When the brain goes “off piste”

Richard Potts is director of the Human Origins Programme at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History where he studies how humans evolved over millions of years to be the dominant species on the earth.  The first thing this tells us is that, to fit that lot in, he may have the largest business card in history.

However that isn’t why I mention him.

Amongst many of his outstanding researches he has developed a theory about learning called Variability Selection Theory.

The basic premise behind his theory is that there are two powerful features of the human brain:

• a database to store knowledge
• the ability to then deviate off the database to solve problems and learn new things

It is this second characteristic that separates us humans from the rest of the animal kingdom and it is suggested that this is how we came to be as successful a species as we are during our transition from living in trees to roaming the Savannah.

Apparently we had to do this as the world was undergoing a period of climate change causing global temperatures to rise and the trees to die off. (And not a diesel engine or a jet aircraft in sight. Hmm……..move on!)

It gives us the ability to learn in rapidly changing environments. We constantly update the database, then get data that doesn’t fit, go “off piste” to resolve the issue and add that experience or information to the database.

There are consequences that trainers and facilitators need to bear in mind as a result of this theory:

• Training events that focus only on the database do not acknowledge the creativity we crave and may be perceived as unchallenging and dull. I am tempted to mention multi-slide PowerPoint presentations at this point….. but I won’t.

• Training events that focus only on going “off piste” become too challenging as we have insufficient data to draw on from the database leaving us frustrated and confused. (See our recent post: Are your’s firm or fluffy?)

On page 38 of his book “Brain Rules“, John Medina likens this to a jazz musician. The best jazz musicians have an awesome understanding of their instruments and the musical theory that goes with playing them (their database) but when they play they frequently improvise and attempt to stretch the rules of music (going “off piste”)

In our world you may know people who are immensely knowledgeable but lack the creativity to expand their databases beyond their immediate needs. You may also know people who appear to be very creative but lack the underpinning knowledge that allow their ideas to be credible. (Described by John Medina as “riffing on an air guitar”)

For trainers, designers and facilitators we must acknowledge the need to feed off the database AND go “off piste” to feed our need to be creative. To create deep and  rich  learning opportunities for our learners we need to ensure we allow them to access their databases and then go “off piste” to create new understandings and learnings.

And this leads me to think about another post for another day.

When is it ok for the trainer to fill in the gaps in the database? And – does this mean you can’t train in a subject you don’t know anything about?

evolution image by brentdanley
off piste image by thomas_tkacsik

Edit:
Read Part Two – Despite not knowing the answers, Paul expands on the questions: “When is it OK for the trainer to fill in gaps in the learner’s current knowledge” and “Can you train in a subject you know nothing about”?

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