learning might be improved by sharing a little jeopardy
Transcript of this video:
My friend, John Durrant, has written recently about the conditions in which our brains are most neuroplastic and primed for learning.
A lot of it is to do with being off-balance. I mean literally off-balance, the sort of thing you experience if you’ve tried to stand on one leg or do a headstand or handstand.
He even says some people do 5 or 10 minutes of that balancing practice to set themselves up for another learning activity.
And I kind of wanted to extend that idea: that I think being off-balance off-kilter, not just physically but kind of mentally or emotionally is quite conducive to being more creative.
I think it’s also interesting socially that people often comment on these videos that they quite like it when they see that I’m negotiating some kind of real or imagined hazard crossing the road if I’m on the streets of Cambridge, or ducking a tree if I’m by the river.
And I like to think that in teams we need to pay attention to creating spaces in which we can make mistakes together on the path to learning where we can actually allow ourselves in rehearsing for things to be off-balance together.
Because I think the feedback on these videos shows that being in that space with people willingly is socially very satisfying, as well as I think setting ourselves up to notice new things and make discoveries – rather than getting caught in the trap of always trying to perform to a standard of excellence.
(File this under team building!)
Photo by Jonathan Pendleton on Unsplash
