How to Coach Yourself and Others Essential Knowledge For Coaching | Page 228
Knowing and not knowing that you know
The interaction between knowing and not knowing that you
know is however more complex and much neglected.
There are two kinds of knowledge (in a third sense) or
practice involved here.
The first is that for which the move to "not knowing
that you know" or "unconscious competence" is the
highest stage of development. This applies to the basic
skills of driving, or knitting; the kind of thing you can
"do without thinking".
The second is where people who have informally
learned a great deal mistakenly put themelves in the
"knowing that they don't know" category because they
have never received any academic or professional
accreditation for their learning. This is the downside of
our qualification-driven culture, which dismisses those
whom Gramsci called "organic intellectuals" because
they do not have the recognition of the formal
educational system.
Neighbour's Arabic proverb enjoins us to "awaken"
someone in this position, which means to take them
back, counter-clockwise on the diagram, to an
awareness of their knowledge. There is a link here with
Mezirow's concept of "transformative learning", in
which education leads to a re-evaluation of life so far.
(There is perhaps a third possibility here, too, which is
the fit with the willing but unwitting category in the
model of practice on this site.)
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