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Knowledge and Common Sense:
Leadership Essentials
By
Inseparables: Content and Process
In today’s quickly
changing world the body of knowledge is increasing at an alarming pace. Those
who know how to use knowledge most efficiently will be the ones most likely to
excel and emerge in positions of leadership. In the coming years, our
knowledge-based society will ask much more of us. Success will call for greater
creativity and adaptability. The need for ingenuity and hard work will not
change, but how we work will require ongoing education, higher order thinking
skills, and superior technological savvy.
While we have
sophisticated technological tools available to help manage the knowledge
behemoth, technology makes no claim that it provides the experiential base, the
“common sense” needed to function appropriately and successfully. Certainly,
technology does not supply the practical know-how required to lead others to
collective accomplishments. Simply put, a sound education upon which to build
leadership skills must include instruction in both knowledge and process. Process,
how we think and do, is as important as content, what we know.
To that end, an
ongoing educational debate revolves around the issue of emphasizing the
teaching of content versus the teaching of process. Which is of greater importance?
The answer seems obvious. When we get to the heart of the matter, instruction
in both domains is crucial to the development of an educated mind. And
instructional tools are readily available for educators to teach process that
leads to higher order thinking.
Acquiring a knowledge base in a specific content area, mastering a collection of facts, absent the skills to process that information and put it to effective use, slights initiative and sanctions dependency. Knowledge of a discipline does not automatically translate into the ability to apply facts and ideas so as to produce results in the work-a-day world. And if one mission of our society is to foster a citizenry capable of moving forward to the betterment of the whole, a citizenry from which spring competent leaders, knowledge and process must be stressed equally in the educational system.
Street-Smart
Leadership
Some contend that
in the past, learning took place mainly in schools.
However, a complete education has always demanded, or at least benefited from,
“street smarts.” It takes common sense to make good use of learning. It’s said,
too, that in our technological age learning takes place throughout life: before
we begin structured schooling, in early childhood, during formal schooling,
throughout our careers, and into retirement if the golden years are to be
meaningful. Educator parlance calls this “lifelong learning.”
But it seems that
lifelong learning has been around for ages. Finding meaning in all events of
life has long been the mechanism for achieving full potential. For example, in
the mid-1800’s, the American Federation of Labor leader Samuel Gompers began his formal schooling at the age of six. But
at age ten, Samuel had to quit school to help support his family. In his autobiography
Gompers recalled, “Like all children of the poor, we
early found our way to the city streets—the place where we began contacts and
struggles with our fellows. It is the education of the street that produces
that early shrewdness in the children of those who ‘have not’ that leaves an
ineradicable difference between them and the children of those ‘who have.’”
Gomper’s dearth of formal
schooling did not deter him from rising to great heights as an effective labor
leader. Gompers realized that as a child of the
working classes he had developed “a subconscious guiding impulse” that became
the “dominating influence” of his life. Family training and street smarts led Gompers to a keen sense of making the best use of the
information at his disposal. He intuitively knew how to process knowledge to
accomplish goals.
Gomper’s education embraced
experiences, relationships, family culture, and lifestyle. “These ‘real-life’
activities,” writes
Perhaps many of
today’s youth have fewer chances to acquire Gomper’s
“education of the street,” but this does not preclude common sense from being a
component of classroom instruction. If society is to continue to have a pool of
competent leaders to draw upon, knowledge of process as well as content must be
systematically taught. Preferably, all students will have the opportunity to
learn content and process hand-in-hand throughout their school years.
Process as Common
Sense
Highly effective leaders
may have an uncanny knack for continuously infusing content with process in
their thought patterns. It’s increasingly important that awareness for this
style of straight thinking be incorporated into traditional school cultures.
Indeed, the concept of process education or inquiry-based, experiential
learning has long stood at the forefront of instructional ideas in progressive
academies of knowledge.
Educators Arthur
Costa and Rosemarie Liebmann in their edited work, Envisioning
Process as Content (1996), have proposed revising all school
curricula to strengthen the teaching of process, including skills such as
critical thinking and problem solving. The dynamics of classroom learning can
reinforce the concentration on content when content serves as the tool for
teaching process.
Ultimately, the
linking of process and content should result in greater student mastery of each
discipline. When students learn to think through paradoxical situations, make
logical connections among disciplines, and find solutions in the midst of
ambiguous conditions, then leadership traits are being developed. The
assessment of students’ critical thinking skills and leadership potential could
become yet another significant measure of outcomes in the forward-looking
educational system.
The notion that
process can be identified and learned is not a new thought. In large part,
process involves the development of common sense originating from accumulated
experience. But experience is not simply encountering and collecting episodes
in real life. Experience involves paying attention to what’s going on around
you—deciphering and learning from what is significant.
British author Aldous Huxley well understood the intricacies of content
and process. Huxley considered the possibilities for humankind’s fuller
development. He wrote of “human potentialities,” using our intellectual gifts
in a more adequate way as thinking social beings. Huxley recognized the
importance of experience as something that is essential to realizing potential.
In Texts and
Pretexts (1932), Huxley wrote, “Experience is not a matter of having
actually swum the
The effective
leader pays attention at critical times and knows how to analyze, interpret,
and coordinate data. That is, the superior leader efficiently processes the
knowledge he/she has amassed through experience. This is a trait that can be
taught and honed with practice in the classroom.
Teaching and
Learning Process Skills
While content
builds on our repertoire of ideas and gives us essential information, process
is the vehicle that enables us to use content. Teachers provide plenty of
content (the “what” part of learning), but they may expect that students
already know process (the “how” of using the information). Too often educators
assume that their students have an understanding of critical thinking, problem
solving, and decision-making, elements important to successful living as well
as crucial to attaining the capacity for leadership. Yet, if students have not
mastered process skills, they may find it difficult or impossible to fold new
content into their storehouse of knowledge.
In the traditional
classroom, conceptually organized content is generally the focus of study.
Learners are “empty containers” to be filled with knowledge from the
well-informed teacher. Learning relies on textbooks and is validated by correct
answers. Students appear isolated, the assessment of learning is distinct from
teaching, and gauging the mastery of content occurs almost entirely through
some form of standardized testing.
However, in
classrooms which nurture higher order thinking—thinking important to fostering
leadership potential—lessons examine practical
problems. In contrast to the traditional classroom, the “thinking classroom”
follows a constructivist model, constructing new knowledge and understanding
from authentic experience.
In the
constructivist classroom, students are viewed as “thinkers” capable of developing
their own perspectives and ideas. Like the students, the teacher is a lifelong
learner, and the teacher facilitates the acquisition of knowledge and the
understanding of process. Multiple activities and data sources are used along
with texts. Students work in cooperative groups and learn to evaluate and
prioritize information. To supplement formal testing, assessment occurs
regularly through ongoing teacher observation and evaluation of the students’
performance and product. Such a learning environment promotes the growth of
leadership and problem-solving skills.
The quality of
day-to-day life in the workplace, home, and community requires that the
individual know how to solve practical problems. Finding solutions to these
problems involves the use of a complex set of reasoning abilities that usually
must be applied under a changing set of circumstances. Seeking the correct
information, evaluating possible consequences, drawing conclusions, and
choosing the best alternative are steps applied to practical problem solving.
These skills are necessary to the acquisition of competent leadership
abilities.
Real life demands
that content and process work together. For education to be relevant, the
teaching and learning of process skills must occur in the classroom alongside
the acquisition of content. The development of a cohort of future leaders,
youth trained to their maximum capabilities, depends on an educational system
that advocates and implements instructional methods where content and process merge
and become inseparable.
References
Brooks, J.G. and
Brooks, M.G. (1993). In search of understanding: The case for constructivist
classrooms.
Costa,
A. and Liebmann, R. (1996). Envisioning process as content: Toward a
renaissance curriculum. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Gompers, S. (1948). Seventy years of life and labor: An autobiography, 2 vols.
Huxley, A. (1932). Texts
and pretexts: An anthology of commentaries. Introduction
Kedro, M.J. (1975). Autobiography as a
key to identity in the progressive era.
The Journal of Psychohistory, vol. 2, no. 3.
Retrieved
Thomas, G. (2004, July). The twelve
principles of personal leadership: Principle #2 – continuous education. weLEAD Online Magazine. Retrieved February 9, 2005 , from http://www.leadingtoday.org/Onmag/july04/gt-july04.html.
Comments to: editor@leadingtoday.org
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About the authors:
Madonna A. Conkin (conkin@bresnan.net)
is a family and consumer science educator and a consultant in experiential
learning that infuses critical thinking skills into dynamic curricular models.
An award-winning teacher, she resides in