Self-Organised Learning

People of all ages learn by making sense of their world, thereby constructing personal meaning. Effective learners become aware of how they achieve this and can actively organise the process for themselves.. They continue to experiment as they approach each and every event as an opportunity for learning and become engaged in a reflective conversational process which the authors call Self-Organised-Learning (SOL).

The book offers a compendium of repertory grid based reflective conversational techniques for promoting SOL. The authors have transformed the use of the repertory grid from a static, prescriptive, measuring instrument to a dynamic, person-centred reflective tool enabling an exploration of the quality of the personal meanings people construct as they act in their world. A suite of conversational Computer Programs, including FOCUS, SPACED GRID, TRIGRID, PEGASUS, CHANGE GRID, EXCHANGE GRID and SOCIOGRID as well as the grid conversation for achieving awareness, reflection and review were devised and developed in the course of over 30 years of action research in education, industry, and government. This method is called the Learning Conversation. By eliciting their personal meaning and explicitly mirroring this back to them by means of the Learning Conversation, individuals, pairs, teams, families, and organisations as a whole can be guided to reflect on the quality of their meaning­ constructing process. Many examples are reported.

Personal meaning is the basis for all our actions and awareness of this process by means of the Learning Conversation empowers self-organised change and this is an iterative process. The ability to guide this process is essential for tutors, teachers, managers, counsellors and therapists to enable SOL. They need to understand this method and practice this for themselves to better enable their students/clients achieve self-organisation in their learning. Once achieved individuals continue to learn life-long.