The unicist reflection driven education enhances the strategic approach of the participants through their exposure to maximal and minimum strategy building, the root cause management of business problems, the development of destructive and non-destructive pilot tests and the learning of the management of fundamentals.
These processes are sustained by the use of unicist conceptual methods that allow developing solutions for adaptive systems and environments.
The Functionality of the Method
The Unicist Education was developed to empower the potential of individuals. The discovery that the concepts people have in their minds, drive their actions and that the concepts and fundamentals that underlie business functions define the root causes of their functionality, expanded the possibilities of business management. Concepts can only be learned when an individual is exposed to real actions producing real solutions.
This drove to the development of the unicist reflection driven education that is based on an action-reflection-action processes where people apprehend the concepts while solving business problems using the ontogenetic maps of the business functions involved.
The unicist unified field method defines the steps to diagnose, build solutions and develop pilot tests to ensure the results of the learning agreements with the participants.
Unicist reflection driven learning uses learning objects which are complex adaptive systems that have been designed to drive the learning processes of the learner without needing external guidance when working within functional learning environments.
A functional learning environment exists when there is a need of a specific knowledge to do something, the necessary capacities of an individual are available and accessible, and the learning objects have the necessary authoritative role to be accepted.
Learning objects cannot work when these conditions are exceeded and then the participation of a counselor becomes necessary to substitute these objects by personal action.
This is homologous to the autopilot of an airplane (paradigmatic example of an object) which needs to be substituted by the pilot when the conditions of the external environment exceed the possibilities of the object.
Adaptive Knowledge Acquisition: The Learning Context
A learning context is required before a learning process begins. Learning processes to deal with adaptive environments requires the existence of a real problem to be solved. The real problem to be solved is the driver of the learning process. It defines the “gravitational force” that sustains the process.
When there is no
real problem to be solved, the learning process has no substance and the “knowledge”
cannot be stored in the long-term memory because it is meaningless.
The catalyst of a
learning process is given by the need of improvement. The existence of a driver
and the real need for improvement provides the will the individual “uses” as a
catalyst in order to face and solve the problems of his/her learning process.
Learning implies
leaving things aside. If the problem can be solved using the preexisting
knowledge there is no need for learning because the problem does not exist.
Therefore, it is implicit
in a learning process for unsolved problems, that the individual leaves aside
the preexisting approach and enters the comprehension of the new approach
without cutting it down to what s/he knew.
Adults only do so
when they really need to solve a problem. The need for improvement is the catalyst
of learning processes and the problem to be solved is the gravitational force.
Only people who need
to improve will be able to learn. People who enter in a learning process
without having a real need to improve in order to solve real problems just enter
in self-fulfilling activities.
Unicist Reflection driven Education
The discovery of the triadic functionality of intelligence introduces a structural shift in the understanding of human adaptive behavior and enhances the development of educational programs.
The unicist reflection driven education enhances the strategic approach of the participants through their exposure to maximal and minimum strategy building, root cause management of business problems, the development of destructive and non-destructive pilot tests and the learning of the management of fundamentals.
The purpose of reflection driven learning is to install an adaptive knowledge object in the mind of the learner.
This implies that concepts as behavioral objects drive the accommodation process to accept new aspects that were not managed before and integrate these new aspects in mind through an assimilation process which requires storing this integration in the long-term memory of individuals. (Click on the ebook to access)
The Stages of Reflection Driven Learning
The research in the field of human learning led to the development of four stages to deal with the learning of the management of adaptive environments and the management of the root causes in these environments.
Homological Benchmarks – WHAT FOR
Specific Fundamentals – WHAT
Pilot Tests – HOW
Specific Reflection – WHY
Stage 1 – Homological Benchmarks
This stage drives the definition of what is needed to be achieved. The participants need to find the picture of other experiences they had to work as homological benchmarks. By definition, there is no possibility to transfer experiences. An experience is necessarily a subjective perception.
Stage 2 – Specific Fundamentals
After the guiding idea, WHAT FOR, has been defined, the approach to the learning objective can begin. This is necessarily focused on specific relevant aspects of a reality.
Stage 3 – Pilot Tests
The pilot tests are real applications in the specific action field that is being learned or in homologous fields when the full real application is too risky. There are two types of pilot tests: destructive tests and non-destructive tests.
Stage 4 – Specific Reflection
The specific reflection needs to produce improvements in the application process of what is being learned. It requires having a personal value adding approach in order to seek improvements.
The reflection process can be synthesized in the following steps:
Business Problem Solving
0 – Focus on the solution
1 – Dealing with projections – Beta brainwaves suffice – Destructive pilot tests
2 – Dealing with Introjections – Alpha brainwaves are needed – Non-destructive – Destructive pilot tests
Universal Problem Solving
3 – Dealing with integration -Theta brainwaves are needed – Non-destructive pilot tests
4 – Dealing with communion – Gamma brainwaves are needed – Results validation
5 – Dealing with the unified field
The reflection process is sustained by the Unicist AI Monitor that emulates the reflection process and drives the apprehension of the concepts that underlie business functions.
Emulating Solutions in Mind
Unicist Reflection requires having a final picture in mind, which means that the solution has to be emulated. It requires positive thinkers; individuals who see the bottle half full, not half empty.
The objective of emulating an action in mind before doing it, is to be able to have a maximal and a minimum strategy to ensure results.
The emulation process is based on apprehending the concept of the activity in order to have a behavioral object that is stored in the long-term memory to be used when necessary. It is based on the use of the unicist pilot test driven reflection process.
Reflection Driven Education Empowers Intelligence
The discovery of the triadic functionality of intelligence, that is based on the triadic functionality of the ontogenetic intelligence of nature, introduces a structural shift in the understanding of human adaptive behavior and enhances the development of educational programs towards driving people to assume a proactive role in the environment.
As human actions are driven by the concepts they have, conscious behavior begins by accepting that the concepts of what is being done have to be known. The discovery that ethics is in fact an intelligence that defines human intentions and evolves in the maturity process of an individual increased the level of transparency of human actions.
This opens the black-box of human behavior increasing the possibility of enhancing conscious behavior, by complementing the strategic intelligence and the logical type of thought, that increases the level of adaptiveness of individuals which increases efficacy, the level of value generation and complementation in the environment.
Efficacy can be defined as the capacity of producing results responsibly. Since adaptive environments are continuously evolving and require a dynamic approach to deal with them, efficacy, in adaptive environments, requires having a strategy to ensure the production of results.
The conscious intelligence of individuals defines their adaptive capacity, that is materialized by the strategies they use to influence the environment while being influenced by it. It applies to any field of human actions.
The different levels of strategy -operational, non-influential, specific and universal- are inclusive and require achieving superior levels of consciousness. The synergy generated by the collective intelligence, in institutionalized environments, allows building strategic committees that permit integrating intelligences to build a functional strategy.
The basic condition to manage adaptive strategies is defined by the functionality of the ethical intelligence, that is required to manage a specific environment.
When the ethical intelligence used, is consistent with the one required by the environment, individuals are able to use their conscious intelligence to exert influence. If the ethical intelligence is not consistent, the development of the unicist reflection process, driven by destructive and non-destructive pilot tests, allows solving the problem and assuming an influential role.
The recovery of the brain after strokes demonstrated that only actions develop neural functions. This applies to any adaptive behavioral learning, which requires an action-reflection-action process.
Thinking allows using the intelligence an individual has, but hinders the development of new complementary functions to exert more influence while being influenced by the environment.
That is why thinking is functional when the level of adaptiveness of an individual suffices, while the development of a higher level of influence requires investing the necessary energy, in an action-reflection-action process, until the brain is able to emulate the new functions and to transform these emulations into results.
Unicist Teaching Hospitals in Business
Introduction
The human body is by definition a complex adaptive system. That is why medical practice can be considered a paradigmatic example of complex problem solving. Therefore, medical education can be used as a benchmark in the education of complex problem solving.
There is also no doubt that businesses, when successful, are intrinsically complex and adaptive. Therefore the management of the complex aspects of businesses is homologous to medical practice and the educational models should be homologous too.
Unicist Teaching Hospitals for Business in the Real World
The activities of Unicist Teaching Hospitals for Business are developed through Business Residencies and need to integrate three roles and one object. The three roles are:
The Chief-Resident is the coordinator of a Business Residency that has the full responsibility for the diagnoses and for achieving the results that have been defined as being possible to be achieved. The participants of the residency also have full responsibility for the results after they agreed that such results are possible.
The “Fallacy-Shooter” is the person responsible for guiding the action-reflection-action process in order to improve the accuracy of the diagnoses and of the work processes. This guidance is based on the development of destructive tests to confirm the limits of the validity of knowledge and non-destructive tests to validate solutions.
The “Ombudsman” is responsible for monitoring that the proposals respond to the functional needs of the solutions that are required; she/he is the business coach. The role represents the client as a “function” that is responsible for generating value to the environment. The responsible officers are the “owners” of the functions. (Click on the ebook to access)
Learning by Teaching
The learning process of the Business Residencies is based on a “Learning by Teaching” model. This model requires that the roles of fallacy-shooting and ombudsman are exerted by the participants of the residency.
Virtual Collaboration
The residencies are based on virtual collaboration. As conceptual knowledge is cross-cultural, it allows integrating counselors and experts of different parts of the world to ensure effective solutions and provide the necessary learning context and support to drive and catalyze the activity of the learners.
This requires following the technologies to deal with the nature of each problem and using the unicist superior education technology to manage the learning process of the participants.
Seen from the outside, the process appears extremely simple, because concepts are rationally obvious and the nature of a learning process responds to the nature of human evolution. From the inside, it requires following strict steps without making shortcuts.
These residencies are in fact productive business units that foster the learning of the participants. They are solutions and knowledge factories.
Unicist Education
The unicist educational approach has been developed to provide a methodology for superior education.
It is based on the goal of providing a learning process to allow individuals to deal with complex problems in adaptive processes. Adaptiveness is defined as the capacity of an entity to influence an adaptive environment while it is being influenced by it.
The unicist education model is based on five pillars:
1.A learning context is required before a learning process begins. Learning processes in adults require the existence of a real problem to be solved.
2. An adaptive learning contract that defines the guiding idea of the learning process and the conditions of the teaching and learning activities.
3. The development of business residencies, which are homologous to medical residencies, where the unicist reflection methodology is used to develop solutions.
4. The use of learning objects that allow managing the personalized learning program of participants.
5. The teacher’s role that is focused on ensuring the development of solutions while driving learning activities.
Difference between Professional and Superior Education
Unicist education is based on learning processes that are analogous to “teaching hospitals” based on real complex problem solving. The unicist educational model is a superior education model that deals with the learning of logical tools and business objects.
A comparison between Superior Education and Professional Education will clarify the guiding idea, and the difference between the Unicist Education and the Professional Education:
Aspect
Unicist Education
Professional Education
Educational Framework
Teaching Hospital / Clinics
Workshops / Seminars / Courses
Educational Model
Complex Problem Solving
Systemic Problem Solving
Learning Approach
Action-Reflection-Action (Emulating in mind)
Theory-Practice (Reasoning driven)
Problem Solving Approach
Focused on Results
Focused on Objectives
Future Forecasting
Logical Inferences / Delphi Groups
Projections / Delphi Groups
Knowledge
Logical & Empirical Approach
Empirical Approach
Type of Tools
Conceptual Tools
Analytical Tools
Business Planning
Strategic Approach
Analytic Approach
Dominant type of Analysis
Fundamental Analysis
Technical Analysis
Risk Management
Based on Possibilities
Based on Probabilities
Business Processes
Adaptive Systems
Operational Systems
Annex
Expert Systems to Sustain Methods
The unicist expert systems are alternative tools for any method that deals with business problem solving or solution building.
They were developed to manage the fundamentals of business processes by managing the root causes of processes to develop solutions in adaptive environments.
With multiple specialized modules to solve specific problems, these systems manage the unified field of the business processes to manage their functionality, dynamics and adaptability.
Note: The R&D work of this technology/methodology was led by Peter Belohlavek at The Unicist Research Institute.
