Workshop+on+meaning-making+learning+(Cyd+B.+Weissman)

//A conversation with fifteen recipient teams of The Legacy Heritage Innovation Grant facilitated by Cyd B. Weissman of The RE-IMAGINE Project of the Experiment in Congregational Education.// //_// The **Legacy Heritage Innovation Grant** supports systemic innovation for a reason- Jewish educational rhetoric will become reality when all parts of a congregation working inter-dependently to achieve common goals. Phrases like “life -long learner,” “love of Torah,” “Jewish identify” define what we hope to achieve. These kinds of goals require the strength of a community to model and support. They require the community to focus on engaging the whole learner-the mind, the heart and the soul. The Legacy Grant supports congregations striving to have all the parts of their congregation, leadership, teacher learning, curriculum, governance, infrastructure work hand in hand to achieve the common goals of knowledge in action-learning that informs living. Simply stated this grant seeks to foster transformative learning. This is a daunting goal for an educational system that often falters in teaching even the basic skills like decoding Hebrew. But daunting is not impossible. Some of boldest innovators from across America and Israel who had received a second year of granting gathered to unearth the practices and principles of learning that is transformative. The outcome of transformative learning contrasts significantly with learning that seeks to purely build skills (e.g. prepare for a bar/bat mitzvah) or seeks to be purely fun. Rather it is learning that has explicitly expressed outcomes that fall within the overlapping domains of knowing, believing/feeling, doing/living and belonging. Jewish education has always held long term objectives such as “Jewish identity,” but has been short on both expressing outcomes that build toward that identification. Jewish education has been unclear about how to design learning that can achieve heart, hand, soul and mind outcomes. A visual that helps capture the domain of outcomes for transformative learning is below (Think Tank-Meaning Making Learning- The RE-IMAGINE Project, 2006).
 * How Do We Create Learning that Nurtures the Whole Person?**

Decades of hard work by Jewish educational leaders have demonstrated that learning that happens in an isolation of real community, best known as the drop off model, does not achieve these goals. Grantees have spent considerable energy redesigning the outer “architecture” of learning so it occurs within a striving community, has relationships at its center, engages the dynamic between family and child and take in to consideration the hardwiring/needs of an individual. Addressing these aspects of the learning architecture is essential if learning is to nurture believing, belonging, knowing and doing. (see chart below from Think Tank-Meaning making learning- The RE-IMAGINE Project, 2006). Fifteen educational teams, supported by the **Legacy Heritage Innovation Grant,** gathered to share their successes of how they crate learning that is transformative. Their stories, in turn, produced guiding principles and practices to direct the work of educational leaders creating the “interior design,” that is- the learning that takes place within their new architectural structures. Prior to sharing their stories each pair of leaders read excerpts from Jewish and secular sources that described aspects of transformative learning for adults and children. The protocol for sharing their learning and their stories follows.

//Meaningful Moments Protocol (15 minutes)// 1. Each partner read one page from the handout “A Framework for Meaning Making Learning” (p. 2 or 3) 2. Underline phrases that resonate with you--either because they confirm or challenge what you believe to be true about designing education that makes a positive difference in learners lives 3. Share the sentences you’ve underlined to enable your partner to build a connection to the same ideas you’ve underlined 4. Describe a time in your own teaching or learning that illuminates **how** to implement these ideas
 * THINK TANK Bet:** The Walk and Talk of Transformative Learning

//Design Principles Protocol// - In your small group identify a facilitator (keep people on time); a recorder (records principles and practices); and a reporter (will report results to the larger group in the end). 1. In mixed groups - Share your experiences and extrapolate general principles and practices for meaning making-transformative learning. 30 minutes Each colleague: a. Share the desired outcome for the learning experience. (2 minutes) b. Describe the learning experience with emphasis on how (3 minutes) c. Group asks clarifying questions (1-2 minutes) d. Group extrapolates general principles and practices for designing learning that can make a positive difference in learners’ lives (5 minutes) 2. Share with large group principle and practices. Add what’s missing. (15 minutes) 3. Return to professional partner. (15 minutes) a. Identify principles and practices that are essential b. Identify who will clearly identify goals for learners c. Identify how to ensure that if goals are focused on meaning making and transformation identified practices and principles will be incorporated in the work ahead


 * FOUR READINGS FOR REVIEW**

Meaning can be understood as a set of beliefs, attitudes, and commitments that act as a guiding source to bring about life satisfaction. Meaning acts as both an organizational construct by enabling an individual to make sense out of the world and one's experience, to assist in decision making, and to facilitate personal growth as well as serve a motivational function, giving inspiration and hope in life and providing impetus and incentive for action. Religion serves as a source of meaning through providing a sense of spirituality, experiences of transcendence, a belief system, and the social context of a faith community. Faith communities provide especially unique sources of meaning through the explicit teaching of beliefs, the modeling of values and beliefs, and providing opportunities to build interpersonal relationships in which young people can explore issues of meaning and experiences from which young people can assimilate meaning. (“Faith Communities as a Resource for Meaning,” Pamela Ebstyne King, Stanford University, 2002)
 * 1.** **Meaning-Making For Young People**

Adults who struggle with question of meaning frequently turn to “new learning” situations in order to understand their changes and sort out their ideas. Adult meaning-making is maximized in learning that is transformative rather than informational (Taylor, Marienau, and Fiddler, 2000)….transformative learning “centers on the learner’s abstraction of meaning; {it} is a deep approach to learning” that is interpretive and helps the learner to better understand reality and cope with change (Taylor, Marienau, and Fiddler, 2000). Educators who encourage transformative learning assume that the learner will change perspective by virtue of going through a process of reflection, analysis and interpretation (or reinterpretation) of information. According to Jack Mezirow, transformation involves changing a frame of reference about “habits of mind” and points of view that are no longer meaningful. When Jewish adults have disruptive or “disorienting” experiences that challenge previously held worldviews (such as the death of a parent, or relocation to a new community) they sometimes wonder if Judaism can help them to “understand” their situation in new ways. When these adults embark on new meaning making, new learning can transform their view of themselves as Jews. As Jewish adults mature and grapple with pressing questions and ambiguities they discover paradoxes in their thinking about Judaism and their lives as Jews. These paradoxical struggles may become especially salient when individuals attempt to “make meaning” during the adults years.
 * 2.** **Meaning Making: Adult Learning**

When Jewish adults are grappling with questions of meaning, they find it beneficial to engage in learning and discourse with other learners. The opportunity to actively dialogue with other Jews contributes significantly to Jewish meaning-making and adult Jewish growth. (Jewish lives, Jewish Learning, Tickton Schuster, p. 106 & 115)

“Meaning Making is not just a process that goes on in one’s head. As Brian Street reminds us, learners should not be ‘treated as though they are autonomous, as though they can be separated from society that’s given meaning to their uses of literacy.’ Thus students’ co-construction of meaning implies that their search for meaning is strongly influenced by social and cultural factors. Students, of course, bring to learning their genetic capabilities “wired” into their brains at birth. But they also bring their perceptions and interpretations of what Paulo Friere called ‘the world and the word,” i.e. their social histories, their experiences and knowledge, and their belief systems. Michael Crichton calls this social context the ‘invisible rule of the past.’ What this means is that students are significantly influenced by their interactions with their families, -community, teachers, peers and the authors of the texts they hear, see, read and otherwise experience.” (The Plainer Truths by Dr. Morton Botel, University of Pennsylvania p. 5, 2003)
 * 3.** **The Process of Making Meaning**

To fulfill the purposes of Jewish education it is vital that we fashion learning experiences that draw on and nurture the yearning for connectedness. In fact, we know that such experiences are both natural and powerful. People self-organize into networks and clusters to share experiences and ideas, to affirm their identities as unique individuals to and with others, and to seek from others confirmation, support and guidance. As much as we want to be in control of our own lives, we do not want to live those lives alone.
 * 4.** **Reshaping Education to Make Meaning**

This holds true all the more in the realm of education. Even in an age of technological wizardry where self-guided learning is an easy as a mouse click, personal relationships remain almost invariably at the core of our most memorable and impactful learning experiences. Jewish tradition sees the relationship of teacher and student as not only instrumentally important, but sacred…Beyond this, Jewish education must create must create opportunities for active learners to engage with others, to become immersed in social contexts where they can experience personal meaning through connectedness and community…[needs to] focus on creating experiences of genuine connectedness, not pseudo-connectedness that is too often experienced in institutional life of all sorts today.

Life-centered Jewish education means several things: 1) First it means that learning should be relevant to the lives of students; 2) Second, life centered Jewish education should deal with the whole person and the full set of human concerns, not just the “Jewish” part; and 3) Finally, life centered Jewish education must be grounded in real life experience. (Lippman Kanfer Institute, Redesigning Jewish Education for the 21st Century, 2006, p. 16-21)


 * PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES extrapolated from shared stories**



Sharing Stories of Meaning Making Transformative Learning….