The Culture of Learning

The Culture of Learning

Don Jones

© 2018 - 2021 Don Jones

Table of Contents

Introduction

What Is Culture?

Our Cultural Driver

Our Cultural Goal

Part 1: The Elements of Culture

Language

Key Takeaways

Social Organization

Key Takeaways

Customs and Traditions

Key Takeaways

Arts and Literature

Key Takeaways

Forms of Government

Key Takeaways

Economic Systems

Key Takeaways

Belief Systems

Key Takeaways

Part 2: Disrupting Learning

Co-Learning

Apprenticeships

Skills and Aptitudes

Role-Based Learning

The New Learning Management Systems

Conclusion

Introduction

I’ve had a, roughly, 20-year career centered largely around technology learning. I’ve presented at technology conferences, written more than 60 technology books on varying topics, designed and written numerous classroom guides for instructor-led training, and produced hundreds of hours of e-learning materials. Throughout that career, I’ve connected with tens of thousands of learners, most of whom were employed in the information technology field. And in many cases, I’ve met and worked with those learners’ managers and employers, who often spend thousands of dollars a year, per employee, on technology education.

A common theme across those employers is how to build a culture of learning. It’s a phrase used so commonly that Google produces over a billion results when you search for it; turning up everything from scholarly treatises to 6 Ways to Build clickbait-style blog articles on the subject. There are, in fact, many excellent pieces on the topic, which begs the question: why another? Why this book?

I’ve read dozens, if not hundreds, of those pieces and found many of them to be practical, actionable, and, in most cases, fairly concise. But I think too many of them focus exclusively on why you’d want a culture of learning or precisely how they recommend you build one. Few attempt to concisely tackle the underlying question, though: what, exactly, is a culture of learning?

I feel that understanding the answer to that question actually unlocks the how and why for you. Understanding that answer is what really changes your brain, in a way that makes all the other answers obvious. Understanding that big, underlying answer also helps you really grasp the full scope of what a culture of learning is, and can be, to an organization. It highlights the real breadth and depth of the topic and shows you how it can–and should–pervade everything your organization does. That’s what this book is about.

Let’s begin.

What Is Culture?

Businesses, I suppose in an effort to make themselves sound more important, often overuse words and use them improperly. I’m somewhat famously opposed to the phrase on-premise to refer to technology assets that are located on-premises, because the word premise already has a perfectly good meaning that is entirely unrelated to asset location. But culture, as used in phrases like a culture of learning, is actually a really, really good use of the word. In fact, a culture is exactly what we’re trying to build. The phrase is so common though, that I think a lot of people use it without really thinking about all that it means, which causes them to miss a lot of important and subtle points.

So, what is culture?

Culture is a noun. It’s best meaning, for our purposes, is something like, the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group. Or, the attitudes and behavior characteristics of a particular social group.

When we speak of a culture in the social studies sense, we often speak of things like language, food, traditional dress, holiday observances, typical architecture, social traditions, and so on. Culture embodies all of those things. As we seek to build a culture of learning, we need to account for those things. We need, in other words, to build a true culture, one that encompasses all of the elements usually associated with cultures. It isn’t just adopting a set of corporate policies or whipping up some motivational posters. We need the whole cultural package:

Social organization, which describes how we organize ourselves as a group and how members of the group relate to one another.

Customs and traditions, which describe how we behave, what typical activities we engage in, and, in large part, describe what we consider normal.

Language, which describes how we communicate with one another.

Arts and literature, which describe the things we produce for entertainment and education.

Forms of government, which describe our means of creating rules, along with how we promote and enforce those rules.

Economic systems, which describe our means of assigning value, conducting trade, and so forth.

Belief systems, which describe things like shared values, share opinions, and so on.

You might wonder what something like belief systems has to do with a culture of learning. In fact, if we are truly building an actual culture, then we have to consider everything that culture entails, which includes things like belief systems, forms of government, and so on. The difference between our culture of learning and most human cultures is that our culture of learning will be built deliberately, rather than evolving organically over hundreds or thousands of years. We will choose the kind of culture we create.

Each of the following chapters will address one of these seven cultural elements. Each chapter will help you understand how these elements contribute to a successful, self-sustaining, and healthy culture of learning, and how these elements can address the practical, day-to-day challenges around lifelong learning.

Our Cultural Driver

Before we begin, it’s worth a few minutes to define exactly what it is we’re trying to solve with a culture of learning.

The ability to learn is