Welfare for all? If yes, have one not to learn participation will and skills in practical work? Will not critical reflection be integral in this learning and be helped by good theory leading to enhanced force of will?

Welfare for all? If one is uncertain or not thought about it, but have started to learn empowering participation under a good trainer/facilitator in practical work. Then personal knowledge of a diverse group of persons emerge and critical reflections will start. May not a yes to welfare for all and a force of will (most?) often develop?

This page

might be the first of some pages trying to illustrate key aspects of the natural way of acting and learning. PLA-work led me to see that a main benefit of using the visual approach is that one effectively can summarize main aspects of complex issues for oneself and communicate the complexity to others. - Many thanks to the IDS moderated Learning Participation e-Dialogue for ideas and confirmations of ideas. Also the PAR e-list and of course innumerable other people and texts and reflections have inspired! The formal responsibility the page(s) lays in full on myself. Later the page(s) may be translated to Norwegian.

I make these pages available in the same spirit as participants develop in a well facilitated PLA process. Thus, comments of any kind but not at least those which may lead to revisions of the page(s) are very welcome!

Holmlia Norway June 2003, 

Good reflections! Truls

An attempt to illustrate the 6 kinds of input to a person’s own learning.

The same or related concepts and terms are for example: epistemiology, creation of one’s own personal opinion, own understanding of some principles of the world.

The understanding change (often irregularly, cf. "incidental") from time to time.

Some very few persons write down their own theories which – if acknowledged by enough people with influence are theories in the terms common usage (and the unarmed bars/short lines in fig 1.).

1. Felt own instincts = evolutionary "knowledge", especially about what may be fine for me and my species ( cf. intuition)

2. Directly observed = actual processes and structures seen by oneself, field work etc.

3. Unqualified books = bad books as one LP-dialogue contributor named it = untypical and/or badly observed stories

4. Reliable books = Good books = well chosen, observed and honestly told stories

5. Bad theory = theory based on another theory without interpreting (modifying) it with help of new observations and cases

6. Good theory = theory based on earlier theory which repeatably was checked and partly modified according to praxis / direct observations

Comments:

opinion changes according to one’s incident mood and own more stable pattern of reflection as well as of new use of info or new info available from any of the given sources

The possibility and willingness to combine infosources 1. and 2. leads to "learning by doing" and

"experimental learning". Reflections are necessary for such learning from experience. Such reflection will weight own and directly observed praxis highly in the total creation of a (revised) opinion.