The Power of Mindful Learning (18 page)

The stargazer looked through his telescope and said, "I see her.
She's sitting on a rock in the sea, far far away, and the dragon is
right there guarding her. " So he went to the king and asked for a
ship for himself and his brothers, and they sailed across the sea until
they came to the rock. There sat the king's daughter, and the dragon
was lying asleep with his head in her lap. "I can't shoot, "said the
hunter, for I'd kill the beautiful princess at the same time. " "Then
I'll see what I can do, "said the thief. He crept up and stole her out
from under the dragon, so deftly and quietly that the monster didn't
notice a thing and went on snoring. Joyfully they ran back to the
ship with her and headed for the open sea. But then the dragon
woke up, found the king's daughter gone, and came flying through
the air, fuming and snorting. He hovered over the ship and was
just getting ready to swoop down, when the hunter took his gun
and shot him straight through the heart. The dragon fell down
dead, but his body was so big and heavy that it smashed the whole
ship to pieces. Luckily, the brothers managed to grab hold of a few
planks, which kept them and the princess afloat on the endless
waters. They were in bad trouble, but without wasting a minute
the tailor took his miraculous needle and sewed the planks together
with a few big stitches. Then he sat down on his raft, collected the
remaining parts of the ship and sewed them together so skillfully
that they could all sail safely home.

When the king saw his daughter again, he was overjoyed and
said to the four brothers: "One of you shall have her for his wife, but
you will have to decide among yourselves which it is to be. "At that a
furious quarrel broke out, for each had his claim. The stargazer said. "If I hadn't seen the king's daughter, all your skills would have been
useless. Therefore she's mine. " The thief said: 11 lot ofgood your seeing
her would have done ifI hadn't stolen her out from under the dragon.
Therefore she's mine." The hunter said: "The monster would have
torn you all to pieces and the king's daughter with you, if my bullet
hadn't killed it. Therefore she's mine. " The tailor said: `If I hadn't
repaired the ship with my needle, youd all have drowned miserably.
Therefore she's mine."The king replied: "You all have equal claims,
but since you can't all marry my daughter, none of you shall have her,
and instead I will reward you each with an equal part of a kingdom. " That suited the brothers, who each settled down to enjoy the
fortune he so rightly deserved.

The Four Artful Brothers

THE BROTHERS GRIMM

(freely adapted)

The king wisely saw that each brother was right and wrong
in his exclusive claim. Many of us, as students or teachers, are
still in search of the one right answer. This belief in a single
right answer rests on a view of intelligence that emphasizes
outcomes and expert authority.

Intelligence is often seen as the capacity to achieve desirable
outcomes. Arthur Jensen defends his concept of a general fac tor of intelligence by emphasizing its "practical validity for
predicting the performance of individuals in school and college, in armed forces training programs, and in employment in
business and industry."' Even Howard Gardner, proponent of
a theory of multiple intelligences, describes intelligence as "an
ability (or skill) to solve problems."' These and other theorists
of intelligence presume that the goal of the educational
process is to equip students to achieve specific, desirable outcomes? An outcome's desirability, however, is dependent on
context. An outcome that is good in one context may be most
unwelcome in another.

The capacity to achieve an outcome is different from the
ability to explore the world and understand experience. Trying
to solve a math problem in a way dictated by the teacher is different from attempting to test one's own hypothesis. The
teacher who tells students to solve a problem in a prescribed
manner is limiting their ability to investigate their surroundings and to test novel ideas.

Much instruction tends to take a paint-by-number approach. Rather than allowing an individual to generate new
hypotheses that may be mindfully tested in the individual's
own experience, a teacher or expert often assumes that the
objective is apparent and that only the means of achieving it
remains obscure to the naive observer. Teaching from this
perspective consists of presenting step-by-step methods of
problem solving, making possible an essentially mindless type
of success.

If we can shed this outcome orientation, we may discover
that the freedom to define the process is more significant than
achieving an outcome that has no inherent meaning or value
outside that particular setting.

Even when intelligence theorists teach such global and frequently useful processes as inference making and hypothesis
testing, they are still defining a valued outcome.' In this case the
outcome is the acquisition of a particular set of skills. Such
views can inhibit the capacity for exploring the skills best suited
to an individual's goals.

This focus on skills is an attempt to mix traditional conceptions of intelligence as a general capacity with more skeptical
views of intelligence as a product of socially acquired skills.
Such a compromise is nonetheless outcome oriented. As Ann
Brown and Joseph Campione have cogently argued, either one
teaches specific skills-those valued in a particular context-or
one teaches learning-to-learn skills."5 These latter meta-abilities are defined by Brown and Campione as the student's speed
in learning new tasks and ability to transfer this learning to
other related tasks.

The definition of intelligence as learning-to-learn skills still
is a traditional model: intelligence is the speed with which
persons go from point A to point B. Intelligence testing, which
focused first on such skills as bisecting lines or judging weights
and later stressed problem solving, now emphasizes the ability
to acquire new skills. In each case the objective-physical motion, problem resolution, or skill acquisition-is preselected by
the intelligence expert.

When students are assessed in this way, they are not given
an opportunity to choose their own objectives, nor are they
allowed to explore processes that are outside the experts'repertoire of valued skills.

An expert's authority rests in large measure on an ability to
predict events within an area of expertise more accurately
than can a naive observer.' The ability to predict has been
linked with perceptions of personal control.' It is possible to
distinguish between two types of predictions. When experts
make predictions, they generally rely on a collection of observations, sorted by categories that are believed to be stable
over time. Yet all of us make predictions based on our own
changing experience, not on observations of the behavior
of others. The difference between a prediction generated
from an actor's perspective (expert's prediction) and a prediction generated by an observer is crucial to understanding
the distinction between the concepts of mindfulness and
intelligence.8

An approach to problem solving based on traditional definitions of intelligence relies on the observer's capacity to use
available data in constructing novel hypotheses that in turn
reveal different perspectives on familiar questions. Those observers who have considerable familiarity with available data
but have not yet become locked into a particular perspective are most likely to make conceptual contributions that advance our
general understanding of an area of research.'

A mindful approach does not favor the observer's over the
actor's perspective. We can test a hypothesis by applying it
directly to our own behavior. As an informal example, an
acquaintance had some plastic surgery on her face. Two days
after the procedure she phoned the surgeon to say that the part
of her earlobe that should be connected to her face was not.
The surgeon, over the phone, said that was ridiculous; her husband, in her presence, agreed with the expert. Together they
caused her to doubt her experience. However, she was stronger
than many people in not denying her own reality. She returned
to the doctor earlier than scheduled and insisted he look more
closely at her ear. The event would have little meaning in this
context, of course, if it had not turned out that she was right.

Consider now an example based on data. Much research in
psychology has shown that people often ignore populationbased information in favor of anecdotal, idiosyncratic information.10 If, when car shopping, we are shown statistics
underlining the high quality of a Volvo but we know someone
who has had trouble with a Volvo, we are not likely to give
much weight to the group-based information. Whether or not
we accept given probabilities, we often don't think about who
determined the base rate, that is, we don't consider what alternative probabilities could be if the issue were framed from
other perspectives. This distinction can have far-reaching personal consequences. For example, a professor I know was being
considered for tenure at a prestigious university. No one in her field had been tenured there for the past fifteen years, and no
woman had ever been tenured there in that department.
Friends and others outside the situation told her to look at the
base rate, the probability of getting tenure in her department
based on what had happened there in the past; their advice was
to look for a position elsewhere. When she and I discussed her
chances, I asked how many things she had attempted and successfully accomplished? That yielded a different probability for
her potential success. We also looked up how many people
tenured at the university had received their doctorates from the
top school she had attended. That yielded yet another base
rate. After trying these and other perspectives, she ended up
following her instincts. As an aside, even if we believe there is
only one base rate, which would make the probability here
seem like zero, there is still a questionable assumption that the
present is identical to the past; there is still the possibility of
progress. Once again, everything is the same until it is not.

This professor received tenure, so this story had a happy
ending, but it might not have. When our experience differs
from that of the experts we can follow our own course or theirs
and either one may yield a satisfying outcome or not. We cannot know in advance, or there would be no conflict to resolve.
To my mind, there are advantages to following one's own perspective even when one loses. Mindful decision making, as
opposed to decision making passively based on data assembled
by outside observers, is a process of active self-definition.11

As we discussed in the context of ambiguous perceptual figures, our ability to view a situation from several perspectives may open a greater range of options. Shifting from ambiguous figures
to the larger environment, we can see that the flexibility to change
perspectives can open up options that would otherwise remain
hidden. When we systematically attempt to narrow a choice, the
perspective we most often neglect is our own experience.

Expert observers tend to focus on particular features of a
situation that enable them to hold the variables constant. For
example, a college admissions committee might admit to college those with the highest SAT scores and grade point averages (GPAs). Perceived stability is often in the experts' interest
because their authority frequently rests on the stability of the
categories they employ. If an admissions committee used a
shifting variety of criteria for excellence, they might well lose
their confidence in being able to distinguish the most desirable
students. The individuals being rated, however, may be focusing on different, but significant criteria. For instance, consider a
student whose grade improved from a C to an A or who
achieved middling SAT scores despite having only recently
learned English. When we rate our own behavior, it is often in
our own interest to generate novel criteria. This capacity to find
a means of shifting perspective can be a vital element of our
ability to navigate new situations, just as the ability to maintain
stable categories is often critical for the expert's authority.