Generative Knowing , livre ebook

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
GENERATIVE KNOWING: PRINCIPLES, METHODS, AND DISPOSITIONS OF AN EMERGING ADULT LEARNING THEORY

“With cascading words, images, stories and meanings, and courageous vulnerability, Nicolaides weaves a phenomenological and DeLeuzian portrait of generative knowing that is both generative and phenomenal. The artistic use of language and story to look at how we come to know in the face of unprecedented complexity and ambiguity brings poetry to scholarship. Scholars of adult learning will recognize the power of this contribution to evolving adult learning theory. This book will be a classic among adult learning scholars.”
Karen E. Watkins, Professor
Learning, Leadership and Organizational Development, The University of Georgia
“Overwhelmed and frequently shocked by the complexity, turbulence, and velocity of our lived experience today, haven’t we all stopped to wonder, how will we find a constructive way forward? Nicolaides’ stunning contribution to the field is an invitation to feel our way forward by growing new senses and new sensibilities. Generative Knowing is not an easy quick fix, but it is a summons to discover “the door in every moment” to try something new, in our ways of being, relating, our ways of leading, and organizing ourselves. Reading it, I feel grounded and yet hopeful for what is waiting to emerge through us and our collective action.”
Rev. David C. McCallum, S.J., Ed.D
Executive Director, Program for Discerning Leadership
“Aliki Nicolaides’ masterpiece, Generative Knowing: Principles, Methods and Dispositions of an Emerging Adult Learning Theory , itself emerges from her own, her mother’s and her father’s lifetimes of literal nomadic experiences, yanking them from their Greek-Palestinian roots, to decades in Singapore, and then more decades in the U.S. Through painful revelations, she illustrates a theory and practice of nomadic learning for generative knowing. This practice cuts below the fog of cultural assumptions and traumatic forgetfulness—below learning for doing and learning for knowing—to learning for being and becoming. As our global society roller coasters toward rapidly increasing refugee dislocations, as well as pandemic, climatological, political, and economic disruptions, Nicolaides’ approach to learning will resonate for more and more of us.”
William R. Torbert
Leadership Professor Emeritus, Boston College
Author of Numbskull in the Theatre of Inquiry: Transforming Self, Friends, Organizations, and Social Science
“Aliki takes the conversation on adult learning to a much-needed new level. In reading this book one has an opportunity for understanding learning from a different perspective and to reflect on one’s own potential for insights drawn from one’s unawareness of how learning is influenced at the subconscious level. Based on a foundation of philosophies, multiple ontologies, and rich descriptions of Aliki’s personal experiences, this book provides a way into learning from experience existing beneath one’s awareness. I believe Generative Knowing is a necessary read for adult learning professionals and others as we enter an age of increasing ambiguity.”
Dr. Lyle Yorks, Professor Emeritus
Teachers College, Columbia University, New York
“A brilliant illustration through personal biography of articulating the intra-connectedness of reality in experience heretofore communicable largely via presentational knowing. An enactment of Eliot’s poignant, ‘The trilling wire in the blood/Sings below inveterate scars’—embracing ambiguity, pushing beyond the limits of a quest for certainty!”
Victoria J. Marsick, Ph.D.
Academic Director, Adult Learning & Leadership
Department of Organization & Leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University
“The deceptive simplicity of ordinary words is harnessed by Aliki Nicolaides in this fascinating book in which she weaves a rich tapestry of adult learning theory. Through the variety of the warp and weft, a story emerges that gives full expression to the possibilities of adult learning. From East to West and through rich life experiences each strand is given its moment to shine and dance to become in the book a colourful woven tapestry of lifelong learning – eloquent, insightful, and unique.”
Dr. Ted Fleming, Associate Professor
Maynouth University, National University of Ireland, Maynouth
“This remarkable book is a call to action for the field of adult learning. Dr. Nicolaides models a response to this challenge by developing a robust theory of ‘generative knowing as ways of being and becoming, actualizing potential creatively by poking fissures of light in the territory beneath living experience.’ These fissures of light that she sheds on her own personal and family histories beautifully illuminate the entanglement of phenomenology, new materialisms, and embodied learning. Through this journey she beautifully and convincingly constructs a ‘nomadic theory of adult learning’ - a way forward during these chaotic, ambiguous times toward more inclusive and just futures.”
Dr. Trena Paulus
Professor, Qualitative Methodologist & Research Technologist East Tennessee State, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA
GENERATIVE KNOWING
GENERATIVE KNOWING
Principles, Methods, and Dispositions of an Emerging Adult Learning Theory
BY ALIKI NICOLAIDES
Copyright © 2023 | Myers Education Press, LLC
Published by Myers Education Press, LLC
P.O. Box 424 Gorham, ME 04038
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, recording, and information storage and retrieval, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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13-digit ISBN 978-1-9755-0399-4 (paperback) 13-digit ISBN 978-1-9755-0400-7 (library networkable e-edition) 13-digit ISBN 978-1-9755-0401-4 (consumer e-edition)
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Cover Artwork by David Holmes
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Dedication

For Yiayia Kostandia, who knit us together even when we were distanced by land, sea, and the different cultures our nomadic lives brought us to. For the lineage of women who continue to live through me. For the devoted fathers, grandfathers, brothers, and uncles who made house and home many times over. For deep connected friendships that make love real. Big love!
Contents

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Prologue ONE Generative Knowing: A Nomadic Theory of Adult Learning TWO A Brief Review of Adult Learning Theory THREE Following the Phenomenon in Phenomenological Research FOUR Luminous Darkness FIVE A Single Story is a Dangerous Narrative SIX Mother Nature: Signals from a Different Plane SEVEN Generative Knowing & the Future of Work Ahreum Lim EIGHT The Dynamics of Generative Learning
About the Authors
Index
List of Figures

Figure 5.1: The Most Beautiful Woman in Jerusalem
Figure 5.2: Three Musketeers
Figure 5.3: Martha Committed to Singapore’s Becoming
Figure 5.4: Martha Featured in Singapore-Based Magazines and Newspapers
Figure 6.1: Young Aristotle
Figure 6.2: Aristotle from 1946 to 1948
Figure 6.3: The Mortar Bombing
Figure 6.4: Ari Being Young Adult
Figure 7.1: A Collage of Photos of My Dad Working in the Company
Figure 7.2: A Collage of Photos Showing my Mom Working in the Corporation
Acknowledgments

T HIS IS MY BOOK . I cannot say that I wrote this book alone. That would be untrue. What is true for me is that this book is filled with many truths, the mystery of my being and becoming, and the freedom to offer knowing that is a grace given. The book is a living inquiry with myself, with the people I love, and the love people give in mutual and spontaneous ways. People need people.
This book would not have become a book without the people who saw that there is truth, mystery, and beauty in what wants to be written by my hand. I have learned that I have a rhythm deep inside me that is much slower, quiet, shy, and in touch with the sensations of disquieting times. These are times in which to listen. To receive. To reach out and trust that together we can learn to creatively find a way to make new worlds with us. To act together and be different is a potent mystery we must learn to harness. Thank you for reading my book, a book that took generations to make.
My gratitude extends to the veranda of my maternal grandmother’s apartment in Greece, where so many stories were told and my story was listened to. My Yiayia Costandia listened first, may her memory be eternal. I extend my deep gratitude to Martha and Ari, my parents and now housemates. Thank you for allowing me to listen to your stories differently and share them. Thank you to my beloved siblings, Katia and Theo, who trusted that the stories I would tell would transform our lineage from the snags on which it was caught. Thank you, my sister cousin, Ilene, who never