"What's Missing?"

Finding New Directions, New Topics, New Discoveries in our Fields

by Connecting, Probing, Reflecting, Creating

Instead of asking where you see yourself in five or ten years, where do you see your chosen field(s) of study?
If you looked at your passion or the field you are engaged in, what’s missing?
Where is it possible to find new directions, new topics, new discoveries?
What tools and techniques do you use to identify and evaluate a possible breakthrough idea or question?
How do you use other fields of inquiry and frames of reference to create momentum and increase your own curiosity?

In the 1850s, gold miners cursed that “blasted blue stuff” until they found out they found out this was silver at the Comstock Lode. They were digging in the right place but didn’t recognize the treasure.

In 440 BC Greek were talking about the idea of atoms but it took over two thousand years to actually “discover” them. They recognized the treasure but weren’t finding it at the time.

Where are the explorers and philosophers not pursuing the path you see they could take? Is there a tangent or something hidden in plain sight? If not a breakthrough, what are the small steps or tools that build on something needed for a change?

Our Collaborative Exploration (CE) in November is one in which participants investigate their personal or work-related field(s) to understand the processes of change or to recognize the opportunities for change to occur.

• In brief, CEs are an extension of Problem- or Project-Based Learning (PBL) and related approaches to education in which participants address a scenario or case in which the problems are not well defined, shaping their own directions of inquiry and developing their skills as investigators and prospective teachers (in the broadest sense of the word). (For more background, read the prospectus.)
• If you want to know what a CE requires of you, review the expectations and mechanics.
  • on hangout for 1 hour each week in November on Mondays at 7 PM EST (USA). These dates are November 6, 13, 20, and 27. The URL for the first hangout will be provided only to those who register (via http://bit.ly/CEApply), which entails making a commitment to attend that 1st session and at least 2 of the other 3 hangouts.

• If you are wondering how to define a meaningful and useful approach to the topic, let us present a scenario for the CE and hope this stimulates you to apply to participate. We will then let CE participants judge for themselves whether their inquiries are relevant.
• Intended outcomes for participants of this CE are two kinds:
  • a) tangible: that reflect your inquiries and plans about the principles or theory about personal and group change that underlie workshop and related group processes; and
  • b) experiential: being impressed at how much can be learned with a small commitment of time using the CE structure to motivate and connect participants.

Applications are sought from teachers, researchers, graduate students, facilitators, and activists who are interested in facilitating discussion, reflection, avid learning, and clarifying one's identity and affinities in relation to the CE topic. Newcomers and return participants are welcome; we ask that you support each other in the process as part of the learning and connecting on deeper levels.

Scenario

If your chosen field needed you to solve the mystery of "What's Missing?" how and where would you start? Why are you best to offer some suggestions on the possibilities? With whom could you collaborate to do this study well? What will you learn or apply from others doing the same search in their own fields of interest?

This four-session Collaborative Exploration (CE) is intended to allow participants to reflect on the assumptions and structures that guide the research, development, and language of your chosen field(s). From this probing and connecting, you are invited to consider making those processes or areas for new explorations more effective in some sense(s) that you deem important. Activities will, as they have in CEs since 2013 (and NewSSC workshops since 2004), build on what the particular group of participants contribute and employ a range of tools and processes so as to support and learn from each other's inquiries. The topic means that the processes of the CE (and NewSSC workshops) and the ways they make space for people to "connect, probe, reflect, and create" will end up being subject to compare-and-contrast with other approaches within the group interactions.