Circle Reflections: Meaning making as a practice for social regeneration
Regen Collective is a community of practice for the regeneration of education and learning. Each month, educators gather in a circle of regeneration to explore the evolution of education and learning towards holistic and humanitarian practices. We follow the PAUSE practice, a micro-version of Theory U, to take us on a deep dive journey. Our shared experiences cultivate synergy through deep listening and generative conversation, and inspires us to cultivate practical applications of social regeneration.
In our Community Regen Circle for August 2022, we explored the power of meaning making and how it can support participatory learning and the regeneration of the education system.
We are meaning-making beings, creating worlds within worlds with the power of our understanding. Yet the times we are in call for a special sort of discernment about the meaning we can make, and the life experiences that ripple out from our perceptions.
Representations can be reductionistic, canceling, desensitizing, and collapsing life down to an imprisonment or enslavement of narrow understanding and perpetuating the cycle of Absencing. Representations can also serve as invitations to step into deep, rich, ever-widening, authentic experiences, cultivating the Presencing cycle.
‘The map is not the territory’ and the curriculum is not the education. When a curriculum is perceived to be a vehicle for which we can authentically connect with one another and our environment, then the meaningful experiences that we generate as multi-dimensional living beings are understood to be the true essence of education.
In our generative conversation during this session, we explored how our interior condition changes the meaning we are making in any learning experience. As educators, we can present education as an opportunity or as an enforcement. Cultivating our presence and supporting one another with awareness practices gives us the strength and capacity to adapt curriculum and content to support the co-creation and emergence of participatory learning and the experiences of the Presencing cycle.
A school is often assumed to be an enforcement of regimented learning due to the cycles of harm and Absencing. We can cultivate a resilience to this assumption and invite participatory learning by presenting a class or school as a resource and a library of learning experiences. With this gesture, students and community members can be encouraged to have a deeper understanding of how they can participate, co-create, and co-evolve their education.
See an excellent example of a school that transformed their approach with these documentaries about generative education at St. George’s school in the UK. An introduction to the school HERE and the story of the transformation HERE .
As educators, we may not be able to change an entire school or district, but we can at least develop practices within our work that invite the co-creation of meaning making. While we may not see an economic impact, these practices send ripples out across the participatory field, supporting a non-violent and evolutionary shift from the inside out.
Developing reflective practices for the classroom is a powerful way to bring meaning-making to any education experience. We can invite students to participate in meaning-making by acknowledging the challenges we are all facing and creating a safe space for them to be participants in co-creating their learning experiences. Reflective practices can also be utilized as assessment models rather than solely using grading as enforced judgement.
Language is also powerful for meaning-making, either enhancing or suppressing our experiences and co-creative capacities. As educators, we can enhance a learning experience by allowing our very words to invite, invoke, and support our deeper sources of knowing and the curiosity, compassion, and courage of Presencing. It is also important to be aware that assumptions and mis/interpretations about language pull us into cycles of absencing. A word can be experienced many ways. As educators in a time of immense disruption and paradigm change, we need to continuously qualify our words to invoke the deeper meanings that invite Presencing rather than the assumptions that trigger absencing.
You can join in this learning journey with us. With journaling, drawing, crafting, or movement, you are invited to explore this introspection:
When has a learning experience, content, or curriculum been a reductionistic, suppressing experience? When has it been an invitation and vehicle to a deeper meaning-making experience?
How might you bring meaning-making and participatory learning into your work as an educator?
How might we encourage and empower more educators to cultivate their content and environment as an invitation to deeper meaning-making experiences and participatory learning? To acknowledge and move beyond the reductionism of the rules and content to the foundational, human, generative experiences?
Please share your insights and reflections in the comments below or with the Regen Collective community. What inspires you will also support others — a circle of regeneration.
You can access the recording of this Regen Circle as a member of Regen Collective HERE
Resonance words and reflections during this Regen Circle, gathered by the participants:
Our inner life awareness as first step in meaning making. Why are we here? What makes a good life? What do YOU want?
education as opportunity or enforcement
noticing the response-ability of teacher and student
Dance shifts between learner/teacher teacher/learner, all are guides staying open to the movement wherever it takes us
Stories can be re-written
inviting students to participate in meaning-making
witnessing as enhancing the present moment and the presence of teacher and student
Opening the heart, opening the cultivated inner space to the souls before us
our hearts can witness the full reality
Sensing as sense-making technology
weaving in the moment to the plan of the day, weaving in the fullest possible experience of reality to the set curriculum
Finding the opportunities to weave in the participatory
Find the freedom of authentic expression
The quest is to reconnect
When has a learning experience, content, curriculum been a reductionistic, suppressing experience? When has it been an invitation and vehicle to a deeper meaning-making experience?
An image or metaphor: What is more real, the learners in the room or The Official Curriculum? (Image — a Document falling and crushing a group of high-school students on one side, the students building something on top of a Document on the other)
ignoring or paying attention to what resonates
changing small aspects of the curriculum so that there is an Invitation to a participatory experience
playful approaches to learning
The contrast of “formal” analysis with “informal” playful creation
How might we encourage and empower more educators to cultivate their content and environment as an invitation to deeper meaning-making experiences? To acknowledge and move beyond the reductionism of the rules and content to the foundational, human, generative experiences
co-creating learning experiences and co-creating during learning experiences
libraries as an invitation to the participatory
schools as resources rather than regiments
Call and response, resonance — the materials you seek “somehow” find you
inviting teachers to cultivate generative experiences
Help teachers become aware of the stories they’re living in (especially the ones they don’t know they’re living in) — it’s their operating system
What are we measuring? Value? Find the opportunities in what isn’t working? Why?
acknowledging the oppressive experiences and then inviting participants to sense into the cracks into new participatory experiences
assessment as a crack, an opportunity, an invitation to encourage and empower meaning-making
assessments are enhancing and perpetuating absencing cycles
developing assessment practices based on participatory experiences and the presencing cycle
Supporting systems/administrators that nurture the inner lives of teachers.
Find assessment structures and practices that honor the needs of the “old” system AND what’s emerging
Thank you to everyone who participated in this Community Regen Circle and the co-creation of collective wisdom and regeneration. Members of Regen Collective can access the documentary and articles about generative education at St. George’s school HERE.
You are invited to join us for a creative exploration and generative conversation with Community Regen Circles HERE. We gather on the first Friday of each month, connecting with members worldwide via Zoom video call. All you need is a quiet space, journaling or arts tools, a warm heart and an open mind.
You can learn more about the PAUSE practice and Regen Circles HERE Please consider supporting the work of Regen Collective with a financial contribution HERE
Regen Collective was created within the Societal Transformation Lab of The Presencing Institute in order to co-create awareness practices for social regeneration and cultivate the conditions needed for the evolution of education and learning towards holistic and humanitarian practices. We look forward to cultivating this with you!
