The Meaning of Learning

Learning pervades life and gives it meaning, both uniting us and making us different from each other. Its most advanced form is transformative learning, which often consumes our consciousness for hours on end. It is these forms that ultimately produce expertise and are the focus of this site.

Advanced learning usually begins with a dilemma. Do you feel like you are stagnating? Is daily life boring. Has it gotten out of balance with your work life? Does it feel like you are about to experience a change that you haven’t prepared for enough?

Such dilemmas focus our consciousness on examining them. We reflect on what caused them. Was it something we did or did not do? We discuss them with friends. Do they remember the events that led up to them or have ideas about what to do next? We decide on a new a new phase of one of our life pathways.

Once we identify this new phase we begin the long process of enabling ourselves to perform. We activate familiar forms of learning like rote practice. We seek instruction and feedback from people who have more experience than we do.

Finally, when we have prepared ourselves sufficiently, we take the new phase public. Our transformative learning has achieved its end. We have improved our minds, are having more fun, created a better work-life balance, or made ourselves more secure.

Dilemma, Examining, Enabling, and Performing are the DEEP steps of transformative learning. Expertise emerges after many such transformations and adds meaning to our lives.