Sometimes, in my experience quite often, things do not work out as you would hope. I came across a blog post this week that reminded me of this in the context of the doctoral journey.
Source of image Loretos Journey Towards a PhD blog
https://loretoonajourney.wordpress.com/
This image of the ups and downs of a doctoral journey captures well the dynamics of any sustained exploration into the unknown. It seems to me that it is precisely because such journeys are full of ups and downs, turns and twists, obstacles, potholes and dead ends that they test our character and resolve and create the intrinsic motivations and desires to succeed that enable our creativity to flourish. One of the reasons for this is that these departures from what we hope will happen - are the sites that open up new possibilities. While the impediments that inhibit our progress or even set us back can make us feel bad they make us react and respond in an ecological way with our contexts and our physical and social world. They make us search for solutions to problems that we didn't even know existed until we found them. They make us do things that we would not have done had our unfolding present followed the pathway we had hoped and we experienced these things physically, emotionally and cognitively and learn.
Source of image Loretos Journey Towards a PhD blog
https://loretoonajourney.wordpress.com/
This image of the ups and downs of a doctoral journey captures well the dynamics of any sustained exploration into the unknown. It seems to me that it is precisely because such journeys are full of ups and downs, turns and twists, obstacles, potholes and dead ends that they test our character and resolve and create the intrinsic motivations and desires to succeed that enable our creativity to flourish. One of the reasons for this is that these departures from what we hope will happen - are the sites that open up new possibilities. While the impediments that inhibit our progress or even set us back can make us feel bad they make us react and respond in an ecological way with our contexts and our physical and social world. They make us search for solutions to problems that we didn't even know existed until we found them. They make us do things that we would not have done had our unfolding present followed the pathway we had hoped and we experienced these things physically, emotionally and cognitively and learn.
I can offer an example of this in my current unfolding present. About 10 months ago I began working on an edited book with Ron Barnett, we created a draft proposal and identified a dozen contributors, which we began contacting in January. What we hoped would happen (our plan) was that the people we contacted would accept our invite and we would progress along the timeline we had created towards our goal. But of course half the people we invited declined our invitation and I git quite demoralised because the vision I had for the book was no longer possible. I began to languish and the more I languished the worst I felt. It was easy to put the book on one side as there were so many other things to do. This week I was shocked out of my lethargy by an email from one of the people who had offered to contribute, trying to find out where we were with the book. It galvanised me into searching again for thinkers and writers who I might invite and after a day of diligent searching I ffound two people who, if they agree to contribute will open up the idea of learning ecologies in new and exciting ways.
One of these writers - Denise DeLuca uses ecological thinking as a way of stimulating innovation through bio mimicry. Her book "Re-Aligning with Nature" Ecological Thinking for Radical Transformation contains lots of interesting ideas (see video below) One of my take aways from the book is contained in the question What is nature's paradigm? 'maybe nature is not efficient, perhaps efficiency is not a goal of nature? Perhaps this idea has relevance for education which more and more seems to embrace the efficiency paradigm... It certainly makes sense to me in terms of my own ecologies for learning.. they are not founded on a paradigm of efficiency but on the desire to learn that requires investments that are often not efficient!
Ron readily agreed with my suggestion and so this morning I emailed Denise and 3 hours later she had replied with such enthusiasm that I feel quite energised.
One of these writers - Denise DeLuca uses ecological thinking as a way of stimulating innovation through bio mimicry. Her book "Re-Aligning with Nature" Ecological Thinking for Radical Transformation contains lots of interesting ideas (see video below) One of my take aways from the book is contained in the question What is nature's paradigm? 'maybe nature is not efficient, perhaps efficiency is not a goal of nature? Perhaps this idea has relevance for education which more and more seems to embrace the efficiency paradigm... It certainly makes sense to me in terms of my own ecologies for learning.. they are not founded on a paradigm of efficiency but on the desire to learn that requires investments that are often not efficient!
Ron readily agreed with my suggestion and so this morning I emailed Denise and 3 hours later she had replied with such enthusiasm that I feel quite energised.
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