This weekend I was part of a three day, thirty-six hour, group relations conference called Leadership in a World of Difference, or something like that. The conference was based on the Tavistock model and was part of a Group Dynamics course that I am taking. In this event, essentially the people are brought together to create a temporary organization that allows members engage in a spirit of inquiry about how groups function. The group is split, convened, divided, poked and prodded into a variety of situations that serve as catalysts for engagement. The mantra of the experience is to examine the "here and now". There is much fodder for a lengthy examination of the conference (I could just paste tweets and FB posts of some of my colleagues to give a sense of the variety of emotions that were experienced) but there was one moment at the end of the weekend that was really salient to me in terms of teaching and learning.
Some of the participants are Conference Management, including the director and a number of consultants. The role of the consultants was hotly explored over the course of the weekend, mostly in the informal settings (outside of the formal conference). In group settings, their role was mostly silent-- they sat and observed and sometimes offered some guiding questions, or
provocative thoughts, but they did not lead (in a traditional sense), or in most cases, evaluate the process.
It was amazing how uncomfortable this made the participant members. While the goal of the conference was stated (while it was by design not concrete, it was clear) there was a sense that consultants needed to take on a role of helping participant members understand what we were experiencing and what the endpoint should look like. The challenge of this, of course, is that they didn't know. Each individual experience informs the greater experience of the group which is a totally organic and unique organism. While there are some predictable patterns based on group theory, nothing is
set in stone and nothing is for sure. The experience that the consultants bring to the mix is a quiet and persistent patience to let the exploration occur.
This reminds me of really good teaching. One of my colleagues from back in Hawaii has a blog tag line: "I do my best teaching when my students don't notice I am there." I've always liked that and think that it is exactly what was going on this weekend. As participants in this conference we were immersed in a carefully planned and crafted environment. We were then let loose to see what we could get out of it, what we could learn. At the end of the weekend there was great frustration on the part of a number of members that they didn't get more support, that they needed more help.
Then, there were some energetic and impassioned voices that asked us to look carefully at the helplessness that our neediness for guidance
displayed. Why were some so unwilling to take accountability for their own experience and their own learning? Why the anger that the management didn't make the endpoint more clear and hold hands to help members get there?
As with good teaching, the management created an environment in which meaningful learning and inquiry would be fostered. The end point was not imagined, because that would be limiting. Similarly, if I assign a project to my students, might it better if I know less about what, exactly, the outcome will be? Is it good, and sufficient to create an environment to promote learning and let them loose? That is what constructivist teaching is all about. The ideal is students learning or creating something previously unimagined. When students have accountability for their experience, then they are truly learning and creating. After this weekend, I have a new hope for my students: that in their futures, they will encounter experiences like mine this weekend as rich and rewarding opportunities to create and explore meaning. And they will be well practiced in this at least in small part because of the time I spent with them.
