“It still behoves us to pay attention to the power dynamics behind “collaboration””

Yes indeed.

“When a woman pushes back against “business as usual”, or a worker with a manager, or a young, black person with the establishment – are they collaborating or not?”

These examples are not defining characteristics of collaboration. I think it would be correct, however, to say that such power dynamics would be one of many factors that would *undermine* the possibility for successful collaboration.

“In whose interest is it that they collaborate?”

Collaboration, using the Wikipedia definition (‘the process of two or more people or organizations working together to realize or achieve something successfully’) implies that both/all people or organisations have a common interest in the realisation or achievement of the same end.

You’re right of course, Neill. But it still behoves us to pay attention to the power dynamics behind “collaboration”. When a woman pushes back against “business as usual”, or a worker with a manager, or a young, black person with the establishment – are they collaborating or not? In whose interest is it that they collaborate?

Just saying!

In the context above, we have not however had to specifically tackle the knowledge sharing chestnut. At this point in time it has not fallen out of the overarching idea of collaboration, rather collaboration has evoked a sense of the future and a space for the currently unknown, the things not currently done or tried to be done – perhaps one to look out for though…

Re learning facilitators encouraging questions, I agree – with one proviso. It shouldn’t be false. We would never advocate holding back your own knowledge – or getting others to hold back their knowledge – in order to get other people to find things out for themselves. I sometimes see teachers or facilitators doing that and I don’t think it’s helpful. I find it also a bit patronizing.

I think a good start for a learning facilitator – or simply a learning citizen – is to start from a position of *inquiry*, which is subtly different from telling people that you don’t know enough yourself. Appreciate what you and others know and have it as the start of the process of an ever deepening inquiry, not a full stop.

And I think you are so right about how we are not socialized into thinking about what we don’t know. That’s why we, in our theorizing, shy away from the word knowledge and why learning is our focus. Knowledge implies something that is known. Learning suggests that we are in the process of knowing.

Bev

It reminded me of what we learned in the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach of Maastricht University (NL) – in case you think you have no knowledge to share, you can always share at least a question with those that seem to have knowledge. In Maastricht learning facilitators (PBL tutors) helped us phrase such questions, e.g. by explicitly making it a learning step for our learning groups to phrase the core learning questions that we see underlying the issues we studied. In the next step, we then activated the given pre-knowledge in the group. Through challenging what others know, we did social learning, e.g. by helping them to reflect on their knowledge or by helping them to express it. … Similarly, I learned that Matt Andrews and colleagues promote in their Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach to keep checking whether we ask the right questions and to keep asking iteratively whether our knowledge (for example, about the context of reforms) is comprehensive enough. … What I have learned from such approaches is that facilitators have the role to help learners to reflect more on their learning and to keep questioning what they (and others) already know.

Also, learning facilitators have the important role to encourage learners to reach out with their questions to others (and to share their given knowledge), and not to be too ‘shy’ to reveal that they consider their knowledge still incomplete/limited. I guess a good start is to accept as learning facilitator that you don’t know enough yourself, and that knowledge is never complete or learning is never finished. Probably Socrates with his questioning was one of the first who tried to develop such skills.

I know this sounds easier than it is 😉 What limits our reflection and questioning skills? How much does our education system, the way we get raised, our cultural expectations to express our knowledge, our learning environment, etc. influence us in the way we learn, reflect on our knowledge, share our knowledge with others, and challenge the knowledge of others. I find your thoughts on learning citizenship (elsewhere on your website) in that regard very inspiring.

Best regards, Robert.

I guess the question is: when does the term “knowledge sharing” get in the way and when does it actually help the process?

I think that knowledge sharing has become a proxy for social learning – I don’t think it’s a good one.