LILA ~ Learning Innovations Laboratory at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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  1. The social structure of cultural change: Damon Centola

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    February 9, 2017
    A dominant theory cultural norms are functional, but Damon provoked us to consider that there are cases in which norms are not functional at all, and can even be dysfunctional. Conformity norms stifle speaking up, for example which is seen in the Emperor’s New Clothes story and Stalin’s Russia. Such norms often comes from some sense of exogenous authority that dictate a behavior (political science), or sense of what is better (behavioral economics), or snow-ball effects of what’s popular (sociology). But all of these explanations assume there is awareness of all these things and they are valuable in some way....
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  2. Where the tipping point missed the point

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    February 8, 2017
    Damon Centola’s work unpacked assumptions in networks that related to how ideas/behavior spread through networks via “strong vs. weak” ties.  For many years, and argued well in Gladwell’s Tipping Point, the belief was that all ideas spread like viruses through networks. Daemon’s work points out that what is important is the distinction between simple contagions (ideas/actions that requires a single contact) vs complex contagions (ideas/actions that require multiple contacts and social reinforcement). Many cultural practices require social reinforcement, particularly when there is uncertainty & risk, run against norms, or interdependence with other technologies. What is important to know is how complex...
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  3. Why tightness is terrible and terrific

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    February 8, 2017
    Michele Gelfand’s work in social psychology explores how micro changes in behaviors connect to larger shifts in values in cultures.  Her work has looked the effect of social norms across cultures. Her concept is that there are qualitative differences in tight groups (with strong norms, litter tolerance for deviance, more orderly) vs. loose groups (weak norms, high tolerance for deviance, less orderly). Her research showed that tight groups coordinate well amidst threats of survival, both human made (e.g. tribal conflicts) and natural (e.g. natural disasters).  Tightness can be activated, too, by real of natural threats. And the situations, such as libraries...
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  4. Marga Biller

    Bechtel Wins Chief Learning Officer Award for Second Consecutive Year

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    2 January 5, 2017
    “Partnering with the business to develop a game-changing learning program that provides valuable skills to our employees, partners and customers, and essentially adding to the bottom line, is the ultimate goal of an organImage result for lucy dinwiddieization’s learning and development team,” said Lucy Dinwiddie, Bechtel’s chief learning officer. “To be honored with an award as significant as the CLO, demonstrates the collaboration and innovation of the Bechtel team and the commitment to our colleagues across the globe.”
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  5. Marga Biller

    Beaver – a Boston area school and LILA member embraces ‘unlearning’ strategies for students, teachers

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    October 17, 2016
    The Research and Design Center at Beaver Country Day School, just outside of Boston, is being framed as a Library 2.0. As construction workers focused on the physical space outside, a group of teacher leaders grappled indoors with the concept of unlearning. The school is embarking on a one-year quest to rethink teaching and learning strategies in advance of the opening of the “RaD.”
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  7. Marga Biller

    Unlearning to Learn – LILA Summit Summary and Animation

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    June 13, 2016
    One of the ways in which LILA supports the learning of its members is to create an animated short presenting key ideas from the year long exploration.  The theme during the 2013-2014 season was Unlearning to Learn.  Below is the transcript from the animation which can facilitate your understanding of unlearning. Unlearning to Learn This year at LILA, we take a whirlwind tour of unlearning, approaching it from three angles: mindsets, habits, and systems. Here, we take stock of our two main quests around unlearning: understanding it and fostering it. Unlearning is what we do when prior learning creates...
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  8. Sue Borchardt

    October 2016 Animation: Understanding Culture in Organizations

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    June 7, 2016
    The sheer scope of Culture’s sweep makes a pithy definition difficult, a challenge further amplified by the dynamic, overlapping, and nested cultural contexts we strive to make sense of. Culture is often named as contributing to the success or failure of organizational efforts such as globalization, mergers & acquisitions, and cultivating diversity. One place to start when exploring whether and how cultural forces might be leveraged to help organizations adapt to internal and external change, is by asking: how do cultures work? and how do they adapt?
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  9. Marga Biller

    A Deeper Dive Into Deliberately Developmental Organizations

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    Comment May 9, 2016
    Dr. Kegan’s study of organizations yielded four cases of companies that modeled the unique properties of a deliberately developmental organization. In the words of one of these organizations (Decurion Corporation), “Flourishing is the process of living into one’s unique contributions. It is the process of becoming oneself. We expect to do this through our work.” In the words of another, Next Jump: “Caring for your employees and helping them grow as human beings is possible while making money and helping the world become a better place.” Dr. Kegan underscored that each of the organizations featured as DDOs in his book were selected from a pool of hundreds of organizations that his team studied, and that each DDO was not only from a different industry or market, but was also financially high-performing. Thus, the common criticism that a developmentally-oriented organization may lead to “happiness as a process” but also lead to lower bottom-line performance is not supported by Dr. Kegan’s research. Instead, the DDO emerges at the intersection of developmental aspirations, developmental communities, developmental practices.
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  10. Marga Biller

    Learning Conversations Moves

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    Comment April 27, 2016
    Cross-organizational “learning conversations” are an important source of informal learning among professionals, though little is known about whether specific characteristics of conversational interaction contribute to different learning outcomes in such conversations.
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Harvard Graduate School of Education