way
of thinking, with its roots in scientific inquiry. Reflection on experience is
not “spontaneous interpretation” (Dewey, [1938] 1997), which leads one
to interpret experience based on existing schema and then to act accord-
ingly (Kahneman’s System 1 [2011]). Instead, two other elements are neces-
sary: a sense of disequilibrium causing a need for resolution, and a sense
of curiosity, both of which are essential to constructive disorientation.
Dewey’s suggested process for inquiring into experience looks a bit linear
and overly rational today, as he based his approach on the traditional scien-
tific method: that is, identifying the problems that arise from experience,
generating possible explanations for the problem(s), converting these into
hypotheses, and testing the hypotheses using objective scientific methods.
Dewey did not assume that the results of inquiry would settle the matter,
but rather would lead to “intelligent action,” which in turn would lead to
further reflection.
Third, reflection needs to happen in community, in interaction with
others, a point I have made throughout this book and explore in greater
depth in Chapter 6.
Fourth, and finally, reflection requires attitudes that value the personal
and intellectual growth of oneself and others, a value Dewey considered
critical for a democratic society. Reflection that is truly useful should be
determined by public inspection and criticism, and should be used as a
means to essentially moral ends.
Dewey largely ignored the power of emotion in learning (except when
writing about the arts) and the pernicious effects of cognitive bias. He also
downplayed the role of politics in learning. Dewey’s thinking is criticized

5.1 What Makes Reflection “Critical”? 75

today mostly for its optimistic, even naïve, assumptions about the power
of education alone to bring about social change. Dewey, and other pro-
gressive educators like Eduard Lindeman (1961), who took Dewey’s ideas
on the education of children and applied them to adults, rarely mentioned
oppression or hegemony as barriers to a democratic utopia, a topic I take
up in Chapter 7.

5.1 What Makes Reflection “Critical”?

Just as not all disorientation is constructive disorientation, not all reflec-
tion is critical reflection, as adult educator Jack Mezirow (1998) pointed
out: “Reflection does not necessarily imply making an assessment of what
is being reflected upon, a distinction that differentiates it from critical
reflection … critical self-reflection involves critique of a premise upon
which [one] has defined a problem” (p. 186, emphasis added). One may
respond to mild disorientation with a strictly technical –and appropriate –
response, such as making adjustments to a staff development program
based on negative feedback from participants, or reflecting on a meeting
and deciding that much of the agenda could have been conducted by
email. These are examples of what Argyris and Schön (1978) have called
“single-loop learning,” making changes within a given framework of values
and beliefs. Double-loop learning, on the other hand, requires that the
assumptions behind the framework be cross-examined. For the examples
just posed, a double-loop tack would lead one to ask such questions as,
“why do we think we need a staff development program in the first place?”
Or, “given that much of our business can be transacted electronically, what
are the useful purposes of meeting face to face?” Critical reflection is not
necessarily a more intense or probing form of reflection, but is more diffi-
cult, as it requires that we identify assumptions that we hold dear and put
them to the test (Brookfield, 2009).
These kinds of assumptions belong to what Mezirow (2000) referred to
as “meaning perspectives”: “The structure of assumptions and expectations
through which we filter sense impressions … [A meaning perspective]
selectively shapes and delimits perception, cognition, feelings, and dis-
position by predisposing our intentions, expectations, and purposes. It
provides the context for making meaning within which we choose what
and how a sensory experience is to be construed and/or appropriated”
(p. 16). Meaning perspectives (or “mental models,” as Senge [2006] and
others refer to them) may be conscious or subconscious, intentional or

76 Critical Reflection
unintentional, idiosyncratic or culturally assimilated. These meaning
schemes, consisting of clusters of beliefs and values, all have emotional
origins and therefore can be extremely resistant to change, making true
critical reflection hard and even painful.
Mezirow (2000) maintained that critical reflection is the most important
element in transformative learning, and there is some empirical evidence
to back this up (cf. Brock, 2010).
For all that has been written about critical reflection and its importance
to deep learning, writers on the topic are relatively silent about how pre-
cisely the process is supposed to work. Some help comes from philosopher
Jürgen Habermas (1984), who proposed that critical reflection must begin
by gaining distance from the present, what he termed “distantiation.” Put
plainly, one must make a conscious choice to step back from the moment
in order to, appropriating Ron Heifetz’ metaphor (Heifetz et al., 2009) get
“off the dance floor” and onto “the balcony” to understand the system of
swirling dancers below. Ironically, perhaps, one must be mindful of that
moment in order to know when to do this. We must learn to listen to
our body’s signals and to discern what to notice, to develop the habit of
“mindful learning” discussed in Chapter 3, an implicit awareness of and
openness to new perspectives. This is what Mezirow (2000) refers to as
developing a more “dependable” meaning perspective, one that “is more
inclusive, differentiating, permeable (open to other viewpoints), critically
reflective of assumptions, emotionally capable of change, and integrative
of experience” (p. 19).
Thus, the first step is developing mindfulness of the sort discussed in
Chapter 3: cultivating a habit of mind that recognizes and then responds
to the signals that distantiation might be in order. These signals might
not be initially disorienting. In contrast to what Mezirow implies, deep
learning is not just a reaction to felt disorientation, but a practiced habit
that can also produce disorientation. Consider the simple example above
about staff development programs. Certainly, the easier form of reflection
would be to look to participant feedback and to reflect on that feedback as
guidance for program improvement –an example of single-loop learning.
A more critically reflective posture would be to go deeper, looking for
more subtle clues. Consider the following responses to a typical end-
of-workshop survey, asking what kept the experience from being more
useful:
The case studies handed out didn’t reflect what really goes on in my
organization.

5.1 What Makes Reflection “Critical”? 77

It’s too bad that top administrators couldn’t be here, because they need this
training more than we do.
I hope that some of the ideas we came up with will result in real change,
but I have my doubts.
A “single-loop,” technical response to each of the above might look some-
thing like this:
Make the case studies more realistic; maybe use more real-life examples.
Make an effort to include more “brass” next time.
Be sure to incorporate time at the end for more detailed action plans.
A “double-loop,” more critically reflective response would be something
like this: Workshop organizers would look to these comments and others
and identify underlying themes that might signal the need for more
adaptive learning, by definition more difficult and risky than technical
solutions, and ask: What is the subtext behind these comments? What
are the implicit messages, if any? What do they possibly reveal about a
gap between strongly held values and the experienced reality (the defin-
ition of an “adaptive challenge”) (Heifetz, 1994)? What might the adaptive
challenge be, and how might we name it? Collective meaning-making, by
naming and acting upon the adaptive challenge requires attention to both
relational learning and political learning, subjects of the next two chapters
in this book.
For now, I want to emphasize just how difficult true critical reflec-
tion can be, especially given the seductive appeal of technical rationality.
Mezirow (1998) argued that critical reflection is a matter of “principled
thinking”: “impartial, consistent, and non-arbitrary” according to “uni-
versal constructs of reason” (p. 186). Unfortunately, using one’s own
powers of reason in this way works only when evaluating other people’s
assumptions. In The Enigma of Reason, Mercier and Sperber (2017) make
the persuasive case that reasoning evolved in humans to justify one’s own
beliefs and to criticize others’. What people find difficult, they write, is
“not looking for counterevidence or counterarguments in general, but only
when what is being challenged is their own opinion” (p. 218). Thus, critical
reflection is a lot easier when thinking through assumptions –about staff
development programs, for instance –when they are someone else’s and
not your own pet theories. In Mezirow’s terms, it is the difference between
“objective reframing,” critical reflection on the assumptions of others,
and “subjective reframing,” critical reflection on one’s own assumptions
(Mezirow, 2000).

78 Critical Reflection
Here is the essence of the difficulty. Letting go of a cherished belief
results in a sense of loss of agency and efficacy and a feeling of regret, all
of which can lead to lowered motivation to learn, increased cynicism, and
even a dystopian view of human existence. Small wonder that cognitive
biases, when challenged by others, become stronger; that conspiracy the-
ories are so hard to dislodge; that superstitions are so hard to overcome!
The way through the stress of critical reflection lies in having an alternative
set of beliefs to turn to, what Mezirow (1998) calls “assimilative learning.”
Back in Chapter 1, I wrote about how difficult it was –and to some extent
still is –for me to let go of the assumption that minds are changed by logic
and evidence. I could not have coped with the new (for me) knowledge
that empirical evidence does not ipso facto change people’s minds without
having an alternative available in the form of a set of new beliefs about
how minds can in fact be changed –namely through the positive power
of emotion, personal agency, curiosity, and social norms, all of which
I explore later in this chapter and those following.

5.2 Critical Reflection and Mindful Learning

I introduced the notion of mindful learning in Chapter 3, as the habit of
mind that consciously and routinely challenges existing assumptions. It
is the sort of critical reflection that stems, not from an overt emotional
disturbance, but rather from a cognitive reminder that the premises
upon which we decide and act are always subject to question. This is the
essence of reflexivity, which “brings the unconscious, taken-for-granted,
habitual ways of thinking and reasoning to the surface for ideology cri-
tique and reconstruction in such a manner that the cognitive processes
and self-formative processes merge” (Steet, 1992, quoted in Kucukaydin
& Cranton, 2012, p. 52). While reflexivity and critical reflection are often
used interchangeably, I view the former as a habit of mind, a core element
in mindful learning, while the latter is the act itself. Reflexivity leads to
more and deeper critical reflection. Reflexivity is especially important as
a counterweight to what Stephen Brookfield (2009) calls “hegemonic
assumptions,” that is, our deeply ingrained presumptions about existing
power relationships in society. He writes that this form of critical reflec-
tion “calls into question the power relationships that allow, or promote,
one set of practices considered to be technically effective. [Critical reflec-
tion] assumes that the minutiae of practice have embedded within them
the struggles between unequal interests and groups that exist in the wider
world” (p. 126). One long-standing hegemonic assumption is that women

5.2 Critical Reflection and Mindful Learning 79

are paid less than men for the same work because men are the more
important “breadwinners,” and thus will have a greater commitment to
the workplace. Society demands different sex roles, and that’s “just how
things are.” Another is the view that persons with physical disabilities are
deficient and deserving of our charity, not as people with other qualities to
offer. I will have more to say about reflection on hegemonic assumptions,
a cornerstone of the intellectual tradition of critical theory, in Chapter 7.
In essence, critical theory
is grounded in three core assumptions regarding the way the world is
organized: (1) that apparently open, Western democracies are actually
highly unequal societies in which economic inequity, racism, and class
discrimination are empirical realities; (2) that the way this state of affairs
is reproduced as seeming to be normal, natural, and inevitable (thereby
heading off potential challenges to the system) is through the dissemin-
ation of dominant ideology; and (3) that critical theory attempts to under-
stand this state of affairs as a prelude to changing it. (Brookfield, 2009,
pp. 126–127)
I quote Brookfield extensively here to make the point that hegemonic
assumptions are experienced as just how things are, and thus external
challenges to them are rather easily dismissed as the extremist views of
those who do not know how to live in the “real world.” As French phil-
osopher Pierre Bourdieu (1977) put it, a hegemonic precept is one that
“goes without saying because it comes without saying” (p. 167). It takes
disorientation through other means, either unconsciously, as through the
arts, or more overtly, as through political action, both of which are subjects
of later chapters. The point is that mindfulness, and mindful learning, can
forestall the immediate defensiveness created by perceived threats to one’s
entrenched worldview.
Critical reflection through mindful learning makes one attentive to
potential disorientation, which becomes “constructive” when the criteria
given in Chapter 4 –namely an environment conducive to adaptive learning
and the conditions required for intrinsic motivation to learn –are met.
Consider the following scenario (inspired, as they say in the movies,
by real events). An iconic civil rights organization in the United States,
founded in the 1950s to combat segregation laws, has found itself in the
post-civil rights era of the early twenty-first century. Legal barriers have
long since come down. The new president of a regional chapter is anxious
to revisit its mission, believing that it is time to direct attention to the more
insidious forms of racism. He points to growing economic inequality,
worse for African Americans, and laws passed by several Southern states

80 Critical Reflection
that make it more difficult for people of color to vote. He schedules a
“mission retreat” with senior staff and board members. He wants to use
this time to create a sense of constructive disorientation in the group. He
knows that the organization faces an adaptive challenge and thinks that
he can make the case for it by inviting participants to critically examine
the organization’s existential purpose. But what then? he wonders. What
if I present an alternative vision and the group doesn’t go for it? He
realizes that he needs more than the clichéd “buy-in.” He needs for the
group to engage in the kind of critical reflection that reflects a genuine
commitment to reframing how the organization sees itself. He needs to
ensure that participants have real voice, that they do not feel co-opted by
the president’s agenda. He needs to ensure the growth of social capital, the
conscious experience of shared values and purposes. And finally, he must
be able to communicate that the group’s deliberations will lead to positive
change. Using the terms of this book, the president will first stimulate dis-
orientation with the message that chapter membership is drying up, as are
financial contributions. He will then work to cultivate a spirit of adaptive
learning, respect participants’ autonomy, build upon the group’s relatedness,
and ensure a collective sense of efficacy about the impact of the retreat on
work going forward.
None of the above is possible without authentic critical reflection, which
is not just going through the motions as a cognitive exercise, but giving
the process emotional energy as well. To underscore a point from the pre-
vious chapter: forces for stability can be extremely difficult to overcome.
My Antioch colleague Donna Ladkin (2015) has written about what she
calls “organizational mindlessness,” the tendency to rely on old categories,
act on “autopilot,” and minimize attention to new information. The key
to overcoming organizational mindlessness lies, I think, in Lynn Davies’
(2015) notion of “educative turbulence”: gently “nudging” a system into
creative activity.
Here is the end of the above scenario: the retreat did not accomplish
what the president had hoped. Participation by board members, while not
overtly resistant, was at best desultory. They simply had no energy to do
the hard work of real change. In retrospect, the president acknowledged
that the disorientation was not enough for the group to experience an
adaptive challenge. He also realized that he needed to do two things before
scheduling another retreat: first, to repopulate the board with people
having fresh ideas and a greater willingness to challenge orthodoxy; and
second, to identify points of energy for change in the organization, those
people and groups in favor of building a new order, and to encourage

5.3 Critical Reflection and Expertise 81

them, sponsor them, and connect them. He needed to give these sources
of creative energy the space to undertake some revisioning, make sure that
these thought experiments are tested through critical reflection on the
organization’s core values, and are tested further with the organization’s
key constituencies.

5.3 Critical Reflection and the Development of Expertise

Critical reflection is not limited to the transformation of mental models
or meaning perspectives. Critical reflection is also important to developing
expertise –learning carpentry, for example, or tennis, or a foreign lan-
guage. One does not become more proficient in these things by simply
acquiring new information. One has to also work with that new informa-
tion, practice applying it, and reflect on the outcome of the practicing.
The development of expertise has been the subject of an enormous
amount of research and theorizing ever since Donald Schön published
his seminal book The Reflective Practitioner (1983). How is it that experts
become experts? It is not, as we have seen, simply because they have learned
and retained a vast storehouse of knowledge. Still, this was the assumption
behind most organization development programs prior to the mid-1980s.
As Fenwick (2008) notes:
Before about 1985, workplace learning was characterized primarily as acqui-
sition; individuals were believed to acquire and store new concepts and
skills and behaviors as if knowledge were a package that didn’t change in
the transfer from its source to the learner’s head. Learning workers were
understood to be acquiring intellectual capital, increasing the organization’s
resources, and returning its investment on training. (p. 19)
In other words, those designing workplace learning programs bought into
the specious assumptions of “institutional learning” (Vaill, 1996) – that
learning has solely instrumental purposes, that those in authority know
best what ought to be learned, and that a well-defined subject matter is
“out there” to be absorbed by the learner.
Schön’s point, first described in 1978 when he and Chris Argyris wrote
about the “learning organization” (1978), is that expertise is developed by
reflecting on practice –by surfacing, reflecting on, and problematizing
what is encountered in the day-to-day, taking a conscious and mindful
approach to what otherwise would be incidental learning. Reflection
on practice depends however on the developmental stage of the learner.
Consider Figure 5.1.

82 Critical Reflection

Figure 5.1 The development of expertise

Those who study the development of expertise typically characterize it

as movement sequentially through various stages (cf. Anderson & Keltner,
2002; Grow, 1991). One begins in a particular knowledge domain as a
novice, bringing to it only limited information and undeveloped know-
ledge perspectives. Once s/he has developed enough working knowledge
to know what the “rules” are s/he moves to a level of minimal “compe-
tence.” With practice the rules become integrated, automatic, and uncon-
scious, and the individual rises to a level of “proficient.” Finally, with a
lot more practice, the practitioner has such a good sense of patterns and
relationships that s/he is able to discern when the rules no longer apply,
that more creative approaches are needed to deal with complexity, and thus
becomes an “expert.” If I want to learn how to bake, for example, I first
need to become familiar with the tools and ingredients, and then how to
follow a recipe. I then have the competence to make biscuits, as long as

5.3 Critical Reflection and Expertise 83

I follow the rules. After a while I become proficient enough with the recipe
that I learn how to substitute ingredients, such as whole milk and vinegar
for buttermilk. Finally, I have enough expertise to make biscuits strictly by
“feel” without worrying about the recipe at all, and explore various ways
of improving texture and flavor. (My mother was famous for her pie crusts
but could never really explain why they turned out so well; her expertise
was based entirely on what I describe below as “tacit knowledge.”)
There is a certain order and logic to this. The problem is that the model
falls apart without reflection on practice, at every stage. The “old school”
approach to teaching beginners has been to assume that they first need
to absorb a lot of information. The traditional model of medical school
education has been infamous for this approach: before giving students any
real clinical exposure they need to spend their first two years in school
learning the “basic sciences,” namely anatomy, physiology, biochemistry,
and so on. Only then, the reasoning has been, could they learn how to
care for actual patients. This is not, however, how budding professionals
(or anyone else) learns most effectively –as anyone who has been through
the medical school grind will tell you –and so in the last years of the
twentieth century medical schools (and other professional schools) began
to explore other approaches, such as problem-based learning (discussed in
Chapter 4), which situates needed learning in practical problems posed
to the learner (Curry & Wergin, 1993). Here is where Schön’s thinking,
based on systematic observation of clinical settings such as an architecture
studio, has had such a profound effect.
Thus, the development of expertise does not take place in a linear way,
depending on how much information the learner is able to absorb, store,
and categorize. Instead, the path to expertise is through reflection, even at
the novice level. Begin with some rudimentary tools; practice; reflect and
problematize (e.g., “what made the biscuit batter so sticky?”); internalize
new practices, and so on, through the stages. At the expert level, learning
is no longer simply instrumental. Reflection on practice becomes a habit
of mind. Experts, unless they become complacent in their expertise,
learn what to notice, what to problematize, and when to examine their
assumptions. They become mindful learners –and in a paradoxical way
become what Vaill called “reflective beginners” (1996), never assuming that
they have all the answers, that they always have something to learn.
There is an important caveat to all of this. Empirical evidence suggests
that experience alone does not lead to reflective practice of the sort
described above. “Experienced” is not the same as “expert.” For example,
Natalie Ferry and Jovita Ross-Gordon (1998) found evidence of reflection

84 Critical Reflection
on practice in both novice and experienced practitioners. They write: “It
appears that experience alone does not generate the emergence of
reflection-in-action. Rather, how one uses experience may be the more
crucial element to understanding why some individuals use reflection to
grow in their professional learning” (p. 111). Thus, reflection on practice
as a habit of mind seems to depend more on one’s propensity to reflect
(Roessger, 2014).
If true, then the development of mindful learning becomes all the more
important. At the highest level of expertise development, “know-how”
becomes mindful. Part of that mindfulness is raising consciousness about
what has become tacit. As I pointed out earlier, much intuitive learning
is helpful, even essential, to our understanding of the world. But some is
not. Intuitive theories, left unexamined, can lead to a host of cognitive
traps, persisting beliefs, and immunity to change. Mindful learning works
to deliberately create constructive disorientation and to follow it. The dis-
orientation does not have to be experienced as a jolt, as a “whoa!” moment,
a disorienting dilemma. It can be an almost indistinguishable signal that
something warrants our attention. One of the simplest and most powerful
definitions of consciousness was offered by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio
(1999), calling it “an organism’s awareness of its own self and surroundings”
(p. 4). In the context of deep learning, mindful learning is a particular
form of consciousness, the awareness that in any given moment our “self ”
has something useful and important to learn, especially when that some-
thing might conflict with our current notions of how things are.
To summarize, deep learning is wholly dependent on critical reflec-
tion, whether that learning results in transforming one’s mental models,
or deepening one’s expertise through instrumental learning. At the highest
levels of expertise, learning becomes transformative as well.
Here, then, are the first core components of what I am calling the “deep
learning mindset” (Figure 5.2), with more to be added to blank spaces in
later chapters.
So far, we have seen that constructive disorientation can stem from
two sources: one might experience a disorienting dilemma –an external
stimulus –or routine mindfulness that stays alert for signals requiring con-
scious attention. Both external and internal sources of constructive dis-
orientation engage critical reflection. Sometimes critical reflection will
lead directly to transformation of meaning schemes; sometimes it will
lead to instrumental learning in the form of expertise development. At the
highest levels of expertise the learning becomes transformative, as one’s key
assumptions about what to do and when to do it are constantly in play.

5.3 Critical Reflection and Expertise 85

Figure 5.2 The deep learning mindset

The transformation of cognitive schema then becomes part of how the

individual sees the world and his/her role in it, subject to further mindful
learning.
An element of Figure 5.2 that I have not described yet is intuitive
learning. Intuitive learning is the unintentional, even incidental learning
that takes place below our conscious awareness. Transforming one’s know-
ledge perspectives is not always a product of critical reflection. Sometimes
transformation occurs on an intuitive, mindless basis, as when people
resettle in foreign countries and gradually assimilate new habits of thought
and living without being aware of it (Taylor, 1994).
Tacit knowledge, a term coined by Michael Polanyi (1966), is one of
the most intriguing and least understood facets of human learning. It is
the knowing we cannot express in words. Here is a quick thought experi-
ment: Imagine trying to explain how we are able to immediately recog-
nize an acquaintance in a crowd of people. You cannot say, “Well, first
I look at the hair, and if that reminds me of someone then I examine
the facial features, and put those qualities together, then try to guess the
age.” Of course not. You just know, at a glance, that this is your neighbor
Janice from down the street. Here is another thought experiment. Imagine
that you are riding a bicycle and all of a sudden you hit a patch of loose
gravel and your bike begins to tip to your left. Which way do you turn the
front wheel? Many would say “to the right,” reasoning that you need to

86 Critical Reflection
counteract the direction of the fall. But you would be wrong. You would
never do this in practice, knowing in the moment that doing so would only
accelerate the spill. You would know instinctively to turn the front wheel
to the left. This is an example of embodied knowing, or simply, learning
through the body. All of our early learning as humans is embodied: babies
learn through sensations, toddlers by exploring through touch (Lawrence,
2012). Embodied knowledge precedes overt consciousness: a sensation
leads to a constructed emotion, which leads in turn to one being conscious
of, for example, fear. Embodied learning is what Aristotle referred to as the
second of his three kinds of knowing, namely techne, or “know-how,” and
is the essence of reflection on experience.
Intuitive learning is often referred to as “incidental learning.” As adult
educator Victoria Marsick has noted, “When people learn incidentally,
their learning may be taken for granted, tacit, or unconscious. However, a
passing insight can then be probed and intentionally explored. Examples are
the hidden agenda of an organization’s culture or a teacher’s class, learning
from mistakes, or the unsystematic process of trial and error” (Marsick
& Watkins, 2001, p. 26, emphasis added). Note the allusion to intuitive
learning as an opportunity for critical reflection. The power of intuitive
or incidental learning is hard to overstate. Research on continuing pro-
fessional education programs has demonstrated that while people may
be motivated to attend a conference or workshop to learn things from
expert presenters, the more powerful learning moments occur in “hallway
conversations” with colleagues, where participants compare notes, in an
unplanned way, on how recommended practices might work –or not –in
their own professional settings.
Back in the 1980s I directed a project sponsored by the American College
of Cardiology where we investigated the degree to which attendance at its
“Heart House” programs changed practice behavior. We found evidence of
this “hallway conversation” phenomenon: when asked how, if at all, their
practice had changed, and what most affected this change, cardiologists
pointed to these very encounters (Wergin, Mazmanian, Miller, Papp., &
Williams, 1988). (Reported changes in practice were backed up by random
audits of patient charts.) Note how closely this finding parallels the research
on transformative learning: knowledge perspectives are transformed only
when new ideas are tried on in the presence of others.
The fact that learning grows out of spontaneous everyday encounters
vastly more often than in formal educational settings has enormous
implications for deep learning. Because intuitive learning is largely uncon-
scious, unless it is deliberately surfaced and inspected it is subject to all of

5.3 Critical Reflection and Expertise 87

the cognitive biases I described in Part I of this book. Intuitive learning
can be especially limiting when it takes place within hegemonic bound-
aries and assumptions. Women in highly patriarchal cultures may grow
up with the intuitive belief that having little control over their own lives is
“just the way things are.” Helping oppressed people surface and question
these beliefs, to discover their own power and agency, is the purpose of so-
called “radical” education methods proposed by Paulo Freire and Augusto
Boal, among others, and I take up the relevance of these methods to deep
learning in Chapters 7 and 8.
To summarize, the core of a deep learning mindset consists of mind-
fulness, constructive disorientation, critical reflection, and transforma-
tive learning. The latter may be the direct result of critical reflection, the
development of deep expertise, or reflection on intuitive learning. Because
intuitive learning by definition occurs at an unconscious level, reflection
on it plays a major role in mindful learning.
I will be adding other components to the deep learning mindset, one
chapter at a time, beginning with a topic I have already introduced, namely
the importance of learning in the presence of others.

Ch apter 6

The Importance of Others

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds
discuss people.
Eleanor Roosevelt

If constructive disorientation is the spark for deep learning, and critical

reflection is the engine, then social discourse is the fuel.
The importance of learning with others may be the most common thread
throughout all of the research and theorizing about human learning. To
review:

• John Dewey wrote that all learning is a function of both continuity and
interaction with one’s environment. While human nature grows from
within it must be completed through relationships.
• Transformative learning theory holds that transformation is most likely
to occur, and is most powerful, when disorientation is followed by dia-
logue with one or more other people.
• Disorientation not in the presence of others can make existing beliefs
even more powerful and resistant to change.
• One’s identity (or concept of “self ”) is a major factor in motivation to
learn and is always socially negotiated.
• Deep relationships are an important, even necessary part of
self-actualization.
• “Relatedness,” the feeling of connection with significant others in one’s
life, is one of the three pillars of self-determination theory.
• Development occurs as a function of periodically renegotiating the
interaction between connection and independence.
• Relational affirmation is a key pathway to one’s “best self.”
• Adaptive learning in organizations requires a communal
understanding of the adaptive challenge and how that challenge will be
addressed.

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89

The Importance of Others 89

• In both problem-based learning and action learning, the learning occurs
in groups, with group members responsible for stimulating, informing,
and challenging each other.
• Reflection on practice is most powerful when done with other
practitioners.
Humans have evolved to be “communal animals,” as Aristotle put it, and
the primary purpose of learning is for social consumption, as an adap-
tation to the social niche humans have built for ourselves. There is little
doubt that deep learning is facilitated in the right interactive setting. Other
people perform several functions for us: they test our conscious reasoning;
they model alternative perspectives; they provide richer opportunities for
experiential learning; and they create accountability, the expectation that
we will be called upon to justify our beliefs, feelings, or actions to others.
Despite the empirical evidence, a cultural norm lingers in Western
cultures, perpetuated by our schooling system, that real learning is done
alone, through individual immersion in a subject matter. Part of this may
be due to a Western fixation on individual achievement, on “rugged indi-
vidualism.” Consider the following passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
classic essay on “Self Reliance” ([1841] 2013):
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule,
equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole dis-
tinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will
always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you
know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in
solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of
the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. (p. 26)
In praise of self-reliance, Emerson constructs a dichotomy: one must be
ruled either by the self or by the crowd. Conforming to social expectation
is weakness; being true to self is strength. Narcissistic and authoritarian
leaders would read this passage and find support for their worldviews, as
would, paradoxically, their admirers who, unaware that they are being
manipulated, act as if these leaders’ views are their own.
Emerson’s view that people must be either self-reliant or conformist is a
false dichotomy. Learning to live effectively in the world requires learning
not only how to live with others, but also how to learn in the presence of
others.
Previous chapters have also, however, alluded to the dangers of deep
learning in groups, traps that can inhibit deep learning or prevent it
entirely. Of these, three are most serious.

90 The Importance of Others

First is the lack of diversity of beliefs in the group. When people are with
others having like-minded beliefs, norms for acceptable deviations from
these beliefs are narrow and impermeable, and those who stray beyond
their confines will feel social pressure to conform. Cults are an extreme
illustration of this, where individual identities are so enmeshed with group
culture that fear of ostracism, or worse, becomes all-powerful.
Second and related is organizational “groupthink,” the failure of group
members to criticize each others’ suggestions and consider alternatives.
A particularly egregious example is how some of the “best and brightest”
minds in America utterly failed to question the dubious assumptions
leading to military intervention and escalation in Vietnam (Halberstam,
1972). Groupthink is the principal reason why brainstorming can be so
inefficient and inadequate. Fear of embarrassing oneself by appearing to
be an outlier can inhibit creative thinking; and brainstorming privileges
those with dominant, extraverted personalities. (Various nominal group
techniques such as Delphi can mitigate these deficiencies.)
Third, addressed more fully in the next chapter, is the lack of attention,
conscious or not, to power differentials and hegemonic differences. With
the exception of “radical” educators such as Paulo Freire (1970) and Stephen
Brookfield (2009), adult educators and learning theorists in general have
ignored or skipped over the degree to which unequal access to financial,
social, or cultural capital affects opportunities to learn deeply.
In this chapter I explore how the lessons learned about social dis-
course might help facilitate deep learning. The evidence points to four key
facilitators, and I will address each one in turn:

• Empathy: not only the ability to put oneself in another’s shoes but also
to understand the social context behind the other’s beliefs.
• Social capital: social ties among individuals and the trust that arises from
these ties.
• Participatory forms of engagement and learning.
• Minimal power differentials and shared responsibility.

6.1 Empathy
Empathy is quite simply the vicarious experience of someone else’s experi-
ence, both cognitively and emotionally. One can be empathic without
necessarily endorsing another person’s point of view, or even caring about
how that person feels. Empathy is not compassion, sympathy for another
person’s loss, for example. It is no comfort to someone who has lost a
child to be told by someone who has not, “I know how you must feel.”

6.1 Empathy 91
Empathy is also not the same as identification with someone else, as psych-
ologist Carl Rogers noted: “The state of empathy, or being empathic, is to
perceive the internal frame of another with accuracy and with the emo-
tional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the
person but without ever losing the ‘as if ’ condition” (Rogers, 1959, quoted
in Jarvis, 2012, p. 744). When presented with someone having a worldview
significantly different from our own, our intuitive response is to generate
reasons why the other’s point of view is wrong. Empathizing with diffe-
rence creates disorientation, and it can take a real effort to make that dis-
orientation constructive. One of the best examples of this was when Anwar
Sadat, as part of his historic visit to Israel in 1977, visited Yad Vashem, the
Holocaust museum. His visit had a profound effect on all concerned, a
show of empathy to the highest degree (Koven, 1977).1 But given the pol-
itical polarization that exists in most of the world today, the challenges to
empathy are strong and, unfortunately, getting stronger.
The picture however might not be quite so bleak. In an informative
TED talk, social psychologist Robb Willer (2016) describes an experi-
ment in which he and his colleagues asked a group of people to read one
of three essays on the environment, the first a standard plea for envir-
onmental protection espousing predominately liberal values (e.g., “It is
essential that we take steps now to prevent further destruction from being
done to our Earth”), one that tapped into mostly conservative values such
as the importance of purity (e.g., “Reducing pollution can help us pre-
serve what is pure and beautiful about the places we live”), and one on
a neutral topic. When surveyed later for their environmental attitudes,
those who had identified as “liberal” were strongly pro-environment no
matter which essay they read. But those who identified as “conservative”
were more likely to endorse pro-environmental policies if they had read
the essay focusing on conservative values. The lesson, according to Willer,
is that if we intend to persuade another to adopt our point of view, we
need first to understand the other person’s moral values and frame our
message accordingly. “Empathy and respect,” he emphasized, “empathy
and respect” (minute 91).
The path to helping someone else learn deeply, in other words, is to find
that space where constructive disorientation might exist, a place where one
might be able to entertain an initially disorienting idea without forcing
oneself or others to compromise deeply held beliefs and moral values (at
least initially). Empathy is the medium for finding that space.
Thus, developing empathy has more than just pragmatic value; it also
leads to deep learning itself. Developing one’s sense of self requires an
understanding of others’ perspectives and trying these perspectives on

92 The Importance of Others

for size. In Chapter 3, I wrote about “knowing thyself first” as the first
key to deep learning. I did not write about “being true to thyself first!” In
their theory of authentic embodied leadership, Donna Ladkin and Steven
Taylor (Ladkin & Taylor, 2010) reference a study of emerging leaders
enacting provisional leadership “selves,” in which those who looked to
emulate senior leaders (what Albert Bandura (1977) calls “observational
learning”) were more successful than those who took a “being true to one-
self ” strategy. The latter group, by choosing to rely on behaviors that were
already part of their repertoire, missed opportunities to stretch and grow
and, paradoxically, to become more “authentic” leaders.
While the literature on the relationship between empathy and learning is
extensive,2 the concept itself is not well understood. As psychologist Hank
Davis (2002) observes, only partially tongue-in-cheek: “It’s not hard to sing
the praises of empathy, whatever it is. You don’t need an iron-clad defin-
ition to appreciate empathy. We pretty much agree that the word denotes a
good thing: empathy is the stuff of group cohesion, and may be the reason
we attract, or are attracted to, one person over another” (p. 32). However,
as Davis also points out, empathy is not necessarily “a good thing”: it can
lead to both affinity and deception. In their own perverse way, sociopaths
are highly empathic. But despite the slippery connotations of the term,
this much is agreed-upon in the literature: empathy is observed in all
social animals, not just humans (Preston & de Waal, 2002); it is a learned
social response in humans, not innate, and must be cognitively regulated
to avoid emotional burnout (Bandura, 2002); it strengthens social bonds
by providing emotional connection and strengthening group solidarity
(Anderson & Keltner, 2002); and it tends to increase with age and cog-
nitive development (Hoffman, 2001; Uzefovsky & Knafo-Noam, 2017).
Evidence also suggests that the degree of perceived similarity between
someone and another person or group affects the strength of the emotional
response; thus, the greater the identification with another, the greater the
empathy; the greater one’s perception of the other as “the Other,” the lower
the empathy (Preston & de Waal, 2002).
An extreme example of this is what Lasana Harris and Susan Fiske (2011)
call “dehumanized perception,” the failure to “spontaneously consider the
mind of another person” (p. 175). They show that while humans normally
activate an empathic neural network when thinking about other people,
parts of this network typically fail to engage when considering groups like
drug addicts and homeless people, while areas of the brain associated with
disgust are activated instead. If one begins to consider certain groups of
people as undeserving of empathy they then become something less than

6.1 Empathy 93
human. Thus, when a politician associates migrants with “murderers and
rapists,” an entire class of people becomes dehumanized. From there it is
not much of a stretch to see how these psychological mechanisms can lead
to “ethnic cleansing” and other atrocities against humanity.
Thankfully, studies of children, adolescents, families, college students,
teachers, counselors, and offenders, among others, indicate that not only
is empathy a function of social learning, it can also be taught (cf. Bayne &
Jangha, 2016; Daly & Suggs, 2010; Giordano, Stare, & Clarke, 2015;
Pederson, 2010; Roseman, Ritchie, & Laux, 2009; Swick, 2005; Thompson &
Gullone, 2003; Wilson, 2011). The evidence suggests that empathy condu-
cive to deep learning can be facilitated by:

• Identifying and taking the trouble to understand, without judgment, the

values, attitudes, and beliefs of others. Values and attitudes, especially, are
deep-seated and highly resistant to change. Deep learning is extraordin-
arily difficult when these are threatened. This has been demonstrated
with research going back as far as the late 1950s, with Sherif and
Hovland’s (1961) classic studies of communication and attitude change.
Based on extensive research, the authors developed the concepts of “lati-
tude of acceptance” and “latitude of rejection” as predictors of whether
a stimulus, such as someone else’s opinion, would be assimilated or
rejected. One’s latitude of acceptance for discordant information on a
given topic lies just beyond one’s current belief, but not too far beyond it,
which is one’s latitude of rejection. The key to attitude change, therefore,
is locating the other person’s latitude of acceptance as the field of play,
so to speak. This can be done informally through observation or conver-
sation, or more formally through surveys, interviews, or focus groups.
• Looking to noncognitive means, such as the arts. In Chapter 8, I address
in detail the role of the written, visual, and performing arts in deep
learning. For now, I will suggest that the arts can be a tool to develop
empathy as a precursor to deep learning. Christine Jarvis (2012) has a
lovely explanation of how reading fiction can do this, namely through
its “capacity to promote an involuntary empathy that can help adult
learners develop deeper understandings of difference and of excluded
groups” (p. 743).
• Continuously monitoring others’ perspectives and feelings. In his book
Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn, Ray Wlodkowski (2008) makes the
important point that with so much learning –deliberate or incidental –
taking place today at a distance through electronic media, understanding
others’ perspectives and feelings has become more challenging. We make

94 The Importance of Others

assumptions based upon small bits of information and can miss the
essence. Or as Saint-Exupéry noted, “What is essential is invisible to the
eye” (quoted in Wlodkowski, 2008, p. 66). In his book, Wlodkowski
wrote that listening for understanding is the single most important skill
necessary for empathy, and I completely agree. Recall that in the TED
talk referred to earlier, Willer (2016) emphasized two words, empathy and
respect. One of the cardinal principles in interviewing, I have learned, is
to demonstrate that while you care about the speaker you do not care
about what the speaker says. In practice this is impossible, of course: you
do care about what someone says. You react instinctively to values,
attitudes, and beliefs opposed to your own. But this is why empathy is a
learned skill, and takes practice, best rehearsed in nonstressful situations.
• Wlodkowski (2008) sums up the importance of empathy this
way: “Empathy is not simply an altruistic notion. It’s a dynamic process,
involving people’s ability to express their thoughts and feelings to each
other in ways that often change the relationship and, most important,
continue the relationship” (p. 68).

6.2 Social Capital

Capital at one time was a strictly economic term, denoting the financial,
physical, and human resources needed for an organization to carry out its
work. The term “social capital” is a product of the last quarter-century,
meaning “the social ties among individuals and the norms of reciprocity
and trustworthiness that arise from those ties” (Haidt, 2012, pp. 338–339).
Like “empathy,” it is hard to imagine social capital being anything other
than a good thing; but also like empathy, whether social capital is “good”
or not depends on the purposes to which it is put. For example, tightly knit
neighborhoods or communities need to worry much less about security;
and organizations with high social capital need to rely less on regulation
and bureaucracy. Extremist political groups, on the other hand, also have
high social capital due to their homogenous views, but use it for the pur-
pose of stigmatizing “the Other.”
How, then, might social capital be used in the service of deep learning?
Mercier and Sperber (2017) provide some answers. To recapitulate points
already made: human reason is powerful but flawed. We are able to gen-
erate powerful reasons to support our existing views and equally powerful
reasons to criticize the views of others. We find it much more difficult to
reason against our existing views and in support of opposing ones. Now if
this were always true, finding common ground would be impossible –but

6.2 Social Capital 95
of course negotiating agreement from initial disagreement happens all the
time. And here Mercier and Sperber posit something that on the surface
seems counterintuitive: that these self-serving reasoning processes have
evolved for specific social purposes. They write:
People are biased to find reasons that support their point of view because
this is how they can justify their actions and convince others to share their
beliefs. You cannot justify yourself by presenting reasons that undermine
your justification. You cannot convince others to change their minds by
giving them arguments for the view you want them to abandon or against
the view you want them to adopt. (p. 331)
This is where social capital comes in: learning in groups is most benefi-
cial when group members have different ideas but a common goal. Under
these conditions the more that group members trust each other, that is,
have developed social capital, the more likely it is that they will share their
interests, lower their emotional defenses, engage in honest debate, and
learn from one another.3 In contrast, the lack of conflicting ideas in a group
can lead to kind of social capital that polarizes attitudes (Haidt, 2012), and
the absence of a common goal can exacerbate individual differences.
Therefore, social capital that leads to deep learning is facilitated when
groups:
• Have a “common bond or sense of a shared fate” (Haidt, 2012, p. 105).
I have borrowed this expression from Jonathan Haidt because it is par-
ticularly apt in this context. Having a communal sense of purpose is
what leads to a common learning goal. Under these conditions group
members are more likely to leave their egos at the door and find com-
munity (or relatedness, in self-determination theory terms) (Ryan &
Deci, 2017). As Mercier and Sperber (2017) put it, “To the extent that
members of a group share their interests, they can trust one another, and
people who trust one another have a very reduced use or no use at all for
justifications and arguments … Group discussion is typically beneficial
when participants have different ideas and a common goal” (p. 334).
• Have ideological and intellectual diversity. Note the qualifiers “ideological
and intellectual”: greater diversity of any kind does not necessarily lead
to greater social capital. The opposite, in fact, can be true. Sociologist
Robert Putnam (2007), of Bowling Alone fame (2000), has presented
some distressing data collected from communities large and small, all
over the world, demonstrating an inverse relationship between the
ethnic diversity of a community and the level of its social capital: that
is, the greater the diversity, the lower the level of trust. What makes his

96 The Importance of Others

research particularly disquieting is that this relationship holds up when
controlling for every conceivable intervening demographic variable.
Worse, not only is trust between groups (“bridging”) lower with greater
diversity but trust within groups (“bonding”) is lower as well. The result
is greater social isolation, what Putnam calls “hunkering down.”
Given that openness to broad and often disorienting diversity of views
is the very stuff that makes constructive disorientation possible, how
can this apparent paradox be resolved? First, we need to be careful not
to extrapolate Putnam’s findings unduly. His unit of analysis was whole
communities and the focus was on ethnic diversity only, so general-
izing to smaller social groups and other forms of diversity is shaky, at
best. Still, Putnam‘s data should raise important cautions about cre-
ating social capital in the service of deep learning. For reasons that have
been well explored by others, ethnicity is a different kind of difference
and presents different kinds of challenges to group identity. These are
challenges that can be overcome but cannot simply be brushed aside
with naïve assumptions about the power of simple contact with diffe-
rence. In our social lives, “trust has to be earned and remains limited and
fragile” (Mercier & Sperber, 2017, p. 334).
• Are open to the contributions of members. Being open to the contributions
of others refers to a willingness to suspend one’s own beliefs and
assumptions to make room for other voices. The guiding principle
here is that everyone has something important to contribute, and one’s
own assumptions must be open to challenge, as difficult as this might
be to do. Being open to others’ contributions recalls Dewey’s ([1938]
1997) point about the importance of dialogue with others as a weapon
against “mis-education,” and Mezirow’s (2000) point that openness to
others’ perspectives is the key to resolution of disorienting dilemmas.
“Openness” is not necessarily a passive quality, as those facilitating social
capital will sometimes have to intervene to ensure that all voices are
heard, or to take a stand against group consensus that is emerging too
quickly (Preskill & Brookfield, 2009). Still, “when the overriding con-
cern of people who disagree is to get things right, argumentation should
not only make them change their mind, it should make them change
their mind for the best” (Mercier & Sperber, 2017, p. 307).
• Expect to be accountable to others. As with group diversity, the role of
accountability is complex. Psychologist Philip Tetlock, an expert on the
subject, defines accountability in its simplest form as “pressure to jus-
tify one’s views to another” (Lerner & Tetlock, 2003, p. 432). Tetlock’s
research indicates that “when people know in advance that they’ll have

6.3 Participatory Forms of Engagement and Learning 97

to explain themselves, they think more systematically and self-critically”
(Haidt, 2012, p. 88). Without group norms that hold people accountable
to others, however, trust falls apart and the group is drained of its social
capital. We all remember the infamous “group projects” from our college
days, with the inevitable slackers who refused to pull their own weight –
and how the work then fell to more conscientious students who made
sure that at least their individual efforts would be recognized. But here
is where the role of accountability becomes more complex: According
to Tetlock’s research, accountability only leads to an increase in social
capital when the group knows in advance that it will be accountable to
an external audience (a) whose views are unknown, (b) who is believed
to be interested in accuracy, (c) who appears to be well-informed, and
(d) who has a legitimate reason for asking for justification (Lerner &
Tetlock, 2003). Consistent with Mercier and Sperber’s (2017) research,
at other times accountability pressures only encourage arguments aimed
at persuasion.

The importance of social capital as a resource for deep learning is cross-

cultural and cross-sector, noted not only in North America, Western
Europe, and Australia, but also in Asia and Africa (cf. Moody, 2019; Okeke,
2018; Wang et al., 2019).

6.3 Participatory Forms of Engagement and Learning

In the last chapter I wrote about the power of informal and intuitive
learning, learning that happens in the moment, often unconsciously. It is
becoming increasingly clear that this learning is more powerful in settings
that are more inclusive and democratic, and have more social diversity
(Yorks, 2005). Current leadership theories are certainly moving in this
direction. James McGregor Burns (1978), in his seminal work more than
40 years ago, wrote that leadership is both a relational and a collective pro-
cess. Burns’ book was one of the first to describe the shift from a “command
and control” vision of leadership to one that is more inclusive and partici-
patory. In his discussion of “transformative leadership,” Burns suggested
that by focusing on shared goals and values, leaders and followers would
raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality and thus
engage in a conscious transformation process. As is true of many seminal
ideas, Burns’ notions of transformative leadership have often been hijacked
by organizational leaders and used in ways he never intended, namely to
attempt to “transform” the organization in a mostly unilateral fashion.

98 The Importance of Others

Still, Burns’ work has been followed by many others’4 who have called for
a shift in perspective about leadership: from hierarchical to lateral, from
command-and-control to participatory, from heroic to team-oriented, and
from mechanistic to organic.
Despite these trends, organizations continue to pose significant barriers
to deep learning. Taking time to build lateral, participatory, team-oriented,
organic networks runs counter to traditional Western values of production
and efficiency. The question is: Beyond developing empathy and social
capital, how can one create this sort of social space, what Bill Torbert
(2004) calls “liberating structures,” which encourage forms of social inter-
action that lead to deep learning? How might this generative social space
support cycles of action and reflection, where participants are free to reflect
critically on their knowledge perspectives, listen to the diverse perspectives
of others, follow the disorientation, and try new knowledge perspectives
on for size?
There are two completely different, but potentially complementary,
ways to do this, one through intervention, the other through cultivation.

6.3.1 Social Learning Through Action Learning

The most common form of creating social learning through intervention
is action learning, discussed in Chapter 4. To recap, action learning brings
together a group to address “wicked problems” (as originally conceived by
Rittel and Webber (2017) in the early 1970s to describe issues riddled with
difficulties and complexities), of the sort that Heifetz (1994) refers to as
“adaptive challenges.” A cross-functional group with minimal background
knowledge comes together to ask fresh questions about the problem,
questions that those in the middle of it might not think to ask. This group,
or “set,” takes on the role of Vaill’s “reflective beginner” (1996), collecting
needed information, challenging assumptions –including those about
what the problem is –and engaging in collaborative learning, resulting
presumably in creative approaches to the problem. Action learning has
been used most extensively in the United Kingdom, particularly in the
National Health Service, but variations of it have been implemented all
over the world.5
Adult educator Lyle Yorks (2005) has provided a particularly illumin-
ating case study of the benefits and challenges of action learning, which he
calls a “collaborative action inquiry.” Undertaken by the US Department
of Veterans Affairs (VA), a diverse group of practitioners, professionals,
and staff at all levels, came together with an interdisciplinary group of

6.3 Participatory Forms of Engagement and Learning 99

academics to address issues of workplace stress and aggression. In add-
ition to coming up with workable strategies to address these issues, explicit
attention was given to the learning process, specifically how to create the
social space that would allow this diverse and often skeptical mix of people
to learn together. Several key insights relevant to participant engagement
and deep learning emerged from this case study, consistent with the empir-
ical research on the effectiveness of action learning in other contexts:
1. The diversity of knowledge perspectives brought to a group-learning project
brings forth both positive and negative energy, leading to a tension that
must be managed carefully. The more varied these perspectives are, the
potentially richer and deeper the learning will be. However, organiza-
tional, disciplinary, and personal differences can threaten this learning
if the experience of having a shared goal is lost. As Yorks (2005)
observed:
Holding the inquiry together at its core is the growing realization that gen-
erating meaningful actionable knowledge requires learning from each other
in a way that synergistically creates knowledge and meaning, transcending
the additive combination of contributions from the various distinct areas
of practice. Learning, as the key to realizing the shared goal of making the
VA a better place to work, is the countervailing force holding the project
together. (pp. 1229–1230)
2. One cannot assume that discussion will lead naturally to dialogue.
Conversations will be marked initially by advocacy of participants’ own
points of view. This was clear in the case study. Early team meetings
were characterized by “tense negotiations” about such issues as data val-
idity, project control, time and place, and role separation.
Underlying these tensions were more fundamental issues of purpose and
visions of what would constitute a successful project, diverse motivations
for participating, and the confrontation between deeply held worldviews
about what constitutes meaningful knowledge, how it can be generated,
and what would be required to have it taken seriously by various audiences
both within the organization and among broader publics. (pp. 1232–1233)
As Michael Newman (2014) has noted, conventional discussion is
a “sharing of monologues,” moving from statement to statement,
locking us into the present, and discouraging speculation. Dialogue,
on the other hand, is “a form of collective, and generative inquiry,”
where “an individual’s point of view is valuable if it extends the group’s
understanding of the object of thought, which is not the view of any
one person” (p. 349).

100 The Importance of Others

3. Because of Points 1 and 2 above, participants will first need to learn how
to learn together. Recognizing this, Yorks (2005) and his colleagues
sought to introduce several “learning practices” into the project such
as reflection and dialogue, the “learning window,” the “ladder of infer-
ence,” and various methods for “harvesting the learning.” The learning
window, for example,
is a metaphor that asks participants to carefully differentiate between “what
they know they know” (with reference to their data for making this claim
and obtaining consensual validation of this claim from others), “what
they think they know” (and how they can test these inferences through
actions and data), and, based on actions, data, and reflection, “what they
know they don’t know” (and need to learn effectively to address the issue).
(pp. 1230–1231)6
4. Successful group learning is marked by a qualitative shift in the nature
of the conversation, a signal that true dialogue is taking place. Yorks’
study participants described this as a “threshold,” a “sense among team
members of inhabiting collaborative space … a liberating structure
that is both productive and educative” (p. 1232), “where the learning
practices had become tacit and part of their natural way of working
together” (p. 1234). One cannot expect however that participants will
all walk together through some kind of transformative portal, never
to regress to their pre-collaborative states. Instead, the group learning
space is fragile, “simultaneously stressful and energizing,” and “subject
to disruption by strong personalities and situational forces” (p. 1234).
This point reinforces my earlier one about the nature of trust in social
groups, hard to develop and easily lost.

6.3.2 Social Learning Through Communities of Practice

“Communities of practice,” a term popularized by learning theorist
Etienne Wenger (1998), are, most simply, groups of people who “spontan-
eously select themselves to develop capabilities and to build and exchange
knowledge” (Manuti, Impedovo, & de Palma, 2017, p. 219). Thus, whereas
variants of action learning are interventionist, and based on “outside-in”
approaches, communities of practice are groups formed naturally, uncon-
strained by organizational or functional boundaries, purely on the basis of
common professional interests. Learning occurs from the “inside-out,” in
the form of “mutual engagement, a sense of joint enterprise, and a shared
repertoire of communal resources” (Manuti et al., 2017, p. 219). Thus,
in contrast to an action learning team, group norms are not imposed or

6.3 Participatory Forms of Engagement and Learning 101

prescribed, but rather are based on relationships inside the community
formed around a practice. As Wenger (2000) notes, communities of prac-
tice have been part of human civilization for hundreds, even thousands of
years, in various forms, such as guilds of potters, masons, carpenters, and
others. Today these communities take the form of informal networks –
online groups of scientists discussing latest development in particle
physics, for example. More to the purposes of this book, communities
of practice exist as elements of “social learning systems,” which Wenger
defines this way:
Knowing is a matter of displaying competences defined in social commu-
nities. The picture is more complex and dynamic than that, however. Our
experience of life and the social standards of competence of our commu-
nities are not necessarily, or even usually, congruent. We each experience
knowing in our own ways. Socially defined competence is always in inter-
play with our experience. It is in this interplay that learning takes place.
(Wenger, 2000, p. 226)
John Dewey would be nodding in agreement, were he alive today.
Within social communities is where we become competent, following
the process of expertise development, as discussed in Chapter 5. But the
boundaries of these social communities, where competence interacts with
experience, are where we experience constructive disorientation, and, thus,
where we learn deeply.
Recall my earlier discussion of the importance of social capital as a key
facilitator to learning with others. Communities of practice are fueled and
held together by social capital, and thus can serve to both encourage and
inhibit deep learning. “Communities of practice cannot be romanticized,”
Wenger (2000) writes. “They are born of learning, but they can also learn
not to learn. They are cradles of the human spirit, but can also be its cages”
(p. 230). Three elements of a community of practice are key to maintaining
its vitality as a social learning system:
1. Enterprise: the level of learning energy. How much initiative does the
community take in keeping learning at the center of its enterprise?
2. Mutuality: the depth of social capital. How deep is the sense of commu-
nity generated by mutual engagement over time?
3. Repertoire: the degree of self-awareness. How self-conscious is the com-
munity about the repertoire it is developing and its effects on its prac-
tice? (Wenger, 2000)
Communities of practice, because they coexist within and across formal
organizational structures, have sometimes been viewed as an irritant to

102 The Importance of Others

organizational purposes. In colleges and universities, for example, faculty
communities of practice routinely chafe at the latest administrative initia-
tive, and university leaders routinely cite “faculty resistance” as a thorn in
their sides. Organizational leaders would do well to take Wenger’s advice
to heart: “[They] need to learn to foster and participate in social learning
systems, both inside and outside organizational boundaries. Social learning
systems are not defined by, congruent with, or cleanly encompassed in
organizations. Organizations can take part in them; they can foster them;
they can leverage them; but they cannot fully own or control them”
(Wenger, 2000, p. 243).

6.4 Minimal Power Differentials

With this fourth and final key facilitator of learning in groups I introduce
a topic so important –the politics of learning –that I devote an entire
chapter to it, to follow. One of the findings of the case study described in
the preceding section was the struggle among participants to make sure that
previous roles demarking organizational or professional hierarchies were
left at the door of the meeting room, giving an equal voice to everyone.
Just as deep learning requires overcoming the impulse to rely on intuitive
theories and to defend entrenched beliefs, it also requires the ability to
overcome hegemonic assumptions, including expectations of deference to
authority, whether conscious or unconscious.
As I have noted previously, hegemonic assumptions are typically deep-
seated and highly resistant to change. Just as simple exposure to diversity
does not guarantee an increase in social capital, gaining a seat at the table
does not guarantee a reduction in power differential. Two of my doctoral
students have extensive experience working to empower urban African
American communities, one in Richmond, Virginia and one in Miami,
Florida. Both have shared the same story with me: initial access to an essen-
tially White power structure was through community representation on a
citywide commission or board. These new Black members felt silenced and
intimidated, while existing members could not understand why they didn’t
speak up. Both groups were trapped by hegemonic assumptions: the Black
community representatives by internalized oppression leading to a habit
of deference to White power structures and the lack of tools that would
help them negotiate what to them was a foreign culture; the existing White
members by the false assumption that the new members would know what
to do and how to act. Each of these groups would have benefitted by the
“learning practices” described in the case study above.

6.4 Minimal Power Differentials 103

A principal reason why diversity efforts have such a spotty record is the
insufficient attention paid to the stubbornness of hegemonic assumptions.
Establishing a chief diversity officer or a center for multicultural affairs will
not do it. Neither will diversifying the ranks of professional staff, although
that is an important first step. Neither will so-called “diversity audits” of
organizational policies and practices, as necessary as these may be. There
are no quick fixes here. What is needed are more safe spaces for engaging
in sustained dialogue –not a single conversation or one-off professional
development programs, but space for “thoughtfully listening, expressing
compassion, and engaging in a long-term relationship with people who
are disenchanted, yet committed to seeing change” (Gigliotti, Dwyer, &
Ruiz-Mesa,  2018).
There is a role here for critical theory, the notion that power
relationships are endemic and self-reinforcing, and that systemic cor-
rective action is necessary. According to critical theory, including a more
diverse array of voices in an organization may simply reinforce existing
forms of domination (Alvesson & Spicer, 2014), exemplified by the two
personal experiences I described above. Addressing the power imbal-
ance requires affirming participants’ voices by explicitly surfacing power
relations, and focusing on participants’ potential in the organization
(Chandler & Kirsch, 2018). But even this may not be enough: if insti-
tutional structures and norms remain the same then any change may be
merely cosmetic.
I should admit at this point that while I admire the perspective critical
theory has brought to the study of social and organizational change, I am
more pragmatist than ideologue. I am more attracted to approaches that
say, in effect, “Yes, we know that power inequalities will hinder our ability
to learn from one another … so let’s develop strategies that not only recog-
nize this problem but strive to mitigate it.”
Strategies designed to mitigate power differentials will take different
forms, depending on the context and purpose of the intended learning.
Interventionist approaches of the action learning variety must meet hege-
monic assumptions head- on, while the cultivation of social learning
systems such as communities of practice calls for more subtle approaches,
embedded in reflection on practice.
Regarding the former, management scholar Russ Vince (2004) has
noted that while action learning groups are often “safe havens for individ-
uals to reflect on projects and problems,” their own isolation makes them
“disconnected from action related to questioning established assumptions
and the politics and power relations through which such assumptions

104 The Importance of Others

were enacted” (p. 74). Unless these hegemonic assumptions are addressed
through destabilization of contradictory power relations (Vince, 2012),
true organizational learning is unlikely. Vince’s point is of critical import-
ance. Work of any learning group that seeks to catalyze larger organiza-
tional change must recognize that such change will inevitably involve
shifting power relationships, and that these do not occur easily or without
conflict.
A form of action learning called critical action learning addresses this
challenge squarely by making conscious those power relations that have
previously been unconscious and thus unavailable to notice. As Vince
(Vince, Abbey, & Langenham, 2018) put it, “[whereas] action learning
encourages people to tackle important organizational or social challenges
and learn from their attempts to improve things, critical action learning
additionally connects with the emotions and power relations that both
promote and prevent people’s attempts to learn and improve things” (p. 86,
emphasis added). An action learning set is the place to surface uncon-
scious power relationships: As participants are put into a destabilizing
political environment, where their usual ways of working are no longer
tacit or intuitive, the resulting discomfort and “social friction” (Warwick,
McCray, & Board, 2017) provides an opportunity to create constructive
disorientation. Note how such a setting can, with some work, meet all
of the criteria necessary for disorientation to be constructive: first, the
action learning set is given a problem that requires not a technical solu-
tion but adaptive learning; second, members of the set experience the
three elements necessary for intrinsic motivation, namely autonomy, effi-
cacy, and relatedness. Members will feel autonomous motivation if the
presenting problem sparks their curiosity and working on it is consistent
with their internalized organizational values. They will feel efficacious if
they have reason to believe that their work will have a positive impact.
And they will have a sense of relatedness if they feel a connection to others
in their set and feel that they have a significant role to play. This last cri-
terion may be the most difficult one to meet, as it requires developing
the necessary social capital. Recall the four necessary requirements for
social capital: a common bond, intellectual and ideological diversity,
openness to contributions of others, and presumed accountability. The
third of these, openness to others’ contributions, is the one most vulner-
able to existing power differentials, and this is where skills of the group
facilitator become most critical, making sure that all voices are heard and
contributions noted.

6.4 Minimal Power Differentials 105

In sum, an action learning set, or something like it, can be a safe space
to explore new ideas and try out new identities while also bounding that
space with organizational norms, expectations, and accountabilities. The
combination of an adaptive problem with the right kind of motivation
creates constructive disorientation, as long as previously unconscious
power relationships are uncovered and dealt with. Critical reflection on
these and other assumptions can lead to the adoption of new knowledge
perspectives and development of new expertise.
Dealing with power dynamics in communities of practice is a bit of
a different story. The power differentials are of two kinds here: within
the community and at its boundaries with other communities. Within-
community politics are typically matters of expert versus nonexpert power,
as novices in the practice attempt to develop competence to equal that of
the masters. These novices of course also enter the community with fresh
ideas, thus setting up conflict with the presumed holders of the expertise.
But if there is an acknowledgment of this tension, and clear recognition in
the group of the contribution by both old and new members, the poten-
tial exists for those with greater expertise to, in effect, provide the sort of
Vygotskian scaffolding that will help those with less expertise develop their
own professional identities (Pemberton, Mavin, & Stalker, 2017).
The challenge of minimizing power differentials in communities of prac-
tice takes on a different form at the boundaries of these practices, where
opportunities exist for learning with other communities. The opportunity
for transformative learning is greater at the intersections of professional
communities than within them; but whether these engagements turn out
well or badly depends on how power relationships are negotiated. A good
example of this is a study reporting on how different medical specialties in
Norway needed to come together to learn the technique of laparoscopy (or
“keyhole surgery”), a procedure that requires a significantly different skill-
set of the general surgeon (Mørk, Hoholm, Ellingsen, Edwin, & Aanestad,
2010). One of their main findings was that “in such a transition process
mastery changes from being based mainly on past merits, to being based
increasingly on the ability to continuously learn new practices, mobilize
arguments and build networks” (p. 576). Echoing Vaill’s (1996) point that
true experts have to see themselves as “reflective beginners,” Mørk and his
colleagues (2010) write that “in a very basic sense everyone was reduced to
apprentice status because they all had to explore and learn what the new
practice could come to be. In innovation processes, knowledge and prac-
tice need to be constantly explored, tested and negotiated” (p. 589).

106 The Importance of Others

Figure 6.1 The deep learning mindset, including the social learning field

6.5 Summary
In this chapter I have tried to make the case for the critical importance
of social interaction to deep learning. While acknowledging the dangers
of social and professional groups as potential barriers to deep learning,
stemming from the lack of diversity in the group, “groupthink,” and
failure to acknowledge hegemonic differences, I also presented four
ways in which deep learning can be facilitated: by promoting empathy,
developing social capital, encouraging participatory forms of engage-
ment, and minimizing (or directly confronting) differentials of power.
I have focused on social learning in smaller, bounded groups. But what
about the larger and far more complex social system of an organiza-
tion or an entire society? How does the politics of learning work at the
macro level?
In the addition to the model of a deep learning mindset I now add the
field in which social learning occurs, composed of both group discourse
and politics (see Figure 6.1), the subject of the next chapter.

Notes
1 My thanks to Norman Dale for this reference.
2 Cf. Preston & de Waal (2002).

Notes 107
3 Mercier and Sperber (2017) provide a comprehensive review of this research in
chapter 15 of their book.
4 Notably, the work of Ron Heifetz, already cited extensively in this book.
5 Evidence for this can be found by browsing through the journal Action
Learning: Theory and Practice.
6 Yorks cites as the source of the learning window T. A. Stewart’s Intellectual
Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations (1997). I am probably not the only
one who, reading this passage, was reminded of former US Secretary of State
Donald Rumsfeld’s notorious distinction between “known knowns,” “known
unknowns,” and “unknown unknowns.”

Ch apter 7

The Influence of Politics on Deep Learning

Conflicts are the midwife of consciousness.

Paulo Freire
If constructive disorientation is the spark for deep learning, critical reflec-
tion the engine, and social discourse the fuel, then politics is the lubricant.
Just as the lack of motor oil will freeze up an engine, the lack of conscious
attention to political dynamics will freeze up the space for deep learning.
How does small-scale learning lead, or not, to organizational learning?
Politics. How do innovative, potentially disruptive, ideas become adopted,
or not, by the larger organization? Politics.
It is astonishing to me how, until very recently, politics and learning,
especially at the organizational level, were rarely discussed together. Peter
Senge (2006) in his book on organizational learning barely mentions “pol-
itics” at all; and as recently as 2003, in an otherwise excellent manual on
action learning, the authors advise against group members dealing with
“politically sensitive” issues (Dilworth & Willis, 2003). Popular books on
leadership and organizational change, on the other hand, take politics very
seriously –Ron Heifetz and his colleagues, for example, devote an entire
chapter to it (Heifetz et al., 2009), as does Oxford’s recent handbook on
leadership and organizations (Day, 2014). In this chapter I want to bring
the neglected relationship between politics and learning front and center.
In Chapter 6, I introduced politics at a micro level, by writing about
the need to deal with power differences in learning groups. In this chapter
I look at the role of politics in learning with a much broader sweep. I begin
with a brief review of how the avoidance and dismissal of conflicting
views has soiled civic discourse, and how some of the barriers to deep
learning discussed in Chapter 1 can explain this. I then revisit the topic
of transformative learning, and extend its focus beyond personal growth
and development to how it can be a means to transform organizations
and the larger society. I then return to John Dewey’s thoughts on learning

108

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109

The Influence of Politics on Deep Learning 109

and democracy, and reimagine his thinking as it might apply to the world
we live in today. Finally, I bring everything back around, from society at
large to people and organizations, and consider how making explicit the
power of politics can enhance the potential of deep learning.
First I should be clear about what exactly I mean by “politics.” As the reader
may have inferred from my use of the term in the previous chapter, I do not
mean the general definition of politics (politicá) used by the ancient Greeks,
that is how communities go about making decisions for their members. My
use of the term is in a narrower and more academic sense, denoting how
that process actually works: Politics is group conflict over limited resources,
whether real or perceived, leading to the use and manipulation of power.1
Societies, just like people, can’t have everything. Some resources are
clearly finite, such as natural resources and various forms of capital. Others,
such as the flow of information, can be made scarce by those who have an
interest in protecting them. The real or perceived scarcity of resources sets
up competition among those persons or groups who have an interest in
getting more of these resources, and conflict is resolved by wielding various
forms of power, whether coercive or more subtly through social norms.
Any action is political, therefore, when it threatens to disturb the current
balance of power. Democratic elections are, obviously, highly political;
but so are virtually all organizational decisions that involve distribution of
resources or benefits.
Consider for a moment, then, how deep learning can be a political act.
Deep learning changes one’s perspective on how the world works and,
by extension, how one should be in the world. This shift in perspective,
brought about by resolving constructive disorientation in the presence of
others, will include insights about needed changes from the status quo,
which, when acted upon, will create disturbance in prevailing power
relationships. Imagine this scenario:
A young woman has been raised in a male-dominated culture where women
are treated largely as chattel and sending them to school beyond the early
grades is frowned upon. Her father has moved to another country and has
come to realize that he wants a better life for his daughter. He sends for her,
enrolls her in school, and supports her education. The young woman grows
to appreciate the impacts of oppression in her native country, and vows to
work to change the system.

Granted, this is a particularly dramatic example, but it is also a true story,

a single instance of how educational resources are routinely withheld from
women as a way of maintaining power over them. It is not difficult to

110 The Influence of Politics on Deep Learning

think of other, more quotidian examples, such as those cited in the last
chapter of workgroups that, having discovered strategies to approach com-
plex problems, only find implementation blocked by the powers that be.
Whenever new knowledge threatens to disturb the existing political equi-
librium, learning becomes a political act.

7.1 Politics, Social Discourse, and Deep Learning

Recall from Figure 1.1 in Chapter 1 the multiple ways in which sources of
intuitive beliefs lead to myside bias, belief persistence, and attitude polar-
ization. Four of these cognitive traps are especially pernicious in politics,
large and small.
First is what Brafman and Brafman (2008) call “diagnosis bias,” a
blindness to all evidence that that contradicts initial assessment of a situ-
ation. A clear example is the stubborn insistence by the Bush administra-
tion in 2003 that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” as a pretext
for invasion, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. Diagnosis bias is
a form of confirmation/myside bias, filtering out any information that is
inconsistent with preexisting belief.
Second and third are these twin fears: loss aversion, the tendency to go
to extreme lengths to avoid possible losses (Kahneman, 2011), and exposure
anxiety, “a belief that failure to act in a manner perceived as firm will result
in the weakening of one’s position” (Shore, 2008, p. 221). In her classic
book The March of Folly, historian Barbara Tuchman (1984) chronicles
how governments since ancient times have so often acted in ways con-
trary to their self-interest, due to the “impotence of reason in the face
of greed, selfish ambition, and cowardice” (quoted from dust jacket). (It
seems almost gratuitous to note that Tuchman’s book can be read profit-
ably today.) While these monumental blunders, from Troy to Vietnam,
are indeed full of greed, ambition, and cowardice, a more psychological
perspective reveals plenty of evidence as well of loss aversion and exposure
anxiety. President Lyndon Johnson fell prey to both of these cognitive
traps when he capitulated to fear of loss by continuing to escalate the
war in Vietnam, even though he had said this early on: “I don’t think it’s
worth fighting for and I don’t think we can get out” (quoted in Brafman
& Brafman, 2008, p. 37). Political leaders, and humans in general, hate to
look weak and will go to great lengths to save face, digging themselves into
deeper and deeper holes in the process. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman
put it this way: “To withdraw now is to accept a sure loss, and that option
is deeply unattractive. The option of hanging on will therefore be relatively

7.1 Politics, Social Discourse, and Deep Learning 111

attractive, even if the chances of success are small and the cost of delaying
failure is high” (Kahneman & Renshon, 2007, p. 38). These three irrational
forces function as psychological defense mechanisms, protecting the
individual from potential embarrassment. They interact with the fourth
irrational force, reductive thinking, which oversimplifies complex situations
into “mental sound bites” (Shore, 2008, p. 211). As I noted in Chapter 1,
humans are constitutionally uncomfortable with ambiguity and will avoid
it whenever possible. Clever politicians know this instinctively and use it
to their advantage in speeches, TV ads, and Twitter and Facebook postings.
Consider for a moment how the term “diversity” has, due to reductive
thinking, become laden with political connotations on college campuses
and organizations in general. As I explained in Chapter 6, group diver-
sity may or may not lead to deep learning and yet, depending on one’s
political leanings, diversity is either a means to social justice, important
enough to justify speech codes and “centers for diversity excellence,” or
a tool to muzzle conservative voices and create cultures of victimization.2
An avoidance of reductive thinking would lead to a more difficult but
accurate appraisal: that group diversity is absolutely necessary for mean-
ingful learning, but simple contact with difference is not enough and can
make people even more tribal. Colleges therefore need to create more
spaces for honest conversations and multiple points of view, rather than
assume that problems caused by encounters with the “Other” require more
administrators and regulations.
Thus, irrational forces work to inhibit deep learning in institutions and
organizations, not just in the larger body politic. Recall from the discussion
of constructive disorientation in Chapter 4 that more-than-optimal levels
of anxiety will inhibit deep learning or prevent it entirely. Diagnosis bias,
loss aversion, and exposure anxiety are all evidence of someone having dug
in their heels, and at that point dislodging beliefs that have these strong
emotional ties will be extremely difficult. The trick, therefore, is to keep
these defenses from kicking in in the first place, by keeping the learning
challenge at manageable levels.
Here is what makes doing this a political activity. First and most obvi-
ously, we must recognize how psychological defense mechanisms can
and are being used for political purposes. Combining diagnosis bias, loss
aversion and exposure anxiety with reductive thinking is a toxic mix.
Second, deep learning is fundamentally social; learning in the presence
of others requires creating an atmosphere of trust, or social capital. The
greater the social capital, the greater the potential for political capital, that
is, the degree of influence one has over others. Political capital is a scarce

112 The Influence of Politics on Deep Learning

resource and must be spent wisely. I will come back to some ideas about
how to do this later in the chapter.

7.2 Deep Learning as Political Consciousness

In an earlier chapter I wrote about the “rationalist delusion,” a product
of the worship of reason in Western philosophy. If reasoning is our most
noble attribute, the logic goes, then by extension those who reason best
should have the most power (Haidt, 2012). This notion, however, was
debunked centuries ago by Aristotle:
Now if arguments were in themselves good enough to make men good, they
would justly … have won very great rewards … But as things are … they
are not able to encourage the many to nobility and goodness … What argu-
ment would remold such people? It is hard, if not impossible, to remove
by argument the traits that have long since been incorporated in the char-
acter. (Aristotle, Nicomeachean Ethics, 1179, quoted in Sloman & Fernbach,
2017, p. 77)
Opening a space for deep learning thus requires more than logical reasoning,
as I’ve argued throughout this book. Some disturbance is necessary, and
often this disturbance must take the form of political action. Several influ-
ential thinkers from the late twentieth century held this view, including
emancipatory educator Paulo Freire (Brazil), “folk school” founder Myles
Horton (United States), and philosopher Michael Foucault (France). I will
profile each of them in turn and discuss how their ideas might be applied
to creating a space for deep learning.
Paulo Freire is widely regarded as the founder of “critical pedagogy.” He
believed that formal education serves to replicate the dominant culture,
where it is taken for granted that, because educators have all the relevant
knowledge, their role is to bestow that knowledge on people who know
nothing (Freire, 1970). By promulgating the dominant narrative, educa-
tion is an insidious force that keeps oppressed people unaware of their
own oppression. Children grow up to believe that this is just how things
are supposed to be. Freire’s central idea is “conscientization,” a process by
which people are made more aware of their oppression and its sources, thus
providing a counter-narrative that will empower transformation of society,
vs. adaptation to the status quo. “No pedagogy [that] is truly liberating can
remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and
by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors,” he
wrote. “The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their

7.2 Deep Learning as Political Consciousness 113

redemption” (Freire, 1970, p. 5). Conscientization presupposes a group
dialogue characterized by perceived equality and mutual trust and respect
among participants, and is achieved through praxis, which for Freire is
critical reflection on one’s own condition, comparing that condition with
alternatives, and then acting on the new awareness and using it to trans-
form oppressive structures. “People have the right to know better than they
already know,” he said. “Knowing better means precisely going beyond the
common sense in order to begin to discover the reason for the facts” (Horton
& Freire, 1990, p. 157, emphasis in original). Because action changes reality,
it is therefore itself subject to further critical reflection. In this sense Freire’s
thinking is much in line with empirical research on critical reflection and
experiential learning.
Myles Horton founded Highlander Folk School (now the Highlander
Research and Education Center) in the mountains of eastern Tennessee
in 1932. Unlike Freire, who left behind a large body of scholarly writing,
Horton’s written record is sparse, consisting mostly of stories and anecdotes.
He preferred to work outside the formal “schooling system,” as he called
it. But the two men had much in common. Like Freire, Horton rejected
the notion that education could be politically neutral, maintaining that
“neutrality is just being what the system asks us to be … you’ve got to
take sides” (Horton & Freire, 1990, p. 102). Also like Freire, Horton faced
violent opposition to his work, much of it directed to him personally, espe-
cially during the McCarthy era of the 1950s and the civil rights movement
of the 1960s. Both men grew up in the poorest regions of their countries,
where their childhood experiences shaped both their political philosophies
and their approaches to education. Both also devoted their careers to using
education as a tool to fight oppression. Freire took a post-Marxist approach,
convinced that the very structures of society needed to be changed: “It is
possible to convert individuals of the ruling class, but never the ruling class
as a class” (Horton & Freire, 1990, p. 190). Horton was more like John
Dewey, believing that social structures could be changed from within,
through creation of a society that lived up to its democratic ideals.
More to the purpose of this book, both Horton and Freire believed
that change, driven by effective political organizing, must begin with the
wisdom of the people, and then stretching this wisdom with new informa-
tion. For Freire this was accomplished through praxis; for Horton it was
by asking questions:
I use questions [in my work with people] more than anything else … I don’t
think of a question as intervening because [people] don’t realize that the

114 The Influence of Politics on Deep Learning

reason you asked that question is because you know something. What you
know is the body of the material that you’re trying to get people to consider,
but instead of giving a lecture on it, you ask a question enlightened by that.
Instead of you getting on a pinnacle you put them on a pinnacle. (Horton
& Freire, 1990, p. 146)
Horton also realized the difficulty in knowing just how far to stretch
people’s thinking: that is, finding the delicate balance between bringing
out the knowledge of the people and going beyond that knowledge. “This
is a problem that has always bothered me, [namely] how far you could go
in stretching people’s experience without breaking the thread” (p. 154).
Thus, both Freire’s and Horton’s views on, respectively, critical reflection
and (what I call) constructive disorientation are consistent with current
research on adult learning. Especially noteworthy is that these views came
about through direct experience and reflection on that experience, rather
than theory. In Freire’s case reflection led to theorizing, while for Horton
it led to more informed educational practice.
Philosopher Michel Foucault wrote about many things in his
foreshortened but brilliant and influential career, but what he is probably
best known for is his analysis of power-knowledge with its implications for
how individuals must struggle against the many, concealed ways in which
dominant organizational knowledge controls them. He wrote about both
institutional power and the (often unconscious) power we give others.
Like Freire, Foucault believed that people learn to obey authority through
the knowledge it sanctions (and does not), and thus young people must
develop a consciousness about power/knowledge connections. As one of
the early postmodern theorists, Foucault rejected the notion that power
is always institutional and hierarchical and vested in formal structures.
Instead, power is decentralized and pluralistic, and therefore can be a force
for both repression and emancipation –in the latter sense by people real-
izing that they do not have to let themselves be defined by the formal
structures around them: “What makes power hold good, what makes it
accepted, is simply the fact that it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force
that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure,
forms knowledge, produces discourse” (Foucault, 1980, p. 119).
Foucault had similar postmodern thoughts about the nature of “truth,”
which for him was seldom if ever absolute:
Truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of protracted solitude, nor
the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves. Truth
is a thing of this world … and it induces regular effects of power. Each
society has its regime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the

7.2 Deep Learning as Political Consciousness 115

types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true … [Thus,]
by truth I do not mean the “ensemble of truths which are to be discovered
and accepted,” but rather the ensemble of rules according to which the true
and the false are separated and the specific effects of power attached to the
true. (pp. 131–132)
In other words, Foucault dismissed positivist notions that hard objective
facts are “out there” waiting to be discovered. Societies construct rules on
what is to be considered “true” and what is not.
And finally, Foucault believed that “it is impossible for power to be
exercised without knowledge; it is impossible for knowledge not to
engender power” (p. 52). He was also quick to point out that we can also
let bodies of knowledge define us, particularly in the human sciences, which
on the surface may seem to be sources of objective truth but in fact dictate
how we should think of ourselves and what we should do.
Foucault developed his ideas by taking the thought of ancient philosophers
and applying them to modern problems as he saw them, rather than looking
to modern science. As such, the value of his thinking for understanding and
encouraging deep learning lies in the questions he invites us to ask –fresh
questions about some of the most basic assumptions we use to rule our
lives. How can we use the power within us, not just to resist oppression and
better position ourselves, but also to produce consequential knowledge –
knowledge that carries its own power –and a healthier discourse? How
might we accept and deal with multiple, even conflicting, “truths”? How
do we avoid becoming imprisoned by the elaborate and highly developed
knowledge structures that we have built for ourselves?
So how do the ideas of these three intellects, from different cultures and
life perspectives (Foucault, unlike Freire and Horton, grew up in a com-
fortable middle-class environment), come together to help us understand
how to use politics in the service of deep learning, to go beyond the indi-
vidual to broader and deeper organizational learning?
First, learning is itself political, because what is important to learn has
been determined through political means –not just in the most obvious
sense, such as local school boards deciding what students should read and
not read, but much more subtly as well.
Second is the importance of disruption as a means for creating space
for critical reflection on assumptions. The disruption must be intentional,
and calibrated.
Third is the need to challenge existing truths, understanding that these
truths may be so embedded in one’s life perspective as to be unconscious,
even unquestioned.

116 The Influence of Politics on Deep Learning

Fourth is the understanding that one of these existing truths for nearly
everyone is an entire set of assumptions about power: who has it and what
can be done with it. A key challenge to these assumptions must be that
“empowerment” is not something that must be won but is there already.
And fifth is the message that enlightenment is not enough. Enlightenment
must lead to action, and action has consequences, good and bad, which
must be reflected upon if further learning is to occur.

7.3 Recasting Dewey
Elsewhere in this book I have discussed John Dewey’s ideas as they relate to
human learning: in short, his belief that learning is achieved by reflecting
critically on one’s experience, in the presence of others having divergent
views. Dewey believed that both children and adults learn most effect-
ively and most deeply this way –and as we have seen, Dewey’s thinking
has been backed up by decades of empirical research. Dewey wrote about
“education” in the traditional sense –formal education –but always in
the context of education as a way of life, as a cornerstone of democracy.
Democracy will survive and flourish, he believed, only when citizens
develop inquiry into their experience as a habit of mind and free them-
selves from what he called “dogmatic thinking” (Dewey, 1981). Here is his
oft-quoted definition of democracy:
Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it
must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be
created only by education. A democracy is more than a form of govern-
ment; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint, communicated
experience. The extension in space of the number of individuals who par-
ticipate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of
others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to
his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race,
and national territory which [have] kept [people] from perceiving the full
import of their activity. (p. 87)
To say that these words, composed more than a century ago, have res-
onance today is a vast understatement. Let us take a moment to unpack
this passage. Democratic societies do not obey any external authority,
including, presumably, religion. Democracies do not exist as faraway gov-
ernment institutions, but rather in the daily business of life. Successful
democracies require that people learn to understand their own beliefs
and actions, to reflect nondefensively on these in the presence of others
having different beliefs and experiences, and to use this “conjoint,

7.3 Recasting Dewey 117
communicated experience” to develop new understandings in the pursuit
of the common good.
This last part of the definition is what gives learning such political heft.
Dewey has been criticized by many for being naïve about the realities of
political power; and while it is true that he viewed democracy as social
rather than political in nature, he was not at all indifferent to power (Stark,
2014), as is evident by the many political causes he engaged in over the
years. He was idealistic, yes, believing that proper education of individuals
would lead to social improvement, the primary aim of a true democracy.
But he also knew that the active engagement of a reflective citizenry is a
constant challenge, one undertaken in the face of the forces of dogmatism.
This is why he saw democracy as always unfinished, always as a process of
understanding, through inquiry into collective experience. He had strong
opinions on the perils of not doing so, as the following passage illustrates:
There must be a large variety of shared understandings and experiences.
Otherwise, the influences which educate some into masters, educate others
into slaves. And the experience of each party loses in meaning, when the
free interchange of varying modes of life experience is arrested. A separ-
ation into a privileged and subject-class prevents social endosmosis.3 The
evils thereby affecting the superior class are less material and less percep-
tible, but equally real. Their culture tends to be sterile, to be turned back to
feed on itself; their art becomes a showy display and artificial; their wealth
luxurious; their knowledge over-specialized; their manners fastidious rather
than humane. (Dewey, 1981, p. 90)
Because Dewey saw education as the fundamental method leading to
social progress and reform, he, like Freire and Horton, viewed education
as a political act. Dewey mainly wrote about individuals and their place
in the larger society, not about the power of reflective dialogue as a force
for change in organizations; but I believe that a close reading of his work
reveals five insights useful for understanding the politics of deep learning.
First is the importance and power of inquiry as a way of life, not just for the
individual but for society as whole. Dewey often wrote about finding truth
through “scientific inquiry,” but not in the narrow, positivist way of deter-
mining objective “facts,” as many of his critics have claimed, but rather,
as the ultimate pragmatist he was, by using inquiry to uncover working
explanations for the problems at hand, always subject to challenge, further
reflection, and revision. Learning, therefore, is always about the process,
not about the result (Stitzlein, 2014). Thus, perhaps counterintuitively,
Dewey presaged critical theorists, believing, like Foucault, that all truth
is contextual.

118 The Influence of Politics on Deep Learning

Second and relatedly, this process of inquiry must be ongoing, resulting
in new discoveries and rediscoveries, new organizations and reorganizations.
Neglecting this, the community will regress into what Dewey (1981) called
“bourgeois democracy,” a quasi-democracy where power rests in the hands
of others. The takeaway here is that the mindful, continuous practice of
Deweyan inquiry in an organization will inhibit the growth of a stifling
bureaucracy.
Third, Dewey, as have so many others since, recognized the import-
ance of disturbance, referring to these occasions as “openings for
inquiry.” A challenge to one’s beliefs, he wrote, creates “a state of per-
plexity, hesitation, doubt” which in turn becomes the stimulus for crit-
ically reflective thought (Dewey, 1910, quoted in Stark, 2014, p. 93).
This is why group diversity is so important (given the cautions noted
in Chapter 6).
Fourth, Dewey (1933) was insistent on the need for “open-mindedness”
during inquiry. He did not mean that one should simply resist rigidity
in thinking; rather, “it is something more active and positive than these
words suggest. It is very different [from] empty-mindedness … [It stems
from] alert curiosity and spontaneous outreaching for the new” (p. 30). As
I’ve indicated in previous chapters, open-mindedness is most likely when
individuals and groups are in a state of constructive disorientation.
And fifth, Dewey insisted that group inquiry must rely on honest dia-
logue. He understood that the purpose of true democratic inquiry is not
to eliminate conflict but to use it in a dialectical fashion to reach workable
solutions for the community (Stark, 2014). By “dialectic” he meant neither
formal debate nor consensus-building, but rather achieving agreement
through maieutic discussion –that is, by asking a series of questions in a
Socratic fashion, intended to surface participants’ latent ideas into con-
sciousness. With the proper facilitation, this model has the potential to be
a uniquely powerful way of building respect and understanding (that is,
social capital) among participants (Stark, 2014).
Gregory Fernando Pappas encapsulates the urgency of attending to
Dewey’s philosophy of learning and democracy today:
Of all the problems of democracy, the one that strikes me as most urgent
today is simply that democracy is not experienced as a task or problem. This
happens when it is taken for granted, or worse, when many people have no
ideal or sense of how things could be better. Without awareness that there
is a crisis of democracy, there is not the felt, problematic situation that can
lead to inquiry about how to ameliorate present conditions. (Pappas, 2008,
quoted in Stitzlein, 2014, p. 61)

7.3 Recasting Dewey 119
It might seem strange to think about John Dewey’s notions about democ-
racy within the confines of an organization: organizations are, obviously,
not democracies. And I am not arguing here that they should be. The
reason I have chosen to profile Dewey in this way (as I have Freire, Horton,
and Foucault before him) is to suggest that because the very nature of
organizations is to protect order and stability and avoid disruption (Uhl-
Bien, 2018), the keys to deep learning that I have discussed until now –
knowing oneself, creating space for constructive disorientation, engaging
in critical reflection, and doing this in a diverse social space –can all be in
place and deep learning still may not occur without political consciousness.
In this chapter I have profiled four men, all White males, albeit from
different countries and with different worldviews; while true, both Freire
and Horton well understood the forces of oppression and experienced it,
and Horton himself was a mentor to Rosa Parks, an icon of the US civil
rights movement, during her days at Highlander.
The issue is not simply one of giving a nod to other voices. That is not
good enough. Adult education programs, even those designed to decrease
inequalities, may instead have the opposite effect, namely one of “cumu-
lative disadvantage” (Kilpi-Jakonen, Vono de Vilhena, & Blossfel, 2015).
A key target of the Europe 2020 agenda of the European Commission
has been to significantly increase participation rates in adult education,
a worthy goal, but only if participation leads to the desired outcomes.
In a study encompassing 13 countries, Kilpi-Jakonen and her colleagues
(2015) explored the patterns of participation in adult learning activities
and the consequences of this participation on career trajectories. While
they noted substantial cross-national differences, they found that overall,
“higher participation rates do not necessarily lead to lower social/educa-
tional inequalities in participation,” that “those already better off in society
are better able to access adult learning and tend to see greater benefits in
career progress,” and “therefore, additional efforts should be made to make
adult learning more accessible to underrepresented groups, in particular
those disadvantaged educationally and on the labour market” (p. 543). In
short, inequalities in access lead to inequalities in learning.
The problem of social inequality and how to address it is huge –and
well beyond the scope of this book. I hope however that the points raised
in this chapter will stimulate more reflection on how learning, both indi-
vidually and in organizations, has inescapable political overtones.
As I have done in previous chapters, I end this one with some thoughts
on how explicit attention to political dynamics can make deep learning
more likely, namely to: (1) identify existing systems of power relationships;

120 The Influence of Politics on Deep Learning

(2) surface unconscious assumptions about how learning is advantaged
and disadvantaged by these relationships; (3) cultivate parrèsia, or the art
of speaking truth to power; and (4) develop forms of procedural justice.

1. Identifying existing systems of power relationships, as fundamental as

this is, may not be obvious when thinking about one’s own learning
or about how to create space for deep learning in others. Following
Foucault’s lead, we must ask some very basic questions right out of the
gate: In what ways are the highly developed knowledge structures that
we and others have developed over the years products of politically and
culturally sanctioned “truths”? How do we recognize the ways in which
accepted “truths” privilege some and disadvantage others? How is dif-
ferential power related to differential access to learning in an organiza-
tion? How can we help others recognize the power within themselves
to engage the work required for deep learning?
2. Surfacing unconscious assumptions, as I’ve argued throughout this book,
is a precondition to learning, an acceptance that something important
is to be learned. Paradoxically perhaps, the more expert one becomes
in a certain field the more likely one will become blind to the effects of
existing power relationships (Warwick et al., 2017). Teams of people in
organizations have ways of being and working that to them are uncon-
scious and “natural” –what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1977)
called habitus. One’s habitus should be understood as a predisposition
to act, or sensitivity to ways of being, rather than the more common
understanding of “habit” as an inclination to repeat identical acts.
This distinction is key, because unlike the intractability of deep-seated
beliefs, habitus is malleable, and under the right conditions –those of
constructive disorientation –reflecting on the “figurations of power one
is part of ” (Warwick et al., 2017, p. 108), and how these configurations
have privileged some forms of knowledge over others, can be powerful
stimuli for deep learning.
3. In his discussion of when and how to speak truth to power, Foucault
(2008) used the term parrèsia, an ancient Greek term for free-
spokenness, to describe “a disciple’s obligation to tell the master the
truth of himself ” (p. 47). Defining “truth” was always problematic for
Foucault, because as I have noted he did not believe in truth in an
absolute sense, but rather that what is “true” becomes accepted by “gen-
eral politics” (his term) and human discourse. Those who speak their
own truths emphasize their freedom as individuals. Parrèsia, there-
fore, is a particular way of telling the truth –it is not demonstration,

Notes 121
persuasion, teaching or debating. Rather, parrèsia is “situated in what
binds the speaker to the fact that what he says is the truth, and to the
consequences which follow from the fact that he has told the truth”
(p. 56).4 Accordingly, one must believe that speaking truth in the face of
power will not be a futile exercise, but will contribute instead to human
discourse. Those who wish to enhance deep learning in an organization
will develop the social capital to potentially shift power relationships,
allowing truth-telling that has lower social and political risk.
4. Brafman and Brafman (2008) use the term procedural justice to refer
to humans’ expectation to be treated fairly. They review empirical evi-
dence that one’s sense of justice is determined more by the process than
the outcome, as counterintuitive as that may seem! Judging the fairness
of the deal one gets in buying a car is determined as much or more by
how the customer is treated than by the deal itself. Convicted felons’
judgments of the fairness of their treatment by the courts is related
more to the length of time their lawyers spent with them than on the
length of their sentences (Casper et al., 2008, referenced in Brafman
& Brafman, 2008). This notion of procedural justice means that when
engaging in parrèsia, discourse will be facilitated when the emphasis is
less on arguing the merits of the truths at hand, and more on talking
through how these truths have been arrived at and communicating
what in that organizational or cultural context is considered to be the
“fair” way to proceed.
Attention to politics is essential to deep learning. Does this mean that
deep learning is always political? No. Deep learning can be achieved in
numerous ways, but always through mindful, critical reflection on experi-
ence. When the outcome of this reflection threatens to disturb the political
equilibrium, deep learning becomes a political act.
There is one other way to disturb the personal and political equilibrium,
and that is through the arts, the subject of the next chapter.

Notes
1 I picked up this definition many years ago and have long since forgotten its
source.
2 As an example of the latter, see Will (2018).
3 Defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “passage of a substance through
a membrane from a region of lower to a region of higher concentration.”
4 Defining “truth” was always problematic for Foucault; as a postmodernist he
did not believe in truth in an absolute sense, but rather that what is “true”
becomes accepted by “general politics” (his term) and human discourse.

Ch apter 8

Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

The role of art is not only to show how the world is, but also why it
is thus and how it can be transformed.
Augusto Boal
On a crisp afternoon in mid-October, my wife and I are sitting on a hillside
in Richmond, VA, along with several thousand other music fans waiting for
a performance by Mavis Staples, legendary gospel and rhythm and blues
singer. She is one of the headliners of an annual folk music festival here that
draws nearly a quarter of a million people to listen to music ranging from
classic American folk to Afro-Pop. It is 2018, during one of the most div-
isive and polarizing eras in American history, and less than a month before
the mid-term elections. Walking into the festival we were greeted by cam-
paign signs and people handing out political literature. People were wearing
hats and buttons touting this or that candidate. But now I look around
and notice the diversity of people sitting together: millennials with baby
boomers, blacks with whites, multiple generations of families, some with kids
in strollers. Some people are standing, but those sitting behind them don’t
seem to mind. A burly guy accidentally steps on my hand and apologizes. An
elderly woman puts her hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she moves
through the crowd. Ms. Staples begins her performance. A couple about
my age sings and claps along. Three women of different ethnicities dance in
front of us, all moving to the music in their own way. A group of twenty-
somethings to our left, looking studiously cool, stop talking and listen. To
our right two toddlers play on a blanket spread out in the grass, taking in the
joy of the moment. This, I think, is what the arts are for.
This vignette is an example of one of the core functions of art in
society: to bring diverse groups of people together into a shared experi-
ence, creating empathy and openness to new perspectives of viewing the
world. Earlier in this book I have often alluded to the importance, indeed
the necessity of emotion in deep learning, in the form of a disturbance

122

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Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts 123

experienced as a disturbance. In this chapter I explore the role of the arts as
catalyst for that disturbance, one of the most useful ways of creating space
for constructive disorientation and, hence, deep learning.
I begin, yet again, with John Dewey. While deservedly his reputation
rests largely on his pragmatist philosophy and his views on the function
of education in a democracy, Dewey also had a lot to say about the role of
the arts as an integral part of the human experience. Dewey was interested
in aesthetics his entire life, but it was not until the early 1920s that he
developed a series of lectures that served as the basis for his masterpiece,
Art as Experience (1934),1 inspired by his friendship with renowned art col-
lector Albert Barnes. Remarkably, Dewey did not approach the subject
with the pragmatist philosophy he had already developed so well: indeed,
he conceded that pragmatism has little to say about it. Instead, we have
this three-word title, signifying that art both stems from experience and
is experience itself. When we think of art, Dewey wrote, we tend to think
of art objects; but the real art is the experience of making or encountering
the object. Thus, a true work of art is a refined and intensified form of
experience. Dewey biographer Jay Martin (2002) captures the essence this
way: “Art is not ‘about’ experience; it is not an ‘imitation’ of an action; it is
not a ‘reproduction’ of history; it is not a ‘spiritual’ experience; it is not a
‘description’ of experience; and it is not –as in the concept of ‘art for art’s
sake’ –a substitution for experience. Rather it is a quality that permeates
experience” (pp. 404–405). Art, in short, is the consummation of experi-
ence and what gives it meaning. I had an aesthetic experience at the music
festival even before the music started. Art permeates everyday life and is not
just the province of “artists.” Dewey (1934) cites as one of many examples:
[T]‌he zest of the spectator in poking the wood burning on the hearth and in
watching the darting flames and crumbling coals … If questioned as to the
reason for [his] action … would say he did it to make the fire burn better;
but he is none the less fascinated by the colorful drama of change enacted
before his eyes and imaginatively partakes in it. He does not remain a cold
spectator. (p. 5)
Recall that Dewey –as have numerous scholars of learning since –
considered all meaningful learning to be based on experience. The life of an
organism is a series of transactions between it and its environment, marked
by periods of both equilibrium and disequilibrium, and “the moment of
passage from disturbance into harmony” is when growth occurs. Here is
the connection between art as experience and the phenomenon of deep
learning, best expressed by Dewey (1934) himself:

124 Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

The rhythm of loss of integration with environment and recovery of
union not only persists in man [sic] but becomes conscious with him; its
conditions are material out of which he forms purposes. Emotion is the
conscious sign of a break, actual or impending. The discord is the occasion
that induces reflection. Desire for restoration of the union converts mere
emotion into interest in objects as conditions of realization of harmony.
With the realization, material of reflection is incorporated into objects as
their meaning. Since the artist cares in a peculiar way for the phase of experi-
ence in which union is achieved, he does not shun moments of resistance and
tension. He rather cultivates them, not for their own sake but because of their
potentialities, bringing to living consciousness an experience that is unified and
total. (p. 15, emphasis added)
Dewey’s ideas about the power of aesthetic experience have found expres-
sion in some recent research on the aesthetic responses of communities
to three school shootings in North America (Maarhuis & Rud, 2017).
Integrating Dewey’s writings on art as experience with his philosophy on
the role of education in democracy, Maarhuis and Rud use a Deweyan
lens to examine how communal works of art serve not only to help com-
munities heal after school shootings but also to reestablish shattered social
bonds. They write:

Responsive works of art, while prompting inner reflection, beckon the viewer
to bear witness, to relate, and to learn through associated living. This pro-
cess of relational reconstruction is not simple problem-solving or individual
behavioral change. It is a generative aesthetic understanding and purposeful
interpretation by the community and individuals about how to relate, adapt,
and return to communal associated living. (p. 238, emphasis added)

So how did the communities where these abhorrent acts of violence took
place do this? Despite the differences in settings (high school, junior high
school, and elementary school), community, and magnitude of the violence
and its impact, the authors found several common themes spread across
multiple art forms. They found aesthetic responses and “artful conduct” in
each case, taking place in seven stages: (1) previous practice of “associated
living”; (2) the experience of a disruptive event (the shooting), creating the
potential for (3) a motivated aesthetic response, leading to (4) engagement
in transactional aesthetic projects,2 in turn leading to (5) movement toward
consummation and reconstruction, which (6) allows for reclamation, res-
toration, and representation; and to complete the loop (7) return to sta-
bility in associated living. In each of these communities where violence
shattered their relational bonds, works of art were able to “create an open
and accessible milieu, where it [was] safe to explore consummation and

Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts 125

reconstruction toward alternative perspectives, outcomes, and possibility
of changing one’s frame of reference and future actions” (p. 254).
Maarhuis and Rud not only tell a story about the arts as a path to com-
munity healing, they also tell a story about deep learning. Art allowed the
survivors, families of victims, and the entire community to make meaning
out of a senseless, violent event.
Deweyan scholar Maxine Greene (2005) has reflected on how inevitable
moments of crisis can spark aesthetic experience and new spaces of creative
imagination. It is an opportunity, she writes, to “act on what we imagine,
what we believe ought at last to be … to move towards possibilities, to live
and teach in a world of incompleteness, of what we all are but are not yet”
(p. 80).
Author and scholar Ellen Dissanayake has a different take on the role
of the arts in society. She has focused her work on the anthropology of
art, and argues that the arts have biological and evolutionary origins,
helping humans create cultures that span generations. She writes that
arts “throughout most of human existence encapsulated and transmitted
group meanings that further confirmed individual feelings of belonging,
meaning, and competence, and united individuals into like-minded, like-
hearted groups” (Dissanayake, 2000, p. 168). Today, she argues, we live
in environments very different from our ancestors, and so have moved
away from the arts as core expressions of human concern; instead, they
have been dismissed by Western society as either “deviant and dangerous”
or “superfluous and elite.” As I will show later in this chapter, art that is
“deviant and dangerous” has in fact served a useful purpose in creating
constructive disorientation. Dissanayake makes a much better case that we
dismiss the arts as “superfluous and elite” at our peril: If we are biologically
predisposed to engage in the arts then they are even more important in our
fast-paced, technologically driven, information-saturated lives.
“Superfluous and elite” would never describe the life and work of dancer
and choreographer Martha Graham, who revolutionized modern dance
by moving away from an “ornamental manipulation of the limbs” that
characterized classical ballet to work that was “initiated form the center
of the body … firmly grounded and connected, barefoot, to the floor”
(Lee, 1998, p. 433). Graham’s genius was seeing dance as a means of using
body movement to express deep human emotion, and the tension between
“unruly passion and the constraints of duty” (p. 434).
The arts contribute to what Dirkx (2008) has called “mytho-poetic”
knowing, those forces within the emotional, affective, and spiritual dimen-
sion of our lives. Most of the scholars of transformative learning I have

126 Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

cited so far in this book have viewed transformative learning as primarily a
rational process that depends upon conscious, critical reflection on experi-
ence. The arts release a different, extra-rational kind of energy and have
a different kind of transformative power, as demonstrated by the artful
healing example above. A growing number of scholars of adult learning
have recognized their potential (Cranton & Taylor, 2012). Jacqueline
Davis-Manigaulte and her colleagues (Davis-Manigaulte, Yorks, & Kasl,
2006) have pulled together several case studies showing how these ways of
knowing are both different from and complement more traditional the-
ories of adult learning that privilege rational or analytical knowing. Their
analysis revealed that artistic engagement accomplishes several purposes: it
helps learners be attentive to their learning by getting them out of their
usual perceptual field and into a more open emotional space; it creates an
empathic environment in which difficult issues can be explored in a sup-
portive context; it creates a pathway to surfacing unconscious knowing;
and it codifies new insights through story and metaphor.
Thus, by serving as the bridge between mere sensation and true experi-
ence, by engaging all of our senses, by cultivating moments of tension, and
by challenging us to expand our perceptions and rearrange our meaning
schemes, art,3 by either creating or making meaning of a disturbance, can
be a source of constructive disorientation.
So how, exactly, does this work? Constructive disorientation through art
can occur through both encounter and artistic expression.
Constructive disorientation through artistic encounter can occur through
various forms of media: movies, TV, literature, social media, theater,
musical performance and street art. As Batson and Ahmad (2009) point out
in their review of research on the power of empathy to improve intergroup
relations, exposure to counter-stereotypes of “the Other” through these
media has a much higher potential of creating empathy and thus, attitude
change. They write:
There is clear evidence that media material can lead one to imagine how
the protagonist is thinking and feeling and, at times, to imagine one’s own
thoughts and feelings in the protagonist’s situation as a stepping-stone,
leading to feelings of empathic concern even for members of stigmatized
out-groups … There is also clear evidence that people react to what they
know to be fictional characters in much the same way, and perhaps even
more strongly, as they react to real people in similar situations … There is
evidence that positive media exposure to individual members of an out-
group can lead to more positive attitudes toward the out-group as a whole.
(pp. 169–170)

Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts 127

Examples of the power of these media are everywhere: movies like
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee); TV series like Roots; documentaries like I
Am Not Your Negro (James Baldwin); plays like Six Degrees of Separation. In
each case the viewer is invited, at very low risk, to live vicariously within
the life of another and to imagine what that life is like. This potential
for empathic connection is what gives the arts their emotional wallop, far
more powerfully than rational argument could do. In the best of cases,
the creative artist is able to find a point of optimal tension –the point
that lands within the viewer’s “latitude of acceptance” (Sherif & Hovland,
1961).4 I began this chapter with a vignette about a Mavis Staples concert.
One of the songs she sang was “Down in Mississippi”:

As far back as I can remember

I either had a plow or hoe
One of those ’ole nine foot sacs
Standing at the old turn row
Down in Mississippi
Down in Mississippi
Down in Mississippi where I was born
Down in Mississippi where I come from
They had a hunting season on the rabbit
If you shoot ’em you went to jail
Season was always open on me
Nobody needed no band
Down in Mississippi
Down in Mississippi
Down in Mississippi where I was born
Down in Mississippi where I come from
Down in Mississippi5

Notice how the song begins as a bit of nostalgia but then creates
disturbance – Season was always open on me. The abruptness of this line
takes the listener from images of hard-scrabble country life to those of the
Jim Crow South. Artists are able to “work with the tension of innovation
and tradition –as well as other tensions, such as randomness and rigidity,
and the impulses of the individual and the imperatives of collectives –to
construct forms that enliven but do not overwhelm the perceptual capaci-
ties of their audiences” (Bang, 2016, pp. 369–370). This point is key: artists
are able to create a direct pathway from lived experience to constructive
disorientation.

128 Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

A particularly stunning example of this is Picasso’s painting Guernica.
It is almost impossible to view this iconic work impassively. Here is what
Picasso himself said:
What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only eyes, if he is a
painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart
if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it. At the
same time, he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking,
passionate, or delightful things that happen in a world, shaping himself
completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in
other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very
life which they bring to you so abundantly. No, painting is not done to dec-
orate apartments. It is an instrument of war. (Quoted in Eliot, Silverman,
& Bowman, 2016, p. vi.)

Constructive disorientation through artistic expression occurs as one engages

in “expressive ways of knowing,” meaning “those forms of expression that
engage a learner’s imaginal and intuitive processes” (Yorks & Kasl, 2002,
p. 47). April Bang (2016) has written a splendid review of research on how
artistic expression can facilitate transformative learning. “Whether or not
people entering [an] artistic activity are already intrinsically motivated to
cooperate,” she writes, “they are nonetheless learning how to cooperate, or
improving their capacity to do so through the endeavor. In addition to the
learning or honing of skills for cooperation, the artistic experience itself
engages the mind, body, and spirit in ways that could bring transform-
ation” (p. 358).
Lyle Yorks and Elizabeth Kasl (2006) show how rational (“propos-
itional”) and extra-rational (“experiential”) knowing complement each
other: propositional knowing is expressed through intellectual statements,
experiential knowing through emotions. As we have seen, emotion is key
to both critical reflection in individuals, and empathic connection and
critical discourse in groups –and thus the complementarity.
Yorks and Kasl (2006) write that artistic engagement can help people
bring into awareness tacit and subconscious forms of knowing, making
them accessible for critical reflection. Transformative learning is social as
well. Expressive ways of knowing provide pathways among individuals by
giving individuals more ready access to the experiential knowing of the
other, thus bringing learners into an empathic connection for learning-
within-relationship. The pathway between critical discourse and the field
of empathic connection deepens a group’s capacity to engage one another’s
worldviews at profound levels of mutual respect, trust, and authentic
understanding. (p. 61)

Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts 129

Thus, as with engagement through encounter, engagement through expres-
sion relies on the power of empathy. Recall from previous chapters that
diversity is a necessary condition for deep learning in groups; but diversity
can also lead to polarization if not handled well. The arts can help stave
off this danger by creating an “empathic field” that “provides a supportive
context within which difficult issues can be pursued without rupturing
the relationship” (Yorks & Kasl, 2006, p. 61). Art carries ‘‘the potential for
making conflict rooted in diversity more constructive for learning’’ as well
as ‘‘the power to make psychological and societal boundaries more porous’’
(Hayes & Yorks, 2007, p. 92).
So to summarize: having an aesthetic experience is an extra-rational
way of knowing, which can challenge us to rearrange how we see the
world. This disturbance, if cultivated, can lead to constructive disorien-
tation, helped along by engaging in low-risk engagement with others in
ways that broaden our empathic field. Doing so weakens ethnic and other
hegemonic boundaries and hence increases the potential for critical reflec-
tion on experience and deep learning –and also the potential for political
change. In a 2016 op-ed piece for the New York Times, columnist David
Brooks noted how Frederick Douglass, the most photographed American
of the nineteenth century, used his portraits –as a serious and dignified
African American –to deliberately challenge the image White Americans
had of Black people. “He was using art to reteach people how to see,” he
wrote. “This is where artists make their mark, by implanting pictures in the
underwater processing that is upstream from conscious cognition. Those
pictures assign weights and values to what the eyes take in,” and therefore,
instead of involving themselves directly in political life, artists’ “real power
lies in the ability to recode the mental maps that people project into the
world” (Brooks, 2016, emphasis added).
In 2017 my collaborator (and former student) Susie Erenrich and
I published an edited book titled, Grassroots Leadership and the Arts for
Social Change (Erenrich & Wergin, 2017). The chapters in this book,
covering music, theater, photo-journalism, street art, film-making, dance,
and museums, provide compelling evidence of the power of the arts to
provoke; to create disquiet; and ultimately to inspire learning and change.
Below I provide thumbnail sketches of five of these chapters, all of which
exemplify how the arts can lead to deep learning:
Banksy the “trickster.” The trickster artist, Banksy, already notorious for
tweaking the stuffy arts establishment, became infamous in October 2018
for the intentional shredding of his work “Girl With a Balloon” immedi-
ately after its sale at auction for $1.4 million. (Just watching the astonished

130 Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

and bemused expressions of those in the high-brow audience is a special
treat.6) Banksy represents what Jarc and Garwood (2017) call the “benevo-
lent subversion” of street artists and tricksters. They write,
The archtypical artist as trickster infuses society with a much-needed sub-
versive viewpoint. Without this kind of what we call cultural vaccination,
communities face stagnation, stasis, and a decline into cultural entropy.
By injecting a small dose of disorder into the system, [subversive artists]
encourage the community to recognize a threat to its well-being and hope-
fully coalesce around it to find a solution. (p. 98)
Banksy began his career as a “bomber,” that is, someone who paints graf-
fiti in public spaces. He has remained anonymous for more than 20 years,
gradually evolving from spray painting to a more sophisticated practice
of stenciling messages onto public spaces, and he has done this all over
the world as a form of social commentary. Some of his work, such as the
“Girl with a Balloon” stunt is intended to poke fun at social pretense.
Other work has a more serious social purpose. A prime example is a series
of paintings in 2005 on the concrete dividing wall along the West Bank,
depicting a girl floating with a handful of balloons next to a boy with a
ladder. Artists like Banksy challenge “the very nature of [an oppressive]
system in order to shine a light on the plight of those for whom the system
does not work” (p. 103).
Benevolent subversion through art creates disorientation. When done
skillfully it can turn the revulsion and contempt we might feel when
encountering urban graffiti –interpreting it as simply in-your-face van-
dalism –into, instead, an invitation to “question how we define terms like
good, evil, normal, weird, decent, or fair” (p. 106).
French photographer JR creates disorientation in an entirely different way.
Like Banksy, JR began his career as a graffiti artist, but his life changed for-
ever when he picked up an old camera that had been abandoned on a Paris
subway and realized the power of photographs to bring people together,
to create emotional connections between the center and the margins of
society. “[By] using visual arts as a way to communicate solidarity and
unification,” Anu Mitra (2017) writes, “JR forces people to reframe the
parameters of social interrogation and explore alternative ways in which to
make things happen” (p. 112). JR thus seeks to break down stereotypes: “To
change the way you see things is already to change things themselves,” he
is quoted as saying (p. 117).
How does he do this? In conflict-ridden communities all over the world,
“A community issue is identified, solutions are jointly studied and enacted;

Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts 131

art pieces are produced that become the conjoint work of community and
artist; and ongoing reflection on outcomes becomes the focal point that
leads the social conversation to another, more relevant place” (p. 115). In
one of his most famous projects, the Face2Face series in the Middle East,
JR placed photos of Arab and Jewish faces together on the Separation Wall
along the West Bank, identical sets on each side. JR explained his purpose:
Passers-by were invited to guess who was the Israeli and who was the
Palestinian –often they could not tell them apart. By participating, everyone
was showing support to a two-state solution in which Israel and Palestine
could live peacefully within safe and internationally recognized borders …
The project showed that what we call “possible” can change; this artistic
action, which experts had thought impossible, proved that limits can move.
(Quoted in Mitra, 2017, p. 116)
Both Banksy and JR use their art to provoke: Banksy, by pointing out
hypocrisy and pretense; JR, by using his photographs of everyday people
to create connection and solidarity. Their purpose however is the same,
namely to use their art in public space to unsettle, to create disorientation,
to reframe perceptions, and to broaden the possibilities for the kind of
deep learning that can lead to social change.
Intercultural choreographic practice in Palestine. The arts are a gateway to
embodied learning, that is, learning that is not just intellectual but phys-
ical, social, spiritual, and emotional as well –and what could be a more
obvious example than dance? Nicholas Rowe and coauthors Noora Baker
and Ata Khatab (Rowe, Baker, & Khatab, 2017) describe how choreog-
raphy can create a space that bridges cultural divides. “Dance,” they write,
“embodies the diverse sociopolitical contexts in which it is created, ampli-
fying a community’s ideals, norms, and distinctions” (p. 282). Thus,
An intercultural dance forum is a political laboratory. It allows participants to
physically realize relevant new ideas and envisage diverse potential futures.
Through creative dance activities with an Other, the diverse pasts, presents,
and futures of those participating in the experience can be deconstructed
and reimagined. When managed equitably, these forums can inform pol-
itical and cultural directions across the globe. When inequitable, however,
intercultural exchanges can simply extend the oppression of one cultural
group over another. (p. 282, emphasis in original)
The authors all participated in the El-Funoun Popular Dance Troupe, a
nongovernmental arts organization in Palestine, engaging intercultural
activities with artists from around the world. The work of El-Funoun rests
on three fundamentals: the collective generation of ideas, a consensus on

132 Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

how these ideas are to be represented in a joint composition, and a pres-
entation through dance that has broad social significance. A particularly
striking example of how this works was a project called The Shape of Water
(not to be confused with the movie of the same name), a collaboration
of seven artists, from Palestine, Greece, and Brazil, exploring the cultural
perspectives of “occupation and territory.” The rehearsal and perform-
ance took place in an abandoned factory near the segregation wall in the
West Bank:
We spent ten intensive days working with dust, broken glass, and holes
in the structure of the building; the segregation wall in front of us and an
Israeli army jeep watching us like a hawk. During this period we explored
the concept of an active audience, and experimented with objects, light,
and sound to create different images, actions, and stories … Spending eight
hours a day in one space, eating, drinking, speaking, and working physically
together allowed us to bond, break down, and understand our differences;
to become one group, working toward one goal. (p. 290)
Note how this vignette illustrates the ways in which the development of
social capital can lead to deep learning, as I discussed in Chapter 6: the
group has a common bond and sense of shared fate; it has a norm of
equality and openness to the diverse contributions of its members; and
it has a shared sense of both individual and mutual accountability. The
authors acknowledge that this was not easy to do, that ownership of ideas
was not easy to give up. However, “this ownership turned into sharing
slowly and with each of the artists trusting in the process and being curious
about what will develop … For the most part, we put our frustration to
work, to create and to question. It was food for the mind working with
interesting artists” (p. 290)
Using the language of this book, I would suggest that these artists were
able to combine creative conflict with curiosity to produce constructive
disorientation and deep learning, both for themselves and for their even-
tual audience. During the performance the audience was led through a
“ghost factory” and invited to consider that just as “people bring life to
places, so through their absence are they helping [to] kill these places?”
(p. 291).
These three examples of how the separation wall became the object of
activist art shows how art can create three kinds of energy: though provo-
cation (Banksy), imagining (JR), and performance (El Founoun).
ACT UP, organized by AIDS activists in New York City in the late
1980s and 1990s, showed how works of art can move audiences in ways
that arguing and brow-beating could never do. David Edelman (Edelman,

Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts 133

2017), an actor and leader in the gay rights movement and participant in
the early attempts to raise awareness about AIDS, writes:
The history of America’s early response to AIDS was largely written by the
collective anger of a large community of gay artists who were both victims
of the disease and leaders of the movement to fight back. They found their
“ordinary” artistic careers recast in an unexpected and unasked for direction
and changed the world’s response to AIDS. It’s a story of compassion and
heartbreak, of raising fists and raising funds, and waking the public health
establishment and the legislators who provided the funding. (p. 174)
It is also a story about the arts and deep learning –and the limits of per-
suasion through logical argument. One of the leaders was Larry Kramer,
Oscar-nominated director, who founded the Gay Men’s Health Crisis
(GMHC). The early efforts of this group were feeble; and frustrated by
the lack of attention this new crisis was getting from the health author-
ities and the gay community, Kramer published an incendiary manifesto
in 1983 railing against public indifference –and promptly left the country.
By the mid-1980s more collective action began taking hold, with movie
icon Elizabeth Taylor providing a public voice and Broadway performers
collecting money from their audiences. Kramer returned from his self-
imposed exile and produced a largely autobiographical play titled The
Normal Heart, which opened at the Public Theater in New York in April
1985 and ran for nine months. Kramer and other artists had realized that
“they could do as much, if not more, to raise consciousness of AIDS
through their creative work than through polemics alone” (p. 181). Still not
satisfied with the public response, Kramer helped form the street group
ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), described in its charter as a
coalition of “diverse individuals united in anger and committed to direct
action” (p. 183). Edelman describes the “direct action” this way:
Their modus operandi was disruption, at once colorful and confrontational,
and police arrests were not only common but desired. From its founding
in 1987 through the early 2000s, the group would be recognized worldwide
for its particular brand of civil disobedience with branches in cities around
the globe. ACT UP forced the U.S. public health service and the pharma-
ceutical industry to speed up the funding, testing, and approval of new drug
therapies, it helped secure the passage of the Ryan White Comprehensive
AIDS Resources Emergency Act, of other federal laws and regulations
designed to protect the civil rights of persons with AIDS, and it ensured
that PWAs [persons with AIDS] were at the table. (pp. 183–184)
Noteworthy for the purposes of this book, Edelman’s history of the
artists’ activism is in roughly three stages: logical arguments about why

134 Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

“something must be done”; having artists use their public exposure to
stimulate awareness and support for their cause; and using cacophonous
street performances to disturb the status quo, demonstrate strength, and
mobilize political action. It is an almost-perfect marriage of art and pol-
itics, which together have been able to surface both rational and extra-
rational consciousness, to create space for reframing dialogues, and to lead
to deep learning.
Theatre of the Oppressed was developed by Brazilian Augusto Boal in the
late 1960s as an activist response to an oppressive military dictatorship.
His work has since become renowned and copied all over the world as
an example of how the arts can create hope and energy for social change.
Unlike the other artists profiled here, Boal’s intent was less to unsettle
and more to spark a vision of how life could be different. “When con-
flict and oppression seem overwhelming,” practitioner Mecca Burns and
her colleagues write, “drama can offer a sliver of hope, a playful way in,
a pathway of incremental steps. Theatre bridges the actual with the pos-
sible, letting people imagine how tensions and circumstances could be
transformed” (Burns, Beti, & Okuto, 2017). Theatre of the Oppressed
(ToP) is participatory theater and it takes several forms, all of which invite
participants to imagine and embody this “bridging” between the actual
and the ideal. One of these variations is called Image Theatre, where
participants are invited to create a series of frozen poses, beginning with
a representation of the current repressive state, then an image of a poten-
tial ideal state, then a series of intermediate, incremental steps connecting
the two. Perhaps the most famous version of ToP is the Forum, in which
a play is presented that has an oppressive ending, but is then presented
again, this time with the audience encouraged to step in, take over one or
more of the characters, and change the storyline for the better. ToP is often
adapted to the culture and political issues of the community. In Kenya,
it took the form of “Weaving the Rainbow,” bringing together members
of a community terrorized by militia groups with former members of
these groups. “The objective was peace and healing through participatory
theatre, which offered an interactive forum for creative and redemptive
dialogue. Both victims and perpetrators shared painful memories, using
theatre techniques to move toward reconciliation in the region” (p. 197).
Theatre of the Oppressed is designed to raise awareness of oppression
and to stimulate positive energy for change, and is modeled on Paulo
Freire’s (1970) ideas about conscientization. It is an intensely political pro-
cess, and like the other arts-as-activism work profiled here, meant to dis-
turb the social status quo. As Boal (2006) himself put it, “Theater is the

8.1 Art and Politics 135

beginning of a necessary social transformation and not a moment of equi-
librium and repose” (p. 6).

8.1 Art and Politics

Each of the above profiles is an example of the intersection of the arts
and politics –using the arts as a way to stimulate the need for change in
power relationships in society. This chapter has shown how the arts can
contribute to political change by honing in on, and disturbing, emotional
equilibrium. They do this by inviting us to get out of our perceptual fields
for a moment –to appreciate the world differently, empathize with others’
life experience, and through either encounter or expression, to create new
visions of how life should be lived. Recall from the previous chapter the
four ways in which political dynamics can contribute to deep learning;
here is how these are furthered with aesthetics, using examples from the
profiles:
1. Identifying existing systems of power relationships. The arts have the
power to challenge long- standing “truths” about privilege, more
through invitation than exhortation. With the “benevolent subver-
sion” of depicting two children at the Separation Wall, their inno-
cence in the face of ugliness, Banksy invites us to confront the Wall as
a symbol of oppression.
2. Surfacing unconscious assumptions. The arts also have the power to bring
to our consciousness the mental models we have that stand in the way
of our learning. With his juxtaposition of Arab and Israeli faces on the
Separation Wall, JR forces us to acknowledge and confront the stereo-
types we have of “the Other.” The El-Funoun Popular Dance Troupe
dismantled cultural stereotypes as well, doing the hard work of taking
diverse cultural traditions and creating something new and powerful
through performance.
3. Cultivating the art of speaking truth to power. The arts can speak truth
to power without engaging in overt persuasion or debate; and as the
organizers of ACT UP learned, skillful grassroots organizing followed
by artistic expression can develop the political capital necessary to get
the attention and eventual action of the powers that be.
4. Developing forms of procedural justice. The arts can invite us into a space
where we experience, not just the outcomes of systematic discrimin-
ation but also the processes that bring these outcomes about. One of the
great virtues of Theatre of the Oppressed is how it invites participants

136 Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

Figure 8.1 World War II poster

Source: Image courtesy of PublicDomainPictures, Pixabay.

not only to experience the pain of everyday unfairness but also to create
scenarios for how life might be different.
I should pause here in my praise of aesthetic experience to acknowledge
that the power of art in politics can cut both ways. Art can disturb the emo-
tional equilibrium so as to create empathy for the other; it can also have
the opposite effect, rallying a community around a cause, in both positive
and negative ways. Consider the US war poster in Figure 8.1, depicting the
iconic figure “Rosie the Riveter.” This is a positive image that promotes
pride and seeks to inspire patriotism. Other war posters were designed to
inspire hated and xenophobia. One of the milder versions of these depicts
Uncle Sam rolling up his sleeves after the surrender of the Axis Powers,
saying, “OK Jap, you’re next!”
Perhaps more than any other artist in recent memory, Leni Riefenstahl
is an example of how artistic talent can be used in the service of dema-
goguery. A gifted German cinematographer, Riefenstahl directed the
notorious Nazi film Triumph of the Will. As reviewer David Davis
(2003) noted, “Alternating between stark close-ups and panoramic shots,
Riefenstahl glorified Hitler’s orations and his sycophantic audience of

8.2 Aesthetics as a Pathway to Deep Learning 137

brown-shirt-clad storm troopers. Indeed, ‘Triumph’ presented Nazism
in all of its horrific intensity, earning Riefenstahl the nickname ‘Hitler’s
filmmaker.’ ” The film became a demagogic instrument for an evil cause,
even though Reifenstahl always insisted that it was nothing more than a
straightforward documentary.
So, when is art a stimulus for deep learning and when is it a propaganda
tool? The answer lies in how the emotional response is constructed by the
viewer. Does the art provide comfort, a sense of belonging and commu-
nity, and reinforce existing values? Or does it create disquiet, inviting one
to question these values? Consider the “Rosie” poster (Figure 8.1) for a
moment. It could do both, depending on the viewer. To women called out
of their homes to work in the factories, it could have a galvanizing effect;
to men used to seeing women in stereotypical gender roles, it could lead to
constructive disorientation.

8.2 Aesthetics as a Pathway to Deep Learning

When it comes to deep learning, art is not –to use several food metaphors –
just a condiment, a spice, an icing on the cake. The arts can be an inde-
pendent, if complementary, pathway to constructive disorientation and
deep learning. Let me return to the criteria for constructive disorienta-
tion I laid out in Chapter 4. Recall that in order to achieve a state of
constructive disorientation one must be confronted with an experience
that creates a disturbance, and is perceived as a disturbance. If one makes
meaning of that disturbance in a way that s/he feels encouraged to follow
it and not ignore it or escape from it, then the disorientation is potentially
constructive. The potential is most likely to lead to a positive outcome
when the following apply:
A situation requiring adaptive learning, defined as a gap between the
values people stand for and the reality that they face, coupled with an
awareness that existing perspectives will not lead to a resolution. Given
what we know about the insidious influence of cognitive bias, leaving
one’s own comfort zone and coming to this awareness can be very difficult.
Artists make raising consciousness easier by inviting people to give license
to their creative imagination, at low personal risk.
The presence of intrinsic motivation, a combination of autonomy, efficacy,
and relatedness. We humans are hard-wired to be intensely curious about
and to have control over our internal and external worlds. We will respond
to adaptive learning challenges when, and only when, we are intrinsically
motivated. The arts are capable of stimulating all three aspects of intrinsic

138 Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

Figure 8.2 The deep learning mindset with aesthetic experience added

motivation (autonomy, efficacy, and relatedness). By inviting others into

a different cognitive and emotional space, artists create an atmosphere of
encouragement, often subliminally. “Here,” they say, “experience this with
me” – and whether the experience is through encounter or expression,
those invited have autonomous choices. Because artistic experience invites
a vision of how things could be different – the essence of conscientization
(Freire, 1970) – one is empowered to imagine how things could be different
and thus experience efficacy. Finally, the empathic field created through
artistic expression surmounts cultural boundaries and promotes belonging,
connection, and community.
In Chapter 5 I introduced the diagram of the deep learning mindset
(Figure 5.2). I suggested that constructive disorientation could come from
both disorienting dilemmas (experiences that do not make sense to us
and are not resolvable without some change in our views of the world)
and mindful learning (the integration of conscious, instrumental learning
with intuitive and embodied learning). In Chapter 6 I added the social
learning field (Figure 6.1), showing how deep learning is enriched through
discourse with others and the wise use of politics. Given the importance of
aesthetic experience to deep learning, another element to the model must
now be added (see Figure 8.2).

Notes 139
Aesthetic experience, as we’ve seen, can by itself lead to constructive dis-
orientation, as when we enter an empathic field through someone else’s
lived experience. Or it can produce a disorienting dilemma, as when a par-
ticularly provocative piece of street art knocks us off balance and challenges
our assumptions and sense of what is right or true. Art can shake our world
up, sometimes violently; and art can help put it back together. Aesthetic
experience can also enrich mindful learning, as we begin to appreciate
John Dewey’s point that art, and potentially aesthetic experience, is all
around us, every day.

Notes
1 Dewey dedicated the book to his friend Barnes.
2 In the Deweyan sense, learning as transaction between a person and his/her
environment.
3 Defined broadly as any form of creative expression, including visual, literary,
movement, and theatrical arts.
4 Sherif and Hovland (1961) anticipated the power of the media to effect attitude
change more than a half-century ago.
5 Words and music by J. B. Lenoir. Copyright 2007 Arc Music Corp. All rights
administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. All rights reserved.
Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
6 “Banksy Shredding the ‘Girl With a Balloon’ Video,” hypebeast.com, retrieved
October 21, 2018.

Ch apter 9

The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

Lao Tzu
Throughout this book I have alluded to the importance of tension for deep
learning. Recall that John Dewey (1934) wrote about an interruption in
homeostasis as the basis of individual growth, Lev Vygotsky (1978) stressed
the importance of creating “zones of proximal development,” and Mihalyi
Csikszentmihalyi (1990) described flow states, optimal for learning, as
the tension between challenge and competence. Peter Senge (2006) and
Ron Heifetz (2009) emphasize the importance of “creative tension” and
a “productive zone of disorientation,” respectively, for organizational
growth. Underlying all of these are what I call “essential tensions.” Tension
is a requisite outcome of our innate curiosity to know our world, and
maintaining this essential tension is an art.
An art? How so? Consider what artists do: they “work with the tension
of innovation and tradition –as well as other tensions, such as random-
ness and rigidity, and the impulses of the individual and the imperatives
of collectives –to construct forms that enliven but do not overwhelm the
perceptual capacities of their audiences” (Cohen, 2006, p. 72). It is not
much of a stretch to imagine how this works in contexts outside the arts.
For example, those who are good at managing conflict may look to create
an “optimal tension,” which Coleman and Deutsch (2014) define as
a state in which there is not too little tension regarding the problem being
faced in a conflict (where the disputants are not sufficiently motivated to
deal with the issues and conflict remains unresolved) or too much tension
(which can lead to conflict avoidance because it is so threatening, or conflict
escalation as the tension limits one to an oversimplified black-and-white
perception of the issues). (p. 485)
Managing tension is more than just a highly developed skill; it also
requires a certain kind of artistry in the form of having just the right
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141

9.1 Intuition and Deliberation 141

combination of intuition and mindfulness in the moment in order to main-
tain the tension at an optimal level.
In this chapter I suggest that creating the conditions for constructive
disorientation and deep learning require the intentional management of
certain essential tensions –tensions that cannot easily be resolved, and
in fact should not be. These tensions are in the form of paradoxes, those
conflicting values and purposes we need to hold onto without choosing
among them. A good example is Csikszentmihalyi’s (1970) depiction of
flow as the optimal tension between two competing human needs, namely
for challenge and support. We need both but they conflict. We need
challenge in order to grow; but a challenge is by definition something
that is beyond our current competence. Managing this essential tension
means being able to hold these values in optimal balance. When they
are out of balance no meaningful learning occurs: too much challenge
creates debilitating anxiety and too little challenge leads to boredom and
distraction.
The artful balancing of challenge and support is essential to deep
learning; but as I pointed out in Chapter 4, it is not sufficient. A mindful
orientation to deep learning requires attention to other essential tensions,
not just the balance of challenge and support. I explore some of these
below.

9.1 Intuition and Deliberation

Intuition and deliberation1 is Daniel Kahneman’s (2011) distinction between
“thinking fast” and “thinking slow.” We have evolved as humans the ability
to make quick, intuitive responses to stimuli. A physician usually knows
what is likely wrong with a patient after a quick examination; a motorist
hits the brakes when another car squeezes in front of him on a crowded
freeway; a worried spouse knows when something is bothering her partner.
Intuitive responses are key to survival and thriving. But as we have seen,
an overreliance on intuition, the easy, fast-thinking response to a stimulus,
can fall prey to a host of cognitive biases. Mindful learning of the sort
I discussed in Chapter 3 can help us recognize those occasions when our
intuition is likely to lead us astray, and allow deliberation, in the form of
critical reflection on experience, to kick in. For example, skillful clinicians
teach their medical students, mostly through modeling, how to employ
handy heuristics to cut through all of the diagnostic possibilities; but they
also emphasize how to be alert to so-called “zebras” –those rare outliers
that can fool the unsuspecting novice into thinking that they are looking

142 The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

at “horses.”2 Motorists are angry about being cut off on the highway but
mostly resist the temptation to retaliate. Worried spouses may have some
intuitive theories about their partners’ distress, but talk with them about
it before jumping to conclusions. Mindful learning manages the tension
between intuition and deliberation by accepting intuition as containing
useful clues to the appropriate response, but also realizing that intuitive
behavior is always a function of previous experience, which, therefore, may
or may not be useful in the present moment.
The center and the edge: curiosity and reflection; risk and consolidation; dis-
covery and conservation; disruption and order; interaction and continuity;
complexity and coherence; differentiation and integration; boundaries and
communities.

These eight tensions all relate to the same general paradox: how do we
deal with two opposing forces, one pushing us to the edge, the other
bringing us back? We are innately curious beings, but reflection on experi-
ence is what gives meaning to that experience. Critical reflection puts our
worldviews at risk, so we need to pull back and consolidate new know-
ledge perspectives with the old. We are driven to discover, but we also
must conserve our resources, responding to what Csikszentmihalyi (1997)
calls the “effort imperative.” Disruption in our perceptual space is neces-
sary for constructive disorientation, but we must do something with that
disruption to return to homeostasis. We need to be able to recognize and
appreciate the infinite complexity of our world, but to survive, both phys-
ically and emotionally, we have to make meaning of that complexity. These
tensions between centrifugal and centripetal forces –going to the margins
and coming back to the center –are key to our understanding and man-
agement of constructive disorientation.
Whereas complexity/coherence is an essential tension at an individual
level, differentiation/integration is an essential tension at the organiza-
tional level. My colleague Laurien Alexandre and I recently published a
book chapter entitled, “Differentiation and Integration: Managing the
Paradox in Doctoral Education” (Wergin & Alexandre, 2016). In it we
cite a seminal article written by Lawrence and Lorsch more than 50 years
ago (1967), in which the authors wrote about how to deal with the differ-
entiation/integration paradox. Working from the principle that effective
performance of an organization depends on its ability to interact with,
and adapt to, a changing environment, the authors found that high-
performing organizations were able to optimize two seemingly antagon-
istic pulls, segmentation (differentiation) and unity of effort (integration).

9.1 Intuition and Deliberation 143

Such organizations were able to do this by employing several “integrative
devices,” including:
1. An intentional balancing of interests that allowed for an “interpersonal
orientation.”
2. A focus on professional expertise rather than blind adherence to hier-
archical authority.
3. A concern with organizational performance rather than just individual
achievement.
4. Perceived “high influence” throughout the organization rather than a
concentration of power at the top.
5. Influence and decision-making centered at the “requisite level.”
6. Modes of conflict resolution that recognize conflict among units as
normal, even critical for organizational health and growth.
Note the resonance of these “integrative devices” with many of the
themes touched upon in this book, especially those having to do with
creating an adaptive challenge, facilitating social discourse, and paying
explicit attention to politics.
In his work on social learning systems and communities of practice,
Etienne Wenger writes about the tension between communities and
their boundaries. “Deep expertise,” he writes, “depends on a convergence
between experience and competence, but innovative learning requires
their divergence. In either case, you need strong competences to anchor
the process. But these competences also need to interact. The learning and
innovation potential of a social learning system lies in its configuration
of strong core practices and active boundary processes” (Wenger, 2000,
p. 234). According to Wenger, achieving a generative tension between the
two requires that four conditions be met: “some intersection of interest,”
“open engagement with real differences as well as common ground,”
“commitment to suspend judgment,” and ways to find a common dis-
course “so that experience and competence actually interact” (p. 233). Note
the convergence here between Wenger’s principles and the keys to deep
learning through discourse that I discussed in Chapter 6.
Philosopher Robert Nisbet (1983) argues that great periods of
achievement in history feature forces in tension with one another, such
as new ideas pitched against settled wisdom, leading to what he calls “the
blaze of creativity.” This is a classic dialectic process –thesis tussling with
antithesis, resulting in synthesis –which then becomes a more complex
thesis. The synthesis is a victory for neither conventional thinking nor
new ideas but an integration of the two, a reinvention of the old that

144 The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

incorporates the new. Here is an everyday example. My wife often chides
me for complaining about things I cannot control, such as the weather.
I realize that she is right, of course, but I still do not enjoy cold, wet, and
gloomy days. However, I make the best of it in cold weather by sitting
in front of the fire sipping a nice winter cocktail. My complaining is
the thesis; my wife’s response is the antithesis; and my adaptation is the
synthesis.

9.2 The Self and the Other: Independence and

Connection and Community
Managing these tensions is fundamental to our development as adults.
Recall that psychologist Robert Kegan (1982) sees development as a
dynamic struggle between independence and connection –between the
need for autonomy and the need for acceptance by important others.
These are always in conflict and in a state of “fundamental alteration,”
first one becoming dominant and then the other. As they shift back and
forth, independence and connection become integrated into an increas-
ingly complex self, again a dialectic process.
The second essential tension in this group –diversity/community –
relates to both individuals and organizations. As instinctively communal
animals, humans seek community with others, safe spaces where they feel
accepted and nurtured and understood. But communities can become
insular, a possibility more insidious in an age of social media and cable
news. Taken to an extreme, identification with particular communities
becomes a petri dish for cognitive bias, breeding tribalism and xenophobia.
Disorientation requires challenges to one’s worldview, and this cannot
happen in an echo chamber. Simply injecting diversity into a community
will not by itself reform meaning-making, and can even backfire, as we
have seen countless times, sadly, with efforts to racially integrate schools
and other social institutions. This is why community and diversity exist in
a state of tension: Social capital in groups is enhanced by having a diversity
of perspectives, but only when the “empathic field” (Yorks & Kasl, 2006)
is broad enough to admit them. One of the ways to open up this empathic
field, as I indicated in the last chapter, is through the use of artistic engage-
ment. The art of managing this tension is the ability to engage in dis-
course in ways that produce constructive disorientation: using difference
to spark curiosity without leaning too far toward total identification with
another person or group, at one extreme, or finding no common ground,
at the other.

9.3 Dialectical Thinking 145

9.3 Dialectical Thinking

As I have implied above, the way to manage essential tensions is through
dialectical thinking. The word “dialectic” stems from the compound
Greek word dialektikos, meaning discourse or discussion (Grossman,
2018). Philosophers through the ages have extolled the virtues of dialect-
ical thinking. Probably the most famous of these is Socrates, the archetypal
questioner who, by asking questions of others, then exposed contradictions
in their answers. He does this not to demonstrate his own wisdom, which
he professes not to have, but to show the wisdom in not knowing. “He
seems to be the only one around who lacks epistemic self-reliance,” writes
Tommi Hanhijärvi (2015). “He is the only one who asks, while everyone
else is just answering. Everyone else is preaching so much that they can’t
hear each other. Only Socrates listens. Herein is his wisdom” (p. 33).
Note how Socrates seeks to induce constructive disorientation: by asking
questions of people who then try to answer them, he uncovers their core
beliefs; when these are exposed, he asks whether these beliefs should be
true in all cases, using phrases like “what if?” or “what about?” The goal
is to shed one’s illusions, and only when this is done is someone capable
of achieving noble goals. Note also the importance Socrates attaches to
dialogue, not just as a means of expression, but, more importantly, in the
power of dialogue as a means to self-revelation.
The classic Greek philosophers (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), and the
more recent Western European ones, including Kant, Hegel, and Marx,
all viewed dialectical thinking as primarily analytical, linear, and rational.
For Socrates, the process leads to a freeing of the mind; for Kant, it leads
to the ability to make ethical decisions; for Hegel, it consists of finding
contradictions in the concrete examples of abstractions; and for Marx, the
dialectic is all about uncovering the social contradictions between produ-
cers and holders of wealth. In each case, dialectical thought consists of a
starting point (the thesis), which generates an opposing idea (the antith-
esis), leading to a compromise or resolution (the synthesis).3 Classical East
Asian philosophy (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism), has had a much
different view of dialectical thinking, less dependent on rationality than on
spiritual balance: change is cyclical rather than linear, contradiction is nat-
ural and inevitable rather than a state requiring resolution, and “all objects,
people, systems, or ideas are invariably interconnected,” rather than cap-
able of analysis by themselves (Spencer-Rogers, Anderson, Ma-Kellams,
Wang, & Peng, 2018, p. 3). For me, some of the best examples of East Asian
philosophy reside in the teachings of Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching

146 The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

(or Book of the Way), written in the sixth century BC. The Tao is about the
art of living, achieved by following a path of contentment and balance.
Here is an example from the Tao, Chapter 2:
When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good, other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.
Therefore the Master acts without doing anything and teaches without
saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
Things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but does not possess, acts but does not expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever. (Lao Tzu, 1988, chapter 2)

In this chapter I am using dialectical thinking in the East Asian sense: that
holding the essential tensions described above requires us to accept and
be comfortable with contradictory ways of thinking and feeling without
being compelled to resolve the contradictions.
One rather simple way to think about dialectical thinking is to imagine
three cognitive conditions: absolutist, that reality is fixed and unchanging,
including natural laws and human qualities (think: IQ tests and trait the-
ories of leadership); relativistic, that everything is contextual, and that all
knowledge is subjective; and dialectic, that both of these apparent polar
opposites are true (Kramer & Melchoir, 1990). While acknowledging that
phenomena are ever-changing and contradictory, the dialectic thinker
also recognizes the need for sense-making and good judgment in zones of
uncertainty.
This view of dialectical thinking resonates with much of what we know
about the keys to deep learning, going all the way back to the early chapters
of this book. Both absolutist and relativist ways of thinking keep us from
engaging in the sort of critical reflection that leads to honest assessment of
our beliefs and prejudices. Absolutist thinkers will resist challenges to what
to them are obvious truths, reinforced by myside bias; relativist thinkers
will shrug off diverse ways of thinking and knowing as, in the extreme,
“alternative facts”: you see it your way and I see it mine. Neither mindset
will lead to constructive disorientation –unless the person is hit with a
particularly unsettling disorienting dilemma. For example, an absolutist,

9.3 Dialectical Thinking 147

dualistic thinker believes that homosexual behavior in any form is abhor-
rent and wrong –and then discovers that his beloved sister is gay. Or a rela-
tivist thinker is forced to make a painful and irrevocable moral judgment
such as approving a “do not resuscitate order” for a mortally ill parent. The
point is that both absolutist and relativistic thinking provide seemingly
safe and complacent spaces, retarding the kind of constructive disorienta-
tion that can lead to deep learning.
Here is how dialectical thinking relates to managing essential tensions:
“Dialectical thinking can be seen as the logic of paradox and the recogni-
tion that uncertainty and the limits of knowledge frame human existence
and force resolution of seemingly irresolvable dilemmas” (Bassett, 2006,
p. 299). Dialectical thinking, therefore, is two things at once: it recognizes
the complexity of the world around us and, at the same time, acknow-
ledges our lack of capacity as humans to understand that complexity.4 Our
developmental task is to achieve increasingly complex levels of synthesis,
knowing that pure understanding will always be elusive.
Writings on dialectical thought can be maddeningly abstract, obscure,
and (dare I say) contradictory, so I will try here to cut through the fog by
suggesting how dialectical thinking can help us hold essential tensions and
keep open the pathways to constructive disorientation and deep learning.
First, it is helpful to distinguish dialectical thinking from other forms of
thought. As I noted earlier, it is seen by most modern scholars as a more
advanced level of adult cognitive development. Classical cognitive devel-
opment theory, stemming from Jean Piaget’s seminal work (1954), holds
that the apex of cognitive development is the so-called “formal operations”
stage, where one learns to think in terms of abstract concepts and logic.
This normally takes place in adolescence. After that, cognitive development
is a matter of refining these skills. Hardly anyone in the world of devel-
opmental psychology holds to that view anymore; instead, the dominant
belief is that adults develop various forms of “post-formal” thought (or
the various forms of “post-conventional” thinking described in Chapter 3).
For example, psychologist and psychotherapist Michael Basseches (2005)
asserts that while “formal operational thinking as described by Piaget can
be understood as efforts at comprehension that rely on the application of a
model of a closed system of lawful relationships to the phenomenal world”
(p. 51), formal logic is simply insufficient to address ill-defined, open-ended
problems. Basseches’ view is joined by many others,5 all of whom assert
that in order to succeed in both one’s personal and professional life, other,
higher-order mental capacities are needed, one of which is the ability to
think dialectically. This view is supported by empirical research showing

148 The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

that dialectical thinking is linked to coping ability and reduction of anx-
iety in stressful situations (Cheng, 2009), the strengthening of intrinsic
motivation (Li, Sheldon, & Liu, 2015), and, unsurprisingly, the ability to
manage conflict (Bai, Harms, Han, & Cheng, 2015).
The penchant for thinking dialectically appears to be strongly correlated
with age.6 It is one of the few, if not only, cognitive skills that does not
diminish noticeably in the sixties and seventies. As short-term memory
and the ability to reason symbolically decline during these years, our ability
to think in dialectic terms remains fairly constant, and for some, actually
increases (Baltes & Staudinger, 2000).
Naturally, different scholars view dialectical thinking through varying
lenses: some see it as the ability to deal with the complexities of modern
life, one of the markers of wisdom; some as the ability to integrate formal
learning with tacit knowledge; some as a constant struggle between dis-
harmony and synchrony; some as the complex interplay between emo-
tional and intellectual capacity. Further, some scholars view dialectical
thinking as a higher developmental stage, while others see it as a parallel,
complementary ability. All of these theoretical perspectives have empirical
evidence to back them up, which to me only indicates that post-formal
theorizing is itself in its adolescent stage of development.
Klaus Riegel (1973) was one of the first to propose a theoretical model
of development in later life with dialecticism as its signature feature.
Riegel’s argument was that, whereas the tasks in early adulthood are largely
matters of solving problems, as we get older we begin to understand that
what may be experienced as a contradiction between, for example, intui-
tive and deliberate thinking, is completely natural, and one does not have
to overrule the other. “The individual does not necessarily equilibrate
these conflicts,” he wrote, “but is ready to live with these contradictions;
stronger yet, the individual accepts these contradictions as a basic prop-
erty of thought and creativity” (p. 366). Gisela Labouvie-Vief (1990) calls
this a tension between logos and mythos, ancient Greek terms for thinking
that is, on the one hand, logical, rational, and analytic, versus thinking
that stems from sensation, emotion, and imagination. She writes, “Logos
thinking is aimed at the removal of variation, at stability and reliability.
Mythos thinking, on the other hand, seizes the novel and leaps out of the
constraints of analytical precision. It disturbs the control and stability that
are logos’ ideal, but it is also an important source of innovation and cre-
ativity” (p. 44).
Riegel (1976) makes an interesting connection between dialectical
thinking and aesthetic activity:

9.3 Dialectical Thinking 149

Development requires a delicate synchronization between progressions
along different dimensions. In this sense a dialectical interpretation of
human development is comparable to orchestral compositions. If there
were only two instruments in an orchestra and if both were always playing
in unison, they would merely increase the sound volume of the melody …
Classical music allows the different instruments to vary the theme but
retains synchrony through its emphasis on harmony. Modern music
produces deviations through disharmonies but retains synchrony through
rhythm and beat. Only random alignments create sounds that have neither
temporal patterns nor synchronies. They represent music as inappropriately
as a series of uncoordinated progressions would represent human develop-
ment. (p. 69)
Classical music offers an even clearer example of the dialectic in the con-
certo. Contrary to common belief, a concerto is not about “harmony,”
even though the players are acting “in concert.” Instead, the term con-
certo is Italian, probably a compound of two Latin words: conserere (to
weave) and certamen (competition). Thus, in a concerto the soloist and the
orchestra alternate between moments of independence, opposition, and
cooperation –a classic dialectic.7
While Riegel saw dialectical thinking as a property of more com-
plex cognitive development, Michael Basseches (1984) went further and
suggested that dialectical thinking is itself a transformative process. Similar
to Kegan’s (1982) notion of development as a sort of spiral, alternating
between focusing on the self and the nonself, Basseches views develop-
ment as a series of transformations in habitual thinking. His 1984 book,
Dialectical Thinking and Adult Development, contains some limited empir-
ical support for his hierarchical model, placing dialectical thinking as a sign
of development.8 More recent research provides stronger evidence for this
(Grossman, 2018). The problem is that, depending on the cultural context,
dialectical thinking can develop independently of the ability to engage in
formal logic. For example, people in East Asian cultures are more prone to
use dialectical thinking, and at younger ages, than are Westerners (Kim &
Markman, 2013). So, as Eeva Kallio (2011) writes, “If contradictory, open-
system and ill-defined problem-based thinking is already possible in some
forms in earlier development, why is it necessary to suppose it also to
be the stage after formal operations? It seems more reasonable to assume
two separate lines (causal and dialectical) of development parallel to each
other” (p. 795).
Most scholars now also agree that, whether its development is hierarch-
ical or parallel, dialectical thinking is required to deal with “the mental
demands of modern life,” as Kegan (1994) put it. By integrating theoretical

150 The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

knowledge with practical expertise, one is able to make judgments in com-
plex, contradictory situations. The personal and professional demands
of modern life inevitably create emotional distress, and, according to
Labouvie-Vief (2003), the ability to tolerate this tension is a mark of
the healthy psyche in adulthood. Doing so is made more difficult, she
contends, by the Western culture’s prizing of intellectual capacity at the
expense of more “childlike” imagination and emotional expression. In a
recent book Labouvie-Vief (2015) integrates her research with the neuro-
science literature to show how managing the tension between cognitive
and emotional development is the key to optimal functioning: how well
we do this, she writes, depends on how well we are able to manage increas-
ingly complex relationships with others.
An emerging consensus is thus taking shape: If adults are to deal suc-
cessfully with disturbances to homeostasis and progress to a more autono-
mous self, they need to acquire the ability to reduce their reliance on
socialized norms while not discarding them entirely. Recall that according
to self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), autonomy is more than
simply the freedom to do whatever one wants, and relatedness is more
than feeling accepted by others, but rather the sense also that one is con-
tributing in unique ways to the greater good. This notion of one’s self as
part of a larger whole, unity within relationship, is very much in accord
with East Asian dialectical thought, as well as with the Zulu notion of
Ubuntu in South Africa, meaning that a person is a person through other
people (Ifejika, 2006).
In summary, the dialectic view of adult development, beginning in
the 1970s as developmental psychology’s crazy uncle,9 has matured con-
siderably since then: dialectics is now a respected member of the family,
full of creative ideas and interesting research. And more to the point
of this book, understanding how adults learn to think this way is the
key to appreciating the art and the power of maintaining life’s essential
tensions.
Just how to develop a dialectic cognitive style, however, is as yet unclear
(Grossman, 2018), and more’s the pity. If I have successfully made the case
that deep learning is increasingly important –and increasingly difficult –
in the modern world, then devising means of advancing it is increasingly
urgent. Here is one of many possible illustrations. On the occasion of the
death in late 2018 of conservative former US president George H. W. Bush,
many American liberals were aghast that any of them would offer flattering
comments meant to honor his memory. New York Times columnist Frank
Bruni wrote that this demonstrates what he called “the transcendent curse

9.3 Dialectical Thinking 151

Figure 9.1 The deep learning mindset, complete

of these tribal times: Americans’ diminishing ability to hold two thoughts

at once” (Bruni, 2018). “Too many of us tend to interpret events, polit-
ical figures and issues in all-or-nothing, allies-or-enemies, black-and-white
terms, blind to shades of gray,” he continued. “We like our villains without
redemption and our heroes without blemish, and we frequently assign
those roles in overly strict alignment with our ideology.”
I am persuaded by the available research that developing both the ability
and, more important, the disposition for dialectical thinking is a necessary
condition for the sort of mindful learning that can lead to deep learning.
Yes, learning that is transformative is possible through other means, such
as experiencing a disorienting dilemma. But because dialectical thinking
is neither natural nor inevitable,10 deep learning as a way of being depends
on the ability to manage essential tensions in dialectical terms as part of
mindful learning.
The disposition to use dialectical thinking thus completes the model of
the deep learning mindset (Figure 9.1).

9.3.1 Can One Develop Dialectic Thinking as a Disposition?

Clearly, given the relative scarcity of dialecticism as a state of mind in
adults, we cannot count on gaining this ability simply as a function of
age, or even as a function of one’s experiences and environment, at least

152 The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

in Western cultures. Despite the now-abundant research and theorizing
about the nature and value of dialectical thinking, there is an almost com-
plete absence of literature on how this way of viewing the world can be
helped to evolve. Michael Basseches (1984) pointed the way back in the
early 1980s with an interview-based tool to measure cognitive complexity;
but neither he nor others with similar theoretical views, have risen to the
challenge of taking the next step, namely, using assessment for develop-
mental purposes.
The lack of attention to a quality so useful, indeed necessary, for thriving
in a world of complexity is surprising, to put it mildly. In this section
I depart from the principle I have used throughout this book of basing
every suggestion for enhancing deep learning on solid empirical research
and theory, and go beyond research evidence to speculate on what a devel-
opmental model for dialectical thinking might look like. This discussion
is based on groundbreaking work on cognitive complexity by my former
student Iva Vurdejla (2011).
Vurdelja adapted Basseches’ (1984) tools for measuring complex
“thought forms” into a simpler (but still complicated!) interview protocol
and scoring system, based on four major elements of dialectical thinking:
• Context: The ability to understand the structure of the current system or
organization (the thesis).
• Process: The ability to recognize what is emerging in the system that is
disturbing the context, including where the disturbance is coming from,
and reframing interpretations of the past (the antithesis).
• Relationships: The ability to create space that will bring previously sep-
arate elements together, making synthesis possible.
• Transformation: The ability to orchestrate synthesis of the previous three
elements into an organizational symmetry.
She used this new approach to assess the propensity for dialectic thinking
in a group of leaders shepherding organizational change, and found that
while all of them exhibited dialectical thinking, each had a distinct pattern
of strong and weak elements. Simply sharing her findings with individual
participants seemed itself to have a developmental impact, as they were
able to see where they might take advantage of their strengths and shore
up their weaknesses.
So how then might this process be helped along? Translating the above
four elements into solid pedagogy is a work in progress, but developing
and strengthening two distinct predispositions would be a good start.
I explore these below.

9.3 Dialectical Thinking 153

First is accepting the reality that learning itself is a paradox. Learning is
based on past experiences, which are used to direct future behavior; but
the past can be a poor predictor of what is needed to cope with the future,
and often gets in the way of that coping. It is not that we always have to
“unlearn” mental models, as some would argue.11 We do not delete our
mental models but rather detach from them, modify and rearrange them,
while at the same time guarding ourselves against letting new meanings
take us away from the person we are and want to be (Grisold & Kaiser,
2017). Dialectic learners value their learning and understand the limits of
projecting from the past into the future. Here is an example of this kind
of nuanced thinking. Grisold and Kaiser (2017) make a useful distinction
between a goal and an intention: “While a goal specifies a concrete end
state, which is dependent on expectations and thus is hindering, we must
have an intention to drop familiar and proven routines and practices and
embrace states of disequilibrium … An intention provides motivation to
search and find something but it does not specify what this something is”
(p. 46, emphasis in original). In other words, both people and organizations
can be prisoners of stated goals if they do not realize how inadequate they
can be as statements of the possible. Intentions, on the other hand, rec-
ognize the limitations of projecting from the past. A dialectic thinker and
leader grasps this distinction, knowing that one can both understand the
limits of planning and appreciate the potential of aspirations.
Understanding and appreciating the learning paradox can be taught.
Abundant evidence exists that coaching and/or mindfulness training can
help others become more critically reflective on experience; and here the
focus would be on assisting others to reflect on the usefulness of past
experience as a guide to future behavior. The simplest of questions can
stimulate useful reflection on mindless routine: What am I doing? Why
am I doing it that way?
But sometimes critical reflection will not be enough. Sometimes
answering the “why am I doing it that way” question will lead to aspirations
that, try as we might, we seem incapable of reaching. Kegan and Lahey’s
(2009) ideas on immunity to change (ITC) can help break the logjam.
During my mid-to late career I did a lot of consulting with colleges and
universities on how to encourage transformative change. In a typical work-
shop (say, with a group of academic departments) I would ask participants
to generate two lists, one for the resources supporting quality work, the
other for the barriers to quality work. I would then ask them to generate
some ideas about how to reduce the strength of the barriers, based on
the notion that progress is more likely to be helped along by weakening

154 The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

barriers than by strengthening supports. We would then discuss ways of
evaluating the feasibility of their ideas and devising means of putting the
most promising ones into practice. It was all very logical. The problem
was that most often, nothing much changed after I left the campus. ITC
helped me to understand why: deeply embedded and largely unconscious
immunities to change in the form of what Kegan and Lahey call “com-
peting commitments” got in the way of the best of intentions. For example,
an organizational unit might have an honest and firm commitment to
becoming more ethnically diverse. It develops and implements outreach
strategies to attract more people of color to apply for available jobs –but
still diversity does not improve. One reason could be that the unit might
also have a commitment to hiring the “best qualified” person for the job.
Because “best qualified” is often synonymous with “most privileged,” the
unit hires the White candidate because he or she has more impressive
credentials –at least by the conventional meaning of “impressive,” which
is inextricably entangled with mainstream cultural attributes. (Similar
scenarios might apply to units characterized by lack of gender diversity.)
In sum, the paradox of learning is this: while the sole purpose of learning
is to help us use the past to help with the future, past experience may not
be all that useful and may even be what John Dewey ([1938] 1997) called
“mis-educative.” Dialectical thinking helps us hold this paradox: it keeps us
from projecting experience mindlessly into the future, at one extreme, or
ignoring experience altogether, at the other. Critical reflection on experi-
ence is not a natural state for humans, but as I have shown throughout this
book, it can be learned, and can prepare us for thinking dialectically.
Appreciating the learning paradox leads to the other key disposition
critical to dialectical thinking: knowing when it is needed. A dialectical
thinker recognizes the difference between complicated problems requiring
only formal logic and technical solutions, and complex situations calling for
adaptive learning and dialectical thinking. For example, landing men on the
moon and bringing them home safely was an extraordinarily complicated
problem, requiring equally extraordinary feats of engineering. But in April
1970 a complicated problem became a complex situation when an oxygen
tank exploded during the Apollo 13 mission. Flight engineers had to devise
a way to keep the crew alive and bring them back to earth with only make-
shift materials and limited power, which thankfully they were able to do
(Lovell & Kluger, 2006).
Dealing successfully with complex situations requires a deep
understanding of one’s current environment as a system of inter-
relationships, and the ability to discover the causes of recurrent patterns.

9.3 Dialectical Thinking 155

This is Brazilian philosopher Moacir Gadotti’s (1996) first principle of
dialectics, namely that everything is related, that everything has something
to do with everything else. He writes: “For dialectics, nature is presented
as a coherent whole in which objects and phenomena are related to each
other, reciprocally conditioning each other. The dialectic method takes this
reciprocal action into account and examines objects and phenomena in
an attempt to understand them in a concrete totality” (p. 18). Doing this
requires gaining some distance from the patterns, what Ron Heifetz calls
“getting on the balcony” (Heifetz et al., 2009, p. 7). Otherwise, as Peter
Senge (2006) notes, “structures of which we are unaware hold us prisoner”
(p. 93). Gaining a systems perspective requires that while standing on the
“balcony” we look at the reality below, first by identifying discrete events,
then by recognizing patterns of behavior over time, and then by observing
how these patterns form an underlying structure (Kreutzer, 1995). One of
the barriers to deep learning is failing to go beyond the first step, reacting
to individual events as if they had no relationship with each other, and
resorting to short-term fixes. These may afford some immediate relief but
will probably not resolve the underlying system problem. For example,
taking cold medication might relieve the symptoms temporarily but will
also disturb other systems in the body and will not cure the cold. An inten-
sive fund-raising effort might temporarily prop up a nonprofit that suffers
from a structural deficit, but might not address the more systemic problem
of an obsolete mission and chronic neglect of stakeholders.
Getting a handle on the system and its patterns requires what has been
called “systems sensing” (Ryan, 1995): that is, knowing which hunches and
curiosities to follow. Learning how to become a better systems sensor calls
for practice of two very different but complementary kinds of learning.
The first is to engage in the kind of mindfulness I described in Chapter 3.
Experts on mindfulness with diverse disciplinary backgrounds12 agree on
the importance of two positionalities of mindfulness practice, both of
which take time and discipline:
• orientation to the present moment, aware of body sensations as clues about
what is important to notice, and able to take in what is to be learned in
that moment; and
• attention, whether implicitly or explicitly, to different contexts; sensitive
to multiple perspectives; alert to distinction; and open to novelty.
A second and more immediately practical way to learn and practice
systems thinking is to create a “causal loop diagram” (Kreutzer, 1995), a
graphic that shows the interrelationships among the elements of a system,

156 The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

including how tinkering with the system will cause changes that loop back.
My diagram of the deep learning mindset (Figure 9.1) is an example of
such a causal loop: external and internal stimuli create disorientation that,
if certain criteria are met, leads to critical reflection, when new learning
is achieved and then assimilated, thereby creating new opportunities for
mindful learning.
Not every problem requires dialectical thinking. How then can one use
systems sensing to discriminate between complicated problems and com-
plex situations? Between those calling for technical and those needing cre-
ative solutions? When presented with a problem our default response is to
go to what has worked before, the tried and true. It is always more soothing
to tell ourselves that the solution is already “out there” and we just have
to find it. Accepting the possibility that we might have to question our
assumptions and redefine the problem itself is much more difficult. It is
not a matter of deciding rationally whether a situation calls for dialectic
thinking, because our body knows this already. We have to recognize our
sensing of a system disturbance when it occurs, and follow the disorienta-
tion the disturbance produces. Mindfulness makes otherwise-unconscious
signals conscious, and systems-sensing tools can help us visualize them.
Both of the dispositions I have just described can be learned. They are
not developed as a function of time or experience, and –unfortunately –
are generally not taught in school. But if we are to develop dialectical
thinking in adults, recognizing the paradox of learning and knowing when
dialectical thinking is needed are, it seems to me, where we ought to begin.

Notes
1 This term appears in Sloman & Fernbach (2017).
2 Obviously, this metaphor works only for Western students, not those in Africa
for whom encountering a zebra may not be considered a rare event.
3 Interestingly, dialectical thinking is almost entirely absent among Anglo-
American philosophers, some of whom are its most vehement critics. John
Dewey studied Hegelian philosophy as a young man but abandoned it as his
pragmatist views began to take shape. See Martin (2002).
4 This position is expressed most eloquently in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason (1998), in which he implies that our intellectual curiosity as humans
will always outpace our ability to answer the essential questions of life, and
thus each new generation has to confront the same moral dilemmas.
5 Cf. Baltes, Sternberg, Bassett, Labouvie-Vief, Kegan, Riegel.
6 This is true at least in Western cultures, where growth through childhood
and adolescence is defined in terms of individualism. Research examined by

Notes 157
Grossman (2018), however, suggests that in East Asian cultures dialectical
thinking emerges much earlier.
7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerto#Etymology. Many thanks to Norman
Dale for the reference.
8 Basseches, 1984. By “limited” I mean that his research subjects were all students
and faculty members at Swarthmore College.
9 Riegel’s article even contains a “Manifesto for Dialectical Psychology,” ending
with the words, “Dialectical psychologists unite! You have nothing to lose but
the respect of vulgar mechanists and pretentious mentalists; you will win a
world, a changing world created by ever changing human beings” (p. 697).
10 Consistent research findings indicate that those who are predisposed to think
dialectically are in the clear minority, even among mature adults.
11 See, for example, Scharmer (2018).
12 Three examples: learning scholar Helen Langer; organizational psychologist
Bill Torbert; and mindfulness teacher Charles Tart.

Ch apter 10

Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world
in jeopardy.
John Dewey

I want to accomplish two things in this last chapter: to summarize and high-
light the key themes from previous chapters; and then to shift in perspec-
tive and tone, from an academic argument for a deep learning mindset to
a more pragmatic discussion of how to put its principles into everyday use.

10.1 The Deep Learning Mindset: A Recap

Deep learning is a disposition, a way to be in the world, one that is
always on the lookout for challenges to our current way of thinking.
These challenges do not stem from cognitive puzzles, but from physical
sensations constructed as emotions. Some of these emotions are perceived
as disorienting, and can stem from three sources. The first is an encounter
that forces us to examine our assumptions about what is true or real, known
as a disorienting dilemma. The second is a learned mindfulness that actively
and regularly seeks out opportunities to question these assumptions. The
more we are able to engage in dialectical forms of thinking –the ability to
hold onto contradictions –the better we are able to deal with these first
two forms of disturbance. The third source of disorientation is having an
aesthetic experience, an invitation to step into someone else’s lived experi-
ence, whether through an encounter with written, visual, or performing
art, or through one’s own artistic expression.
Not all disorientation leads to deep learning. In order for that to happen
the disorientation has to be perceived as constructive, that is, it unsettles us
and sparks our curiosity, both at once; and it does so in a way that we perceive
an opportunity to change how we perceive the world, and for the better.

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10.1 The Deep Learning Mindset: A Recap 159

Whether constructive disorientation is perceived as constructive depends
on several things. Do we find ourselves unable to deal with the disorien-
tation using the cognitive tools we know and normally use? And, does the
motivation for dealing with the situation come from within? That is, do we
feel that we have real options, and are we confident that new learning will
have a positive impact? When an optimal tension exists between the need
to see things differently and the sense that we are willing and able to meet
the challenge, we are in a state of constructive disorientation, a space that
is necessary –if not sufficient –for deep learning to occur.
Constructive disorientation, then, sets the stage for honest, critical
reflection on experience. This is rarely easy, as a host of cognitive and emo-
tional traps exist to trip us up, all working to preserve or strengthen our
current beliefs and meaning perspectives. Critical reflection, therefore, is a
learned skill, requiring practice. Deep learning is wholly dependent on crit-
ical reflection, whether that reflection results in transforming one’s mental
models or deepening one’s expertise. Deep learning can also result from
intuitive learning, the largely unconscious, “embodied” learning, when
that learning is made conscious and reflected upon. All of these sources of
deep learning become assimilated into our ways of viewing the world, and
therefore subject to further disturbance.
This deep learning field is enriched when we pay attention to two key
phenomena.
The first is discourse with others. Deep learning is most powerful –and
often necessary –in the presence of others who will help us see the world
through other sets of eyes. Social learning can be either positive or nega-
tive. The early possibilities of online conversation have been corrupted,
and deep learning now faces an even steeper path. Youngsters and people
much older are burying their faces and brains in social media, selected by
them and by the platforms to narrow the mind, to exclude any potentially
disorienting information and perspectives. Groups that are too homoge-
neous, whether through demographics or ideology, can serve to reinforce
one’s existing beliefs, and therefore stifle deep learning. The markers of
social discourse facilitating deep learning include: a sincere and sustained
interest in others’ beliefs, especially ones out of sync with our own views,
adequate trust or social capital, a generative social space with authentic
engagement, and minimal differences in power.
This latter quality, attending to the politics of learning, is the second
enabler, one that is often ignored. Deep learning is a political act when-
ever it threatens to disturb the existing political equilibrium, and it thus
requires political consciousness. Our societies determine what is important

160 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

to learn, and deep learning requires that these be examined, reflected
upon, and even intentionally disrupted in the service of the common
good. Healthy democracies depend on a citizenry that recognizes existing
systems of power relationships and endorses free inquiry into existing
systems, including systems of power relationships that privilege some
forms of knowing over others.
A deep learning mindset requires all of these elements working together
as a system, as was shown in Figure 9.1.

10.2 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

Embedded in each of the previous chapters are implications for how to
enhance deep learning in oneself and others. I won’t rehash all of these;
instead I’ll try to recast them into a set of working principles for everyday
professional practice –and for living.

10.2.1 Pay Attention

In other words, be mindful of the present moment. You don’t have to
wait to be hit with a disorienting dilemma. Potentially constructive
disorientations are all around us if we make the effort to notice them –
that is, if we engage in mindfulness. Back in Chapter 3, I defined mind-
fulness as a state of heightened alertness, one that is conscious of body
sensations, accepting these without judgment, and focused more on
the present moment than ruminating about the past or worrying about
the future. Mindfulness practice allows us to get inside and understand
what Otto Scharmer calls our “blind spot,” that unconscious inner
space “from which we operate when we act, communicate, perceive, or
think. We can see what we do (results). We can see how we do it (pro-
cess). But we are usually not aware of the who: the inner place or source
from which we operate” (p. 6, emphasis in original). Mindfulness allows
us to step back from our conceptions of how the world is and to see
how imprisoned we can be by them, to borrow Doris Lessing’s phrase
(Lessing, 1987). It allows us to realize, in Bob Kegan’s terms (Kegan &
Lahey, 2009), just how “subject” we are to these mental constructions
and invites us to observe them at a distance, as “objects.” It allows us
the freedom of reflecting on why we are prone to think or act in a par-
ticular way. Am I discarding a perception that might disturb my sense of
things? Am I putting an experience into an unexamined conceptual box?
Am I finding comfort in confirming what I already thought was true?

10.2 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset 161

A spirit of mindfulness accepts the tension between the need for mental
models, which help us to cope with a complex environment, and the
understanding of how the act of creating and using them interferes with
true experience. Mental models freeze experience into categories into
which future experience must conform. Mindfulness helps to defrost
these categories and create a space for constructive disorientation that
might not otherwise exist.
Mindfulness not only protects us from mindless complacency but also
keeps us from being defined by what we perceive as our successes and
failures. When one is being mindful, thoughts, for example, are experienced
“as temporary phenomena without inherent worth or meaning, rather than
necessarily accurate reflections of reality, health, adjustment, or worthi-
ness” (Baer, 2003, quoted in Weick & Putnam, 2006, p. 279). Mindfulness
is not about protecting our ego, and so in that sense it is the opposite of
narcissism: everything is not always about us. Neither is mindfulness about
self-improvement, as Amanda Sinclair (2016) reminds us; we don’t practice
it to change anything. We do it to open ourselves up to experiencing the
present moment without automatically trying to put some meaning into
that moment –that is, by treating every experience as a fresh experience,
allowing us to see every encounter as an opportunity to be what Peter Vaill
(1996) calls a “reflective beginner.”
A full discussion of mindfulness practice is beyond the scope of this
book, but excellent, readable sources are available. For the general reader
my personal favorite is the classic Living the Mindful Life, by Charles Tart
(2001). For the academically inclined I’d recommend an excellent scholarly
review of the empirical evidence of the benefits of mindfulness practice, by
Kirk Warren Brown and others (2007).
Mindfulness practice in organizations has not received nearly the
attention it deserves. Leadership theorist and Antioch colleague Donna
Ladkin (2015) has written about “organizational mindlessness,” in which
organizations rely on past categories and act on autopilot, minimizing
attention to new information. Organizations, by their very design, avoid
disruption, focusing instead on maximizing efficiency and productivity,
both of which are threatened by the inevitable turbulence in their envir-
onment. Like individual people, organizations have to work to free them-
selves from the default setting of routine action.
Organizational psychologist Karl Weick has spent much of his career
studying collective mindfulness and sense-making. In his research on so-
called “high-reliability organizations” that are especially good at reading
and responding to their environments, he uncovered several practices that

162 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

he called “mindful organizing.” He writes that these organizations do five
things:
[They] spend (a) more time examining failure as a window on the health of
the system, (b) more time resisting the urge to simplify assumptions about
the world; (c) more time observing operations and their effects, (d) more
time developing resilience to manage unexpected events, and (e) more time
locating local expertise and creating a climate of deference to these experts
… Collectively these five processes focus attention on the discriminatory
details that get lumped into categories. It is that shift from perception to
conception that threatens rich awareness of discriminatory detail. (Weick &
Sutcliffe, 2006, p. 516, emphasis added)
Just as personal mindfulness maintains a healthy tension between experi-
ence and meaning-making, organizational mindfulness does the same by
making the effort to interrupt mindless routine, inviting disruption of
that routine by questioning labeling and categorization. Just like people,
organizations need concepts in order to cope; but they also need to recog-
nize that the very act of conceptualizing interferes with experience.
A particularly dramatic case in point is the Challenger shuttle disaster
in 1986. Failure to attend to what proved to be early warning signals of
potentially catastrophic defects was attributed to what was termed “nor-
malizing deviance,” that is, treating anomalies or uncertainties as unexcep-
tional deviations from acceptable norms, rather than as events that should
have been singled out for special attention (Vaughn, 1996, cited in Weick
& Sutcliffe, 2006).
Mindfulness keeps us alert to both what is going on around us and
how we are choosing to interpret that experience. By forcing us to notice
how quickly we put experience into unexamined conceptual boxes, we are
invited to examine how and why we are doing that. This momentary space
creates an opening for constructive disorientation.

10.2.2 Confront Your Biases

Challenging one’s biases is hard work –difficult and uncomfortable and
unnatural, but necessary. As useful and necessary as automatic responses
may often be, they are also subject to a whole host of cognitive traps
created by the very categories we use to navigate our world. As I noted
above, mindfulness creates the potential for examining and reflecting crit-
ically on our assumptions about the world, to get out of our ruts and
make a fresh appraisal, before a disorienting dilemma is thrust upon us.
In a lovely TED talk, Verna Myers (2014) invites us to face our biases,

10.2 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset 163

and instead of denying them (“I’m not racist!”), walk toward them; and as
difficult as this might be, approach the discomfort that doing so creates.
What does this mean in practice? It means, first of all, that we acknow-
ledge that everyone is biased, and that not all biases are bad. We have
what Hans-Georg Gadamer (1989) calls both enabling and disabling bias.
Enabling biases are those learned perspectives that have, through experi-
ence, given us tools to understand phenomena at a deeper level. For
example, expert psychotherapists are able to spot the subtle messages their
patients are giving them, and by reflecting them back, help to achieve
personal insights. An experienced parent is able to know whether a child is
crying from hunger or from pain. An experienced teacher is able to sense
a learning opportunity in class, whether it’s in the lesson plan or not. We
need enabling biases, as long as we reflect critically on them, as true experts
do. Failing to do this is what leads to disabling bias, the purest example of
which is confirmation (or myside) bias, filtering incoming information so
as to accept only that which is consistent with our current beliefs.
Unfortunately, we are all afflicted with myside bias. We can argue about
its evolutionary purposes, but we can’t argue about its negative effects
on our personal growth, and on the health of our society. Myside bias
contributes to and strengthens our current beliefs, making them both
more rigid and less permeable. Moreover, we are now more vulnerable
than ever to myside bias, given the one-sided messages on cable news
and social media, enticing us to attach what we see and hear to a current
belief system, giving us no incentive to think things over before the next
wave hits.
The next step after acknowledging bias, therefore, is to take the time
to cross-examine how we are treating new information –not just which
conceptual box we’re putting it into, but also the feeling that comes with
it. Myside bias is always emotional, never dispassionate; if it were more
detached, we wouldn’t be so quick to find comfort in it. This is why myside
bias is so pernicious: we fuse our beliefs with our identities, letting our
perspectives about the world define who we are. We have to be able to step
back and objectify our beliefs, holding them at arm’s length, and giving
ourselves permission to put them to the test. We have to be able to tell
ourselves: “I may hold these beliefs, but they don’t hold me.” In her book
on mindful leadership, Amanda Sinclair (2007) suggests that we reflect
on our own thinking, which is often analytical, evaluative, judgmental,
even ruminative or catastrophizing. When caught in these often-repetitive
thoughts she advises that we ask ourselves two simple questions: “How
am I thinking? And, why am I thinking that way?” To those I would add,

164 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

“What is causing me to feel that way?” Immunity to change theory (Kegan
& Lahey, 2009) suggests that with especially deep-seated and emotionally
charged beliefs, we challenge them in stages, one small step at a time. For
example, some theologians hold that religiosity is strongest and healthiest
when followers are encouraged to question rather than simply to accept
what is told them as dogma (e.g., Meyers, 2009). Those who feel that their
very souls are at stake, would be encouraged to take on small, relatively safe
issues before moving on to more central ones.
The third step in confronting bias is to take Verna Myers’ advice and
walk toward it, knowing full well the discomfort this will cause and the
challenges this will pose. Daniel Kahneman, authority on cognitive bias
and a self-described pessimist, notes this near the end of his book Thinking,
Fast and Slow: “The question that is most often asked about cognitive
illusions is whether they can be overcome. The message … is not encour-
aging” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 341). With respect, I don’t agree. While it’s true
that humans will never rid themselves of myside bias and all its stealthy
cousins, that doesn’t mean that we are incapable of overcoming specific dis-
abling biases, as uncomfortable as this may be. I noted in previous chapters
that overcoming entrenched beliefs is very difficult to do alone: We need
a force from the outside in the form of other people, who are more able to
spot the flaws in our thinking than we are. Others, in particular those with
diverse worldviews and most particularly those we see as “the Other,” can
nudge us out of our categorical thinking and give us an alternative.

10.2.3 Engage the Tensions

Constructive disorientation is always a balance of opposing forces or
tensions. These are of three general types. One is the tension between fast
intuition and slower deliberation; another is the tension between pushing
to the edge while holding to the center; a third is the tension between the
self and the other. We learn most deeply when these essential tensions, as
I’ve called them, are held in an optimal balance, with the scales not tipping
too far in either direction. While admittedly this notion is highly abstract,
numerous examples of how it plays out are scattered throughout the book.
Here are three more, one for each type:
Confronting bias is an example of the tension between intuition and
deliberation. Intuition is a bias to think and respond quickly to a disturb-
ance in our perceptual field. As I noted earlier, intuition is potentially an
enabling bias, using what we have learned through our past experience
to take on problems of the present, but only when it exists in tension

10.2 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset 165

with deliberation. Suppose that you are an official of a local school dis-
trict, and you have been tasked by the superintendent with conducting
an evaluation of a new program, an outreach initiative to parents. You
know that this is the superintendent’s pet project. You conduct the evalu-
ation and put together a draft report indicating that the program has had
only mixed success. Your intuition tells you that your boss won’t be happy
with anything but a glowing review, and you fear that your report will
be whitewashed, or withheld completely. You could ignore this signal,
reasoning that you will “just let the chips fall where they may”; or you
could follow the disorientation and deliberate, with others, how to make
the report palatable to the superintendent, without compromising the
report’s authenticity or your own integrity.
Here is an example of pushing to the edge while holding to the center.
The governor and attorney general of your home state, both of whom you
admire, become embroiled in controversies that have to do with racist
behavior as young men.1 It is revealed that in his college yearbook, the
governor included a photo of a man in blackface (a caricature intended to
mock African Americans) standing next to someone dressed in the robe
and hood of the Ku Klux Klan. The attorney general later confesses that
as a college student he once attended a costume party dressed as a rap
singer, putting on a wig and darkening his skin. You are presented with a
disorienting dilemma: how could these men have behaved in a manner so
counter to the image you have of them? But instead of taking an absolutist
position, that in the spirit of zero tolerance both officials should resign,
you hold the contradiction, and reflect on how much or little we should
count the misdeeds of youth and weigh these against more typical behavior
of each man at maturity.
The essential tension between self and other is, to my mind, the central
challenge of adulthood. We need to be both autonomous and connected.
How we hold this tension will determine whether we develop or stagnate,
flourish or languish. Suppose that you’re a working mother, struggling to
balance the demands of both job and family. You find your career ful-
filling, and relish the sense of efficacy your work brings. But the culture
scripting from your childhood creates a sense of guilt that you are not
spending enough time at home with the kids. You could attempt to resolve
this tension by simply working harder to fulfill both roles equally well;
or you could decide to hold the tension and look for ways to restructure
your life so as to integrate the competing roles more successfully. Now flip
genders and suppose you’re a man who has built a successful career, but as
you approach your mid-fifties you begin to feel a different pull, wanting to

166 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

connect more deeply with your family and close friends. You could try to
resolve this tension by dismissing the regret, reasoning that this is the price
of success, or you could hold the tension, take it seriously, and reflect on
how you might better integrate the changing priorities in your life.
By holding essential tensions we give ourselves the space to acknowledge
that contradictions are inevitable in life and that we should embrace them
as opportunities for growth.

10.2.4 Maintain a Humble Curiosity

As I’ve noted several times in this book, we humans are hard-wired to be
curious. Curiosity is one of the forces that pushes us to the edge of our
comfort zone, and I cannot imagine deep learning without it. The best
form of curiosity is fired by knowing that there is always more to learn,
along with a certain comfort that you don’t have to learn everything. As an
educator I have always been frustrated with a schooling system that, inten-
tionally or not, assumes that the most important learning is when we take
in someone else’s learning, not discovering things for ourselves. Of course,
we have a lot to learn from the past; but a reliance on received wisdom can
blind us to emerging possibilities.
Expressing a humble curiosity toward learning is to follow John Dewey’s
recommendation to live a life of inquiry. A contemporary expression of
Dewey’s advice is a recent book by Judi Marshall (2016), where she defines
a life of inquiry –what she calls “first person action research” –as “a person
cultivating an approach of inquiry to all they think, feel, and do, including
being curious about their perspectives, assumptions, and behavior” (p. 7).
Note how closely this resembles mindfulness, but mindfulness that is pur-
poseful. A life of inquiry is much like action research at a personal level. As
I described it in an earlier chapter, action research is a form of experiential
learning. We perceive something that warrants exploration, a spot of dis-
orientation in our perceptual field. We reflect critically on the disorienta-
tion, bring our current knowledge to bear on it, theorize about what might
be going on, take action, and see what puzzles remain.
Doing so requires that we let go of the past, knowing that while the past
has shaped the present, we need also to embrace emerging opportunities
(Scharmer, 2018). Carol Dweck has written a hugely popular book on what
she calls the “growth mindset” (2016). While those having a fixed mindset,
she writes, look upon failure as a negative reflection on their self-worth,
as proof of their inadequacy, those with a growth mindset view failure as
an opportunity, a challenge to learn something new. In short, we need to

10.2 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset 167

fail in order to grow. Dweck’s work recalls this aphorism from Sir Francis
Bacon: “Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.”
Entrepreneur Leticia Gasca (2018) offers this caution, however: Don’t fall
for the trendy “fail fast” mantra: Failing fast and often, while accelerating
learning and saving time, is not a good way to –in my terms –learn deeply.
Instead, she advises, we should “fail mindfully”: “aware of the impact, of
the consequences of the failure, of the lessons learned. And [we should be]
aware of the responsibility to share those learnings with the world.”
Part of what contributes to a fixed mindset is “loss aversion,” the ten-
dency to be motivated more by fear of loss than by promise of gain. As
I wrote in an earlier chapter, loss aversion is one of the most dangerous
cognitive traps. It is, in the case of a compulsive gambler, literally throwing
good money after bad: he is unable to cut his losses, walk away from the
table, and ask himself what made him throw his money away. It is, in
the case of a military intervention in another country that is not going
well, vowing to stay the course “because we’ve invested so much already,”
rather than admitting the mistake and reflecting on what lessons are to
be learned. We need to overcome loss aversion in our lives and be willing
to take on reasonable risks. As immunity to change theory would suggest
(Kegan & Lahey, 2009), we do this incrementally, in a series of small steps,
and hold ourselves accountable, not for achieving success, but for learning
from the experience.
Here is an example of what I mean, one from my own experience.
A college professor wants to introduce more cooperative learning in his
classes. He’s seen the research showing that learning is more powerful and
long lasting when students learn together. He worries, though: Will this
look like I’m shirking my job? Isn’t the job of a professor to “profess”? How
will this affect my student ratings? He decides against a complete peda-
gogical overhaul, and plans instead to introduce cooperative learning activ-
ities a little at a time, and to carefully observe how they work. He knows in
advance that because students are not used to active learning, there will be
some grumbling, but he vows not to take the criticism as evidence of his
inadequacy but rather as useful data. Sure enough, this first-person action
research eventually pays off in the kind of student learning he has always
hoped for.
A way to capitalize on this kind of research on practice is to engage in
what has been called “prospective hindsight” (Meissner & Wulf, 2015), that
is, imagining that an event has already occurred. I often used a form of
prospective hindsight when designing program evaluation studies. I would
ask prospective stakeholders, “What evidence do you think you will use to

168 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

judge the worth of the program?” And then, I would take their responses
as a guide to help decide what data to collect. A clever variation of this
technique is to do what Gary Klein has called a “project premortem”: “In
a premortem, team members assume that the project they are planning has
just failed –as so many do –and then generate plausible reasons for its
demise. Those with reservations may speak freely at the outset, so that the
project can be improved rather than autopsied” (Klein, 2007, p. 18).

10.2.5 See Complexity Everywhere and Don’t Let It Scare You

Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard put our human futility well: “To secure
against insecurity,” he wrote, “we set out to become masters of the uni-
verse and to hold chaos at bay for one more day” (quoted in Meyers, 2009,
p. 178). Sooner or later we realize that neither of these is possible; but that
doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of maintaining a healthy tension between
order and chaos, one of the tensions pushing us to the edge while holding
us to the center. Comfort with complexity is part of having a humble curi-
osity: you see turbulence as intriguing rather than frightening.
What makes dealing with chaos so unsettling for many people is that
they feel they are being pulled to the margins, a space they can’t control,
while losing their grip on the center. Some find comfort in an authori-
tarian leader who vows to fix things for them through, for example, stoking
racist anger that “the Other” is to blame for their troubles. Others “hunker
down,” to use Robert Putnam’s (2007) term, shrinking their worlds and
social circles so as to “hold chaos at bay for one more day.”
Neither of these reactions is healthy, not for individuals or society.
Whether the world is truly becoming a more complex and turbulent place,
or only feels that way, we seem increasingly unable to embrace complexity
without being consumed by it. It doesn’t have to be this way. As Lao Tzu
wrote in the Tao Te Ching:
Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself? (Tzu, 1988, chapter 15)
This to me is the essence of Eastern mindfulness: to make peace with
turbulence and change that is ever present; to avoid retreating to abso-
lutist thinking; to allow yourself to experience the tension that awareness
of complexity produces, and to turn this tension into constructive
disorientation.

10.2 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset 169

The need for comfort with complexity extends beyond the person
to the organization. The richest discoveries occur at the boundaries of
systems, where they intersect with others, not at their centers (Wenger,
2000). Still, as I’ve noted earlier, adapting to complexity and turbulence is
not most organizations’ strong suit. Most often, the tension between the
need to innovate and the need to produce is resolved in favor of the latter,
what Mary Uhl-Bien (2018) calls the “order response.” Organizational
leaders must recognize and engage the tension, not letting it default
to the order response. Uhl-Bien’s research has shown that pressures for
innovation do not typically come from the top brass but from the cre-
ativity of an organization’s members, agents of change who link up and
drive innovation. The role of formal leaders is to spot these innovative
nodes, to give them space for trying out new ideas, to manage the inev-
itable conflict with other parts of the organization, and to link them up
with each other and with sponsors having the wherewithal to make real
change happen.

10.2.6 Learn How to Learn with Others

As I wrote in Chapter 6, the importance of learning with others may be the
most common thread throughout all of the research and theorizing about
human learning. The quality of our learning experience improves when
others are around and can deteriorate when we are alone. How then might
we “cultivate our social fields” (Scharmer, 2018, p. 15) to sow the seeds of
empathy, social capital, and authentic engagement, and help them grow?
Less metaphorically, how do we create and hold space for learning through
dialogue?
I like Peter Rule’s (2004) notion of “dialogic space,” a concept he
developed while doing emancipatory education work in post-apartheid
South Africa. He writes,
By identifying and exploiting cracks of opportunity within the apartheid
edifice, the [project] was able to fashion dialogic possibilities. It did this by
creating conditions in which participants felt free to communicate openly
with one another and, in the process, negotiate new sets of relationships
among themselves, with the world and with their futures. These conditions
included: a basis of trust (there can be no dialogue without trust); an atti-
tude of openness towards learning from one another; a physical place where
participants could meet in relative safety; a project ethos that encouraged
participants to express themselves; and a commitment to solving problems
through meeting, discussion, reflection and consensus rather than coercion.

170 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

This is not to suggest that this dialogue was without conflict, struggle and
pain, or that relationships of power were absent from the project, but
that these elements, on the whole, were articulated and elaborated within
processes of dialogue. (pp. 329–330)
Rule’s description of dialogic space captures all of the elements needed
for people to learn deeply with others (see Chapter 6 for details). Getting
into true dialogic space requires that we challenge a whole set of lazy
assumptions:
• that people will leave their biases at the door;
• that a sharing of views in the form of individual monologues will lead
naturally to dialogue;
• that participants will feel equally safe, and heard, in the conversation;
• that group learning will occur organically, without first negotiating
common understandings and values –and, perhaps, accepting the need
to develop some new learning skills.
A learning skill most in need of development today is listening. As Julian
Treasure (2017), an expert on the effects of sound and speech, has noted
colorfully, “our society is crashingly ocular” (loc. 50). We have become
adept at picking out visual cues, he avers, and learning which of these to
pay attention to (including, as I’ve noted repeatedly, an assortment of cog-
nitive traps): “People seek out ‘proof ’ on the internet, collecting views that
support theirs and ignoring antithetical ones. This is a recipe for polariza-
tion” (loc. 77). We are losing our skills at listening, surrounded by such a
cacophony that we have a hard time discerning what is worth hearing from
all of the “mush.” The only antidote, Treasure argues, is skilled conversa-
tion marked by active and empathic listening.
Active listening, I would agree, is the necessary first step to learning
successfully with others. As I have noted elsewhere in this book, this is a
lot harder to do than we might think. In a discussion marked by diverse
perspectives, we are usually preoccupied in coming up with a response
that supports our own beliefs and refutes others’. We have to learn to
listen with intention, focus without judgment on what the other person
is saying, check our understanding by reflecting back what we have heard,
and summarize the other’s message. (In doing so we also have to avoid
summarizing the other’s point by reducing it to a pejorative overgeneral-
ization, e.g., “Oh, so in other words you think the government should take
all our guns away.”)

10.2 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset 171

Wendy McGrath and her colleague Peter Eppig, at Antioch University
New England, developed a technique they called the “Critical Skills
Program.” McGrath describes it this way:
In the Critical Skills Program, we used a collaboration technique that was
quite effective when people were dug in [to existing beliefs]. The goal was
not a shared outcome –but a higher outcome, to achieve not common
ground but higher ground, as it were. Rule 1 –you must work with someone
on “the other side.” Rule 2 –you can use the pieces (important) of your
current viewpoint as resources but they cannot determine the final product.
The final “solution” must be something completely different –and better
than whatever you came in with. Everyone has to “let go” –but it was
effective because people were going someplace new –and in reality –were
not required to give up their positions, beliefs, ideas. (McGrath, personal
communication, January 16, 2019)
Active listening is the first step to building trust, or social capital.
Organizational psychologist Frances Frei (2018) suggests that trust will
develop when three factors are in play: when the other is perceived as
authentic, when his or her arguments are seen to have logical rigor, and
when s/he projects empathy. “When all three of these things are working,”
she said in a recent TED Talk, “we have great trust. But if any one of these
three gets shaky, if any one of these three wobbles, trust is threatened.”
Active listening, as long as it is not experienced as smarmy or disingenuous,
contributes to one being perceived as both empathic and authentic. I have
discussed the importance of both qualities extensively in this book, and the
evidence suggests that if authenticity and empathy are present, then logical
arguments are possible, as long as there is a shared interest in reaching
agreement.
Some of my work in recent years has been in leadership and change
in higher education, most specifically academic departments. My research
uncovered six markers of quality in academic departments, one of which was
“engagement,” where departments asked critical questions of themselves,
reflected about their work, and shared individual reflections through dia-
logue. Consistent with findings in other organizational settings, effective
dialogic reflection required “an openness to diverse points of view, seeking
to break new ground by sharing meanings, understanding the whole, and
uncovering assumptions … When the purpose of the dialogue is to learn
from one another, disagreement becomes a source of energy for learning”
(Wergin, 2003, pp. 51–52).

172 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

Maintaining the “humble curiosity” I referred to earlier includes
approaching learning with others with an air of humility about all that we
have to learn from them.

10.2.7 Harness the Power of Politics in Learning

The terms “politics” and “political” have had negative connotations for
years, no more so than today. Politicians are accused, without irony, of
“playing politics,” when this is precisely what they were elected to do. In
this book I have tried to discuss the politics of learning in a much more
positive light.
Recall that in Chapter 7 I wrote that whenever new knowledge threatens
to disturb the existing political equilibrium, learning becomes a political
act. Even when following all of the principles above, not attending to the
politics can doom any attempt at deep learning in a group or organiza-
tion. We must identify existing power relationships, asking the unasked
questions about them, and surfacing assumptions about why things are
the way they are. We must speak truth to power, including speaking truth
to ourselves about the power we may enjoy. We must give voice to the
disempowered, including giving them the tools to unleash the power they
already have. All of this may sound like a radical, leftist agenda, but it
isn’t, not really. Constructive disorientation emanates from disturbance,
and sometimes it is a disturbance that has to be prompted. Some examples:
• Individuals work most effectively when, as part of mindfulness practice,
they routinely invite challenges to their own hegemonic assumptions. As
an older White male, I have had to acknowledge and face many examples
of my own cluelessness about privilege over the years, and I am afraid
I’m not done yet. In retrospect, I wish that I had recognized these myself
rather than having had them pointed out to me.
• Communities of practice work most effectively when newcomers at the
margins make their ideas known, while those at the center welcome the
disturbance to the status quo.
• Organizations work most effectively when, charged with responding to
an adaptive challenge –such as, say, reframing a nonprofit’s mission
to keep it more in line with society’s needs –they recognize and wel-
come contributions from all levels of the organization, including those
at the “bottom,” while also calibrating how to integrate the products of
their work with existing power relationships. They do this knowing all
the while that an effective outcome will likely shift the balance of these
relationships.

10.2 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset 173

Working the politics requires having a feel for just how hard to push: too
gently will get no response, too aggressively will invite a backlash. A useful
resource for helping find that sweet spot is Debra Meyerson’s (2003) work
on “tempered radicals.” Tempered radicals, she writes, “operate on a fault
line. They are organizational insiders who often succeed in their jobs. They
struggle between their desire to act on their ‘different’ agendas and the need
to fit into the dominant culture” (Meyerson, 2004, p. 16). Tempered radicals
are not afraid of complexity. They understand that their organizations are
constantly evolving, adapting to environmental changes, and so they “push
and prod the system through a variety of subtle processes, questioning
assumptions, changing boundaries of inclusion, and scoring small wins”
(pp. 17–18). Successful ones realize that, given their organizations’ default
“order response,” they need to find kindred spirits and form networks,
including sympathetic sponsors who can advise them on how and how
hard to push the agenda.

10.2.8 Invite Disorientation Through Aesthetic Experience

Just days before writing this I was introduced to Robert Edger, MD, and
his wife, Gunn (Gunnbjorg) Lavoll, MD.2 Both are psychiatrists and Bob
is also an artist, a painter. We were discussing a draft of my chapter on
constructive disorientation through aesthetic experience, and Bob gave a
personal example of how powerful this can be. He and Gunn were part
of a group of congregants from a church in Chicago, in South Africa to
help commemorate the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s birth.
They attended a service held in Desmond Tutu’s home parish, where an
all-White choir was singing traditional hymns in Zulu and other South
African languages. Bob described the disorientation of seeing and hearing
a White choir singing in a Black church, and then the experience of
witnessing the predominantly Black congregation rising spontaneously,
singing, clapping, and dancing, totally responding to the music. What was
most exciting were protest songs, specifically “Modimo,” which if sung
in the apartheid era, could have led to arrest and imprisonment. “The
music bonded the races at that moment,” Bob said. “It’s as if all of the
energy these two groups needed to come together could not be expressed
in words,” I observed. “Music was the necessary catalyst.” Bob smiled and
nodded.
Earlier in this book I have addressed what is known as “embodied
learning.” Most of us learn in school that learning is something we do in
our heads. Recent advances in cognitive science have established that what

174 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

we do in our heads is shaped by our experiences, even determined by them.
Embodied knowledge is often hidden from our immediate awareness and,
as in the example above, hard to put into words. Mindfulness practice
can access it; so can aesthetic encounter or expression. As dancer Celeste
Snowber (2012) has written, “When we write from our sweat, our words
uncover knowing that we did not know” (p. 58). Knowing from our “sweat”
applies not just to dance but to many other forms of expression. During
my conversation with Bob and Gunn, he noted that, “When I’m painting,
I stop thinking.” What he meant by this was not that he just makes aimless
brushstrokes with random colors; his art is purposeful but driven by how
he feels about what he sees unfolding on the canvas.
Aesthetic experience can be an independent path to constructive dis-
orientation and deep learning. Bob and Gunn Edger had an aesthetic
experience in the South African church that led to constructive disorien-
tation and deep learning about the bonding power of music. Ethnic
and racial tension has been a blight on human history for thousands of
years, but the arts can provide a unique, empathic, even joyful setting for
expressing painful issues, and expanding our perceptions of the possible.
Art is most powerful as a source of deep learning when it deals with
adaptive challenges, such as seemingly intractable racial division. Aesthetic
experience gives us license to imagine, at low personal risk, ways of closing
the gap between the values we stand for and the realities we face. Aesthetic
experience is an invitation –not a directive –to see things differently, and
so it unleashes all of the elements of intrinsic motivation: autonomy, effi-
cacy, and relatedness. It is one of the gentlest ways to turn disorientation
into constructive disorientation.
Imagine how introducing more aesthetic experiences into an organiza-
tion might create a more welcoming environment for deep learning. For
example, think of how aesthetics might transform meeting time into a
more generative space, helping people transition from all of the stuff going
on in their heads to a mental and emotional place that is more conducive
to dealing with, and learning from, problems and issues that lie beneath
the formal agenda. Consider using storytelling, having group members
share personal experiences related to the topic at hand. Storytelling enlarges
the empathic field, especially important when members of a group have
diverse life experiences (Yorks & Kasl, 2006). This will only work, of
course, when genuine listening is going on and people feel “heard.” Or
participants could be asked to bring photographs or drawings representing
their perceptions of relevant issues and engage others in discussion about
what they “see.” At a recent conference I attended the organizer3 had laid

10.2 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset 175

out a collection of polished stones, each inscribed with a positive, sup-
portive word, and invited participants to select one and ponder why they
had selected it and what the word meant to them. Here are some of the
words: serenity, blessings, peace, gratitude, hope, breathe, dream, cele-
brate. I picked “cherish.”
Creative possibilities are endless; just don’t be deterred by initial eye-
rolling behavior. Take small steps that lie at the edge of participants’
comfort zones.

10.2.9 Engage in Thought Leadership for Deep Learning

Thought leadership is simply the championing of new ideas so as to trans-
form how we and others think (McCrimmon, 2005). Thought leadership
does not depend on one’s position in an organization: it is egalitarian and
nonhierarchical. The power of thought leadership depends on passion,
commitment, and the willingness to stick one’s neck out, just far enough
to create constructive disorientation in the system.
I began this book by making the case for deep learning and why we
need it now more than ever before. We are faced with a confluence of
forces: accelerating change, instant and multiple sources of information –
many tailored to feed one’s biases –and a toxic polarization that both feeds
and is fed by a fear of becoming overwhelmed by chaos and “the Other.”
Drive-by learning is rampant. Reflecting on how we have come to know
what we think we know has always been difficult; and now it is more chal-
lenging than ever.
We need thought leaders for deep learning. We need people who are
willing to be what I have called “leaders in place” (Wergin, 2007), willing
to champion the urgency of deep learning. By that I don’t mean distrib-
uting copies of the deep learning mindset to friends and colleagues. I mean
practicing deep learning, and helping others do so as well. Not by lec-
turing or pontificating; not by logic; not by sharing the empirical evidence
contained in this book. The path to encouraging deep learning in others
is through example, inviting emulation. Lee Shulman, former president of
the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, once told me
that the surest way to make change happen in an organization is through
what he called “diffusion by envy”: demonstrating that what you’re doing
works (Shulman, personal communication, 2002). A person with a deep
learning mindset demonstrates that deep learning works: not by reacting
mindlessly to every bit of information that crosses her awareness, and not
by hunkering down, trying in Kierkegaard’s words to “keep chaos at bay

176 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

for one more day.” A person with a deep learning mindset is mindful of
somatic signals and identifies which of these are disorientating. A person
with a deep learning mindset uses critical reflection to follow these
disorientations, whether quickly, reflecting in action (Schön, 1983), or
more slowly and deliberately, in complex situations requiring adaptive
learning (Heifetz et al., 2009). A person with a deep learning mindset
models for others a center in the midst of turbulence and a ballast in the
face of accelerating change.

Notes
1 US readers will recognize this as a true story.
2 I am grateful to my dear friend, mentor and colleague Larry Braskamp for the
introduction.
3 Dr. Barbara Lipinski, Antioch University Santa Barbara.

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Index

accountability, 69, 89, 96, 104, 132 diagnosis bias, 110, 111
ACT UP, 132 Dunning-Kruger effect,  12, 14
action research, 27, 166, 167 enabling vs. disabling, 163
adaptive, 57 exposure anxiety, 111
Alexandre, L., 142 intuitive beliefs, 14, 15, 53, 54, 87
analytic thinking, see critical thinking intuitive theories, 84
Apollo 13, 154 loss aversion, 61, 110, 111, 167
Argyris, C., viii, ix, 6, 49, 75, 81 patternicity, 13, 15
Aristotle, 19, 27, 52, 70, 86, 89, 112, 145 reductive thinking, 13, 14, 15, 55, 111
episteme, 27, 52, 70 Boal, A., 87, 122, 134
phronesis, 27, 28, 52, 70, 73 Theatre of the Oppressed, 134, 135
techne, 27, 52, 70, 86 Bourdieu, P., 50, 79, 120
art Brafman, O., 17, 110, 121
defined, 123 Brafman, R., 17, 110, 121
as cultural vaccination, 130 brain, anatomy of, 20–22
music as a tool for deep learning, 127 Brookfield, S., 75, 78
as path to community healing, 124 Brooks, D., 129
as pathway to deep learning, 137–138 Bruni, F., 150
performance as pathway to deep learning, Burns, J., 97
132–135
photography as tool for deep learning, 130 Cartesian thinking, 25
and politics, 135–137 challenge, 35, 36, 50, 52, 58, 59, 60, 63, 66, 67,
street art as tool for deep learning, 129 71, 140, 141
autonomy, 34, 40, 41, 43, 46, 60, 63, 65, 80, 104, adaptive, 60, 70, 77, 88, 98, 143, 172
137, 144, 150, 174 Challenger disaster, 162
cognition, ix, 6, 8, 16, 19, 22, 25, 27, 31, 49, 75,
Bacon, Francis, 9, 167 129
Baldwin, James, 127 embodied, 27
Bandura, A., 64, 92 cognitive dissonance, 7, 12, 15, 31, 36, 45, 51, 53,
Banksy, 129, 130, 131, 132, 135, 139n6 54, 60, 66
“Girl With a Balloon,” 129 cognitive science, 18
Barrett, L., theory of constructed emotion, 31 communities of practice, 100–102, 105, 143
Basseches, M., 147, 149, 152 community, 29, 34, 65, 74, 95, 101, 118, 124, 125,
bias, 2, 29, 60, 74, 137, 144, 163 130, 131, 134, 136, 137, 138, 144
affective, 54 competence, 35, 36, 40, 41, 46, 48, 58, 59,
belief persistence, 15, 16, 18, 110 63, 64, 66, 71, 82, 101, 105, 140, 141,
causal assumptions, 13, 15 143
confirmation/myside, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 18, 32, consciousness
45, 53, 110, 146, 163 defined, 84
confronting, 162–164 constructive developmentalism, 43–45

193

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194

194 Index
constructive disorientation, x, 70, 74, 75, 84, discourse, x, 3, 88, 106, 108, 114, 115, 120, 121,
96, 108 121n4, 128, 138, 143, 144, 145, 159
barriers to, 146 active listening, 170, 171
defined, 57, 66 dialogic space, 169
enabling in others, 65, 71 maieutic discussion, 118
necessary conditions for, 66, 84, 101, 137, 141, disequilibrium, see constructive disorientation
159, 162 disorienting dilemma, 28, 29, 30, 32, 35, 38, 48,
through art, 126–129 53, 70, 84, 139, 146, 151, 158, 160, 162, 165
what makes disorientation Dissanayake, E., 125
constructive, 60–65 diversity, group, 14, 62, 90, 95, 96, 97, 99, 102,
critical theory, 79, 103 103, 104, 111, 118, 122, 129, 144, 154
Csikszentmihalyi, M. double-loop learning,  49
effort imperative, 59, 142 Dreyfus Affair, 10
flow theory, 58, 59, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 140, Dweck, C., 166
141, 142
addictive potential of, 59 Edelman, D., 132, 133
Edison, Thomas, 10
Damasio, A., 32, 33, 84 educative turbulence, 62
dance, as a tool for deep learning, 125, 129, 131, efficacy, viii, 34, 37n8, 40, 57, 60, 64, 65, 66, 71,
132, 174 78, 80, 104, 137, 165, 174
Davies, L., 57, 62, 80 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 89
educative turbulence, 80 emotion, 1, 7, 19, 25, 33, 35, 49, 78, 86, 124, 148
deep learning mindset, 84, 87, 106, 138, 151, 156, role of, 16, 18, 25, 29, 31–32
160, 175 role of in deep learning, 122, 128
deep work, 68, 71, 73 empathic field, 129, 138, 139, 144, 174
dehumanized perception, 92 empathy, 90–94, 98, 106, 122, 126, 129, 136,
Dewey, J., x, 25, 26, 42, 43, 48, 50, 57, 58, 64, 169, 171
67, 73, 74, 75, 88, 96, 101, 108, 113, equilibrium, in learning, 110, 121, 123, 135, 136
116–119, 124, 139, 140, 154, 156n3, 158, Erenrich, S., 129
166 essential tensions, forms of
Art as Experience, 123–124 the center and the edge, 142–144
bourgeois democracy, 118 intuition and deliberation, 141
criteria of experience, 42 the self and the other, 144
intelligent action, 48, 74 experience, 15, 27, 41, 47, 74, 114, 164
learning and democracy, 109 aesthetic, ix, 125, 128, 129, 136, 138, 158, 173, 174
mis-education,  48, 96 exposure anxiety, 17, 110, 111
mis-educative, 26, 154
and open-mindedness,  118 Facebook, 4, 12, 111
routine action, 48 fake news, 1
dialectic, 43, 74, 118, 143, 144, 145, 149 Foucault, M., 112, 114, 115, 117, 119, 120, 121n4
definition, 145 Franklin, Benjamin, 19
dialectical thinking, 145–150, 156 Freire, P., 26, 29, 48, 49, 87, 90, 108, 112, 113, 114,
and aesthetic experience, 148 115, 117, 119, 134
defined, 146 banking model, 26, 48
developing, 150–154 conscientization, 112, 134, 138
elements of, 152 praxis, 29, 49, 113
systems thinking as necessary Friedman, Thomas, 3, 4
for, 154
vs. absolutist and relativistic Gadamer, H., 163
thinking, 146 Gadotti, M., 155
vs. other forms of thought, 147 Galileo, 19, 25
dialectics, 52 goal displacement, 69
dialogue, see discourse Graham, Martha, 125
diffusion by envy, 175 Greene, M., 125
Dirkx, J., 125 growth mindset, 166

Index 195
Habermas, J., learning
distantiation, 76 action, 67, 71, 89, 98–100, 103, 105, 108
habitus, 50, 52, 120 critical, 104
Haidt, J., 7, 16, 94, 95, 97, 112 adaptive, 36n1, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 67, 68, 70,
Handy, Charles, 4 77, 79, 80, 88, 104, 137, 139n2, 154, 176
Hegel, G., 145 adult, ix, 28, 30, 58, 66, 114, 119, 126
hegemonic assumptions, 78, 79, 102, 103, 104, collaborative, 98
172 cooperative, 167
Heifetz, R., 57, 76, 98, 107n4, 108, 140, 155, 176 deep
productive zone of disequilibrium, 58, 65, barriers to, 31, 47, 48, 68, 74, 89, 98, 111, 155
66, 140 definition of, vii, viii, 158
Highlander Research and Education Center, necessary conditions for, ix, x, 32, 35, 38,
113, 119 49, 52, 60, 62, 64, 68, 70, 73, 84, 86, 90,
Horton, M., 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 119 95, 119, 121, 129, 141, 159
Hovland, C., 127, 139n4 as a political act, 109
Hume, David, 6 as political consciousness, 112–116
why so hard, 6–18
Ibsen, Henrik, 38 why so important, 1–6
identity double-loop,  75, 77
defined, 33 drive-by, 1, 19, 32, 68, 70, 175
immunity to change, 17, 61, 84, 153, 167 embodied, 27, 131, 138, 159, 173
competing commitments, 17 experiential, 25–31, 89, 113, 166
incidental learning, see intuitive learning, experiential learning cycle, 26
learning:intuitive incidental, 81
Infocalypse, 3, 4 instrumental, 84
International Center for the Advancement of intuitive, 84, 87, 97, 138, 159
Scientific Literacy, 23 mindful, 76, 79, 84, 85, 87, 138, 141, 142, 151,
intuition, 15, 28, 73, 141, 164 156
intuitive learning, 85–87 mytho-poetic,  125
observational, 92
James, W., 25 organizational, 50, 104, 108, 115
Jarvis, C., 93 participatory, 97–100
Jarvis, P., 27, 49 physiology of, 22
JR, 130, 131, 132, 135 problem-based, 67, 83, 89
self-directed, 48, 50, 67
Kahneman, D., 8, 9, 14, 24, 28, 68, 71, 73, 74, single-loop,  75, 76
110, 111, 141, 164 transformative, viii, ix, x, 28, 29, 30, 44, 55,
Kant, Immanuel, 4, 145, 156n4 70, 76, 86, 87, 88, 105, 108, 125, 126, 128
Kasl, E., 128, 129, 144, 174 workplace, 81
Kegan, R., 5, 17, 18, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 61, learning organization, 50, 81
70, 144, 149, 153, 154, 160, 164, 167 learning paradox, 153–154
self-authoring, 45, 50, 53 Lee, Spike, 127
socialized mind, 45, 47, 53 Lessing, D., 160
Kierkegaard, S., 168, 175 Lindeman, E., 75
knowing Littlewood’s Law of Miracles, 13
embodied, 86 loss aversion, 17
Kolb, D., 26, 67
Marshall, J., 166
Labouvie-Vief, G., 148, 150 Marx, K., 145
Ladkin, D., 39, 46, 80, 92, 161 Maslow, A., 39, 40
Lahey, L., 17, 18, 61, 70, 153, 154, 164, 167 Maslow’s hierarchy, 39, 40
Langer, E., 53 self-actualization,  40
leadership meaning schemes, see mental models
embodied, 92 mental models, ix, 14, 23, 28, 31, 35, 36, 75, 81,
transformative, 97 84, 153, 159, 161

196 Index
Mercier, H., 10, 11, 15, 16, 77, 94, 95, 96, 97, RAND Corporation, 2
107n3 rationalist delusion, 7, 112
Meyerson, D., 173 rationality, 6, 29, 145, see reasoning
Mezirow, J., 28, 29, 44, 45, 48, 70, 73, 75, 76, reasoning, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 77, 78, 89, 95, 112
77, 78, 96 recognition, 34, 65, 105
assimilative learning, 78 reductive thinking, 111
objective reframing, 77 reflection, 4, 26, 29, 31, 32, 49, 50, 53, 73, 74, 86,
subjective reframing, 77 98, 100, 103, 114, 119, 124, 131, 142, 153
mindfulness, 46, 53, 54, 76, 79, 84, 141, 153, 155, criteria for, 74
156, 158, 160–162, 166, 168, 174 critical, ix, x, 4, 29, 88, 108, 113, 114, 115, 119,
defined, 53 121, 126, 128, 129, 141, 146, 153, 156, 159,
minimal power differentials, 102–105 176
Mitra, A., 130, 131 characteristics of, 75
Moore’s Law, 3 and development of expertise, 81–84
motivation, 33, 40, 41, 58, 63, 78, 105, 159 and mindful learning, 78
autonomous, 63, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 104 defined, 73
characteristics of, 33 on practice, 81
defined, 33 relatedness, 40, 41, 46, 60, 64, 80, 88, 95, 104,
intrinsic, 60, 62–65, 67, 70, 71, 79, 104, 137, 137, 150
174 Riefenstahl, L., 136
and learning in adults, 32–35 Riegel, K., 148, 149
organizational, 64 Rogers, Carl, 91
Myers, V., 162, 164 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 88
Rowe, N., 131
Newman, M., 99 Rule, P., 169
Newport, C., 68 rumor cascades, 3
Nisbet, R., 143
Nussbaum, M., 31 Scharmer, O., 157n11, 160, 166
Schön, D., 49, 60, 75, 81, 83, 176
order response, 61, 169, 173 reflection in action, 49
organizational mindlessness, 80, 161 technical rationality, 60, 77
self, the, 38, 46, 52, 63, 84, 88, 89, 91, 144, 149,
Palmer, P., 34 150, 164, 165
Parks, R., 119 essentialist views of, 39–42
parrèsia, 120, 121 interactionist views of, 42–45
Pauling, L., 10 reflected best self, 41
Piaget, J., 43, 147 self-actualization,  40, 88
Picasso, P., 128 self-determination theory, 40, 43, 46, 63, 65, 67,
Polanyi, M., 85 88, 95, 150
polarized attitudes, 18 self-development theory,  40
political capital Senge, P., 38, 50, 51, 65, 75, 108, 140, 155
defined, 111 creative tension, 51, 57, 65, 66, 140
politics, 4, 74, 103, 105, 106, 108, 114, 115, 120, personal mastery, 50, 51
121, 121n4, 138, 143 shallow learning, see drive-by learning
defined, x, 109 shallow work, 68
harnessing power of, 172–173 Sherif, M., 127, 139n4
Popper, K., 73 Shermer, M., 6, 9
positive psychology, 40 Shore, Z., 17, 110, 111
post-truth,  1 Shtulman, A., 15
practice-based research,  27 Shulman, L., 175
procedural justice, 120, 121, 135 Sinclair, A., 161, 163
project premortem, 168 social, 94–97
prospective hindsight, 167 social capital, 80, 90, 98, 101, 102, 104, 106, 111,
Putnam, R., 95, 96, 168 118, 121, 132, 144, 159, 169, 171

Index 197
social learning field, 138 Twitter, 1, 3, 14, 68, 111
social learning systems, 101, 102, 103, 143 Tzu, L., 140, 145, 146, 168
Socrates, x, 4, 38, 145
Sperber, D., 10, 11, 15, 16, 77, 94, 95, 96, 97, Ubuntu, 150
107n3 Uhl-Bien, M., 61, 119, 169
Staples, M., 122, 127
Staw, B., 64 Vaill, P., 5, 38, 47, 48, 49, 50, 81, 83, 98, 105, 161
strategic planning, 51, 69, 71 institutional learning, 5, 6, 48, 81
synapses, see brain permanent white water, 5, 6, 47, 48, 50
systems sensing, 155 reflective beginner, 49, 51, 83, 98, 161
reflexive learning, 50
tacit knowledge, 83, 85, 148 Vince, R., 103, 104
Tao Te Ching, 145, 168 Vurdejla, I., 152
Tart, C., 46, 157n12, 161 Vygotsky, L.
tempered radicals, 173 scaffolding, 58, 105
Tetlock, P., 96, 97 zone of proximal development, 58, 66, 67, 140
thought leadership, 175–176
Torbert, W. Weick, K., 161, 162
action inquiry, 46 Wenger, E., 100, 101, 102, 143, 169
action logics, 47 Wergin, J., 34, 63, 83, 86, 129, 142, 171, 175
conventional, 47, 51 Will, George, 121n2
postconventional, 47, 50, 51, 53, 147 Willer, R., 91, 94
liberating structures, 98 wisdom, 28, 52, 143, 145, 148
Treasure, J., 170 Wlodkowski, R., 33, 34, 35, 93, 94
truth decay, 1
Tuchman, B., 18n4, 110 Yorks, L., 97, 98, 99, 100, 107n6, 128, 129, 144,
Twain, Mark, 19, 68 174

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Deep Learning in A Disorienting World

Uploaded by

Deep Learning in A Disorienting World

Uploaded by

DEEP LEARNING IN A DISORIENTING WORLD

is Professor of Education Studies at Antioch University’s Graduate School of

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

© Cambridge University Press 2020

ISBN 978-1-108-48022-2 Hardback

1 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

2 How We Learn: A Short Primer

6 The Importance of Others

7 The Influence of Politics on Deep Learning

8 Constructive Disorientation Through the Arts

9 The Art of Maintaining Essential Tensions

10 Cultivating a Deep Learning Mindset

1.1 Sources and outcome of confirmation (myside) bias

2.1 The human brain

2.2 The limbic system

2.3 Experiential learning cycle

3.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

5.1 The development of expertise

5.2 The deep learning mindset

8.1 World War II poster

8.2 The deep learning mindset with aesthetic experience added

9.1 The deep learning mindset, complete

1 The Troggs, 1966.

Why Deep Learning Is So Important …

So convenient it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to

1.1 Why Deep Learning Is So Important

2 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.1 Why Deep Learning Is So Important 3

4 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.1 Why Deep Learning Is So Important 5

6 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard

1.2.1 Farewell to the Rationalist Philosophy

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 7

1.2.2 Why Personal Belief Systems Are So Resistant to Change

8 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 9

PERCEIVED Intuitive Cognitive CONFIRMATION

Figure 1.1 Sources and outcome of confirmation (myside) bias

10 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 11

12 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 13

14 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 15

16 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 17

18 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.

Inferior temporal gyrus

Dorsal (superior) Temporal lobe

Figure 2.1 The human brain

2.1 Inside Your Brain

Figure 2.2 The limbic system

2.1.1 The physiology of learning

Give up? The answer is in the endnote.4

2.2 Experiential Learning Theories 25

2.2 Experiential Learning Theories

2.2 Experiential Learning Theories 27

Figure 2.3 Experiential learning cycle

2.2 Experiential Learning Theories 29

2.3 The Role of Emotion in Learning 31

2.3 The Role of Emotion in Learning

2.4 Motivation and Learning in Adults

2.4 Motivation and Learning in Adults 33

There’s something I must do first. I must educate myself.

3.1 The Self and Development

3.1 The Self and Development 39

Figure 3.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

character, revealed by the narratives we tell ourselves and others? Or is it

3.1.1 Essentialist Views of Self

3.1.1.1 Self-​Development Theory

3.1 The Self and Development 41

3.1.1.2 Reflected Best Self

3.1.2 Interactionist Views of Self

3.1.2.1 The Legacy of John Dewey

2 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

4 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

6 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 7

1.2.2 Why Personal Belief Systems Are So Resistant to Change

8 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 9

Figure 1.1 Sources and outcome of confirmation (myside) bias

10 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 11

12 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 13

14 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 15

16 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

1.2 Why Deep Learning Is So Hard 17

18 Why Deep Learning Is So Important … and So Hard

Figure 2.1 The human brain

2.1 Inside Your Brain

Figure 2.2 The limbic system

Figure 2.3 Experiential learning cycle

2.4 Motivation and Learning in Adults

2.4 Motivation and Learning in Adults 33

Figure 3.1 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

3.1.1 Essentialist Views of Self

3.1.1.1 Self-Development  Theory

3.1.1.2 Reflected Best Self

3.1.2 Interactionist Views of Self

3.1.2.1 The Legacy of John Dewey

3.2 Self-Development in Organizations

3.2.2 Permanent White Water

4.2 Constructive Disorientation in Others 65

4.2 Constructive Disorientation in Others 67

4.2.3 A Setting for “Deep Work”

4.2 Constructive Disorientation in Others 69

The Importance of Others 89

90 The Importance of Others

92 The Importance of Others

94 The Importance of Others

96 The Importance of Others

The importance of social capital as a resource for deep learning is cross-

98 The Importance of Others

100 The Importance of Others

102 The Importance of Others

104 The Importance of Others

106 The Importance of Others

Figure 6.1 The deep learning mindset, including the social learning field