ON LEARNING DIALECTICAL THINKING:
The IDM Approach
A Timely Offer
Momentous events regarding the global development of thinking occurred between 1978 and 1993. Their outcomes have been systemically gathered by Otto Laske in volume 2 of his Measuring Hidden Dimensions (2008; http://www.interdevelopmentals.org/publications-MHDv2.php) 15 years later.
Our teaching offer in dialectical thinking fuses M. Basseches’ research of 1984, aimed at putting dialectical thinking on an empirical basis (simultaneously demystifying it), with R. Bhaskar’s incisive review of the dialectical tradition from Plato to Sartre (1993). IDM’s Dialectical Thought Form Framework (DTF) comprises both research outcomes, deepening Basseches’ work in a philosophical, and Bhaskar’s work in an empirical, direction. Based on its teaching experience in this field since 2000, IDM has begun to certify professionals in dialectical thinking in the Fall of 2011.
To be certified, students take three courses:
- An introduction to dialectical thinking
- An action-learning course in using dialectical thinking
- A hands-on course in using dialectical thinking in a particular specialty, such as coaching, leadership development, or other (see below).
Learning Dialectical Thinking at IDM
Cognitive development in adults is today considered a critical and lead developmental line, but outside of IDM’s Dialectical Thought Form Framework there is a paucity of methodological tools and approaches to assess it with any degree of reliability or even credibility. Applications of insight into, and findings about, adult cognitive development touch many commercial, political, pedagogical and ecological endeavors now under way. Many of them have the potential to add great value to business activities in evident ways (see the list of applications below). Their relevance for personal development as well as the “business case” for dialectical thinking is therefore a strong one.
As shown in volume 2 of my Measuring Hidden Dimensions (2008), cognitive development after 25 years of age naturally veers toward holistic and systemic thinking, with reference to Plato’s term called “dialectical thinking”. As M. Basseches has demonstrated, dialectical thinking is an extension of formal logical thinking that develops in phases, not stages, beginning in late adolescence. It is a universal gift to mankind, first championed in a high time of discovery by Socrates and the late Plato in the 5th century BC. The discipline of dialectical thinking is found in both East and West. In the latter, it has a distinguished, although intermittent, history starting with Plato, and comprises recent thinkers such as Hegel, Marx, Adorno, Horkheimer, Sartre, and Baskhar.
The defining criteria of thinking dialectically do not lend themselves to distinguishing discontinuous world views in the sense of “stages”, but phases of dialectical thinking development can be encapsulated as different “frames of reference”. In each higher phase, an increasingly larger set of patterns Basseches called “schemata” and I call “thought forms” is used by the thinker, and these thought forms are increasingly coordinated with each other, on account of which highly complex thoughts can be built. Such thoughts help do justice to the complexity of the world into which we have been thrown.
Text Analysis Focus
Dialectical thinking is best understood as regarding the fluidity of thinking beyond formal logical thinking (retained as a precondition), degree of systemic thinking, and an ability to think in terms of holons in transformation. It is a way of freeing individuals’ sense making generator from formal logical constraints. As shown in my volume 2, fluidity varies with epistemic position (King & Kitchener 1994, Laske 2008) and, indirectly, social-emotional level, both together defining the “stance” (positioning toward the world) required for exercising transformational thinking. Due to the stance required for thinking beyond formal logic constraints, dialectical thinking is not for everyone.
If dialectical thinking is a natural outcome of later phases of adult development, why does it need to be taught? Does teaching it promote the speed and degree of complexity of such thinking? Answers to this question depend on one’s empirical experience with assessing social-emotional versus cognitive development. Using CDF, I have found that Kegan is right in saying that individuals are subject to their stage of meaning making, but I have not found this to be entirely true for cognitive development: construct awareness in the strictly cognitive domain can be assessed as well as taught with some success.
In teaching dialectical thinking, I follow the model of the Frankfurt School where text analysis and dialectical conversation about texts was focal in learning the craft. The learning model followed there was exceptional. Two philosophers, Th. W. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, founders of the Frankfurt School, engaged in conversation during a seminar on Hegel (“Philosophisches Hauptseminar”), and students followed their interpretation of Hegel texts, learning from the conversation and from Hegel’s Logic simultaneously. Students increasingly partook of the conversation the two philosophers were having, and eventually grew to peers with them in their understanding and practice of dialectic. (From 1958 to 1966 I was trained in this fashion.)
At IDM, we have retained the text analysis focus of learning dialectical thinking and have, by necessity, replaced the conversation between the two philosophers by verbal interchanges between two cohort subgroups analyzing and discussing cognitive interviews. The resulting conversation is one between the student presenter of transcribed cognitive interview fragments, on one hand, and members of the cohort including the instructor, on the other.
Since cohort members do not know the individual interviewed, a balance is created between two foci: what the interviewer “heard” and probed during the interview, and what cohort members “hear” when reading the transcript of selected fragments of the interview (selected by the presenter). Here, less is more. Cohort members have the advantage of starting from a blank slate on which interview content is incidental and can easily be put “in brackets” to focus solely on thought structure. To do so is typically more difficult for the interviewer and presenter of an interview since s(he) retains a knowledge of the interviewee, and may find it more difficult to detach from that knowledge. This can be a hindrance to objectivity since cohort discussion is focused on the structure (not the content) of what has been said by the interviewee in response to probes of the interviewer, not the interviewee per se.
Administering and evaluating cognitive interviews as the royal road to learning dialectical thinking
The use of transcribed interviews in learning dialectical thinking is not accidental. Structured interviewing is a particular kind of conversation that invites the use of dialectical thinking, at least the use of thought form classes, if not individual thought forms. Because it is an interchange between two thinkers, it is seen at IDM as a primary training ground for learning dialectical thinking.
Interviews are structured conversations whose speech flow documents “how the interviewee thinks”. The content (information) that appears in interview fragments could have been conceptualized and formulated by the interviewee in many different ways (in fact, in at least 28 different ways if we think of the set of dialectical thought forms). Thus the cohort, whose members together evaluate cognitive interviews, is tasked with discerning the highly specific way in which a particular interviewee shaped thought content in response to probes made by an interviewer.
In light of the constructivist notion that what is thought “about” (thought content) is constructed by a speaker/thinker, a dialectical analysis of such content has the purpose of understanding the sense making generator – in contrast to the meaning making generator – that generated the interviewee’s speech. This generator can be accurately captured by using the methodology deriving from Basseches’ work (and refined in my 2008), according to which it is the number and degree of coordination of dialectical thought forms that determines an interviewee’s present fluidity. Although transcribed interviews are favored materials at IDM (since they document the dialectical thinking fluidity of the interviewee), a page from Hegel’s logic, a published article by Bernanke or Wilber, or any other text deemed worthy of dialectical scrutiny could be used as an equivalent.
The conclusion from text analysis is that “dialectical thinking exercises” per se lead nowhere. This is so since a learner has to first discover and recognize dialectical thought forms in him- or herself, before s(he) can begin to use them expertly in conversation with others. This internal discovery of thought forms in oneself is beneficially supported by strict constraints, such as provided by a text focused on by cohort members guided by an instructor who is a dialectical thinker. It then does not matter much whether the text is forthcoming from a living speaker (present or transcribed) or a written document generated by the internal speech flow of a writer.
It is my experience that where this internal discovery does not occur in the learner, there is a disconnect between the learner’s -- still weak -- internal dialectical process (Reason), on one hand, and his/her use of thought forms, on the other. This is because the beginner’s use of thought forms remains grounded in formal logical Understanding and is therefore focused on content, not structure, of thinking.
A New IDM Program Starting in September of 2011
Since dialectical thinking is not taught in the North American or even European education system, people’s propensity to think dialectically is presently somewhat diminished, compared to earlier centuries. What Adorno called the administered society has no interest in promoting dialectical thinking, although it has resigned itself to tolerating “critical thinking”, a shallow version of it based on formal logic. Despite this situation, the present generation, enmeshed as it is in global warming, demographic and political revolutions the world over, and a commercial climate stifling individual creativity, is showing signs of tiring of logical thinking as the principal medium of inquiry, for better or worse. The notion that everybody has the resources to think dialectically, and indeed is naturally gifted to do so, needs to be resuscitated, not only for professional pursuits.
Starting next month, IDM will offer a comprehensive program for learning dialectical thinking. The new program is designed to lead to Certification in the Use of the Dialectical Thought Form Framework (DTF). The components of this program have been practiced at IDM for some time, as shown below. The certificate will “certify” that its bearer has learned dialectical thinking through DTF, to a point where it can be used for a diverse set of purposes – e.g., to converse with peers in a disciplined and structured way; to consult to clients; interview clients; assess clients; provide insight into the thinking of public speakers and politicians; lead debates as an action learning coach; do cognitive-developmental coaching; effect conflict resolution and mediation; pursue dialectical psychotherapy, and, ultimately, teach DTF. All of these applications of dialectical thinking are avenues for the IDM certified professional.
The IDM DTF Network
Along with the new teaching program, IDM is introducing after-course services in the form of a two-tiered network for clients to join, either for practical or research purposes, or both. Both tiers of the IDM Network require the payment of an annual membership fee. All of the free resources now on the site will become privileged information.
- The Tier-1 network is geared to students who want to remain connected to IDM research and teaching and need advice in using what was learned by studying DTF and CDF generally (consulting services). Program One and Two graduates receive discounted memberships.
- The Tier-2 network [called IDMR] is a two-way enterprise: we invite selected clients to join it to share the benefits we offer under shared copyright and risk management. In this network, we make available to clients tools developed at IDM, licensed course materials, existing research papers as well as new research findings, and offer reduced participation fees for summer courses and IDM conferences. Those who join IDMR will be invited to partake in collaborations; they will be granted reduced licensing fees for making use of IDM copyrighted materials and tools. Both parties are bound by a contract for the sake of copyright. Members are encouraged to share their use experience of DTF tools, and of CDF tools generally, confidentially. This network will be hosted on separate web pages.
Component Modules of the DTF Program
The program grew out of the IDM Assessment Certification Program of 11 years standing. Its components are:
1. Introduction to the Dialectical Thought Form Framework (“Module B”, 6 2-hr sessions)
2. Dialectical Thinking Intensive based on DTF (8 2-hr sessions)
3. Selected (alternative) Applications of DTF (6 2-hr sessions)
- a. cognitive interviewing
- b. cognitive-developmental coaching
- c. text analysis and text writing
- d. leadership development
- e. talent management
- f. management consulting
- g. business strategy development
- h. innovation and change issues
- i. decision making dilemmas
- j. culture building
- k. conflict resolution (mediation between stakeholders)
- l. innovation and change issues
- m. political-ecological debate
Program Components Described in Detail
The DTF Program comprises three steps.
Step One: Introduction to DTF
In this module, students learn the basics of dialectical thinking: the trajectory of cognitive development over the life span according to research, the history of the Western dialectical tradition (delivering models of adult cognitive development), the operationalization of dialectical thinking by Basseches, the meaning and content of the four quadrants of dialectic, their representation in the human mind as classes of “thought forms”, the epistemic preconditions of dialectical thinking, procedures of leading structured conversations for the purpose of cognitive interviewing, coaching, psychotherapy, and related pursuits, and the use of thought forms as mind openers.
Students learn to begin to pay attention to the structure of their own thinking, unfettered by concentration on content. They are introduced to the DTF Manual contained in volume 2 of Laske’s Measuring Hidden Dimension.
Step Two: Dialectical Thinking Intensive
The intensive is a practice module. It presupposes the introductory course as a theoretical background. As described at /pp-dialectical-thinking-intensive.php, the course comprises 8 2-hr practice sessions. It follows an “action learning” model in which the instructor acts as coach helping the cohort interview and converse with a volunteer member discussing a problem s(he) is encountering. It is the task of the coach to focus both interviewer and interviewee in terms of a “base concept” present in the interviewee’s speech, and to call out thought forms that could elaborate it and are either present, or could be present, in the interviewee’s speech flow. In this way, the coach is focusing the cohort on the emerging “text” the interviewee’s sense making generator is delivering to everybody’s ears. The action learning procedure is anchored in a real-world problem the volunteer has chosen to be having; it unfolds as a consultation to the interviewee’s ongoing mental process.
It is the task of the members of the cohort other than the instructor/coach and volunteer/interviewee, to partake of the conversation with the latter one after the other, or in an open forum. There is no passive audience. There is instead a fully engaged cohort focused on issues articulated by a volunteer who serves as interviewee. Interviews are no longer than 15 minutes. After each interview, cohort members share their experiences, critique the interventions they saw occurring, and deliberate about more effective interventions that might have been used.
The Intensive is structured in terms of the scope of dialectical thought forms scheduled for rehearsal in a particular session, as follows:
Session 1: Review of the structure of dialectical thinking and its difference from formal logical thinking, of classes of thought forms, and of individual thought forms
Session 2: Practicing structured interviewing using the template of the Three Houses
Session 3: Practicing Context thought forms
Session 4: Practicing Process thought forms
Session 5: Practicing Relationship thought forms
Session 6: Practicing transformational thought forms
Session 7: Bringing all four classes of thought forms together in interviews, conversations, and interview evaluations
Session 8: Review and wrap-up.
Step Three: Selected Applications
In six 2-hr sessions, the third module specifically addresses applications of interest to particular groups of professionals who want to benefit from thinking dialectically. Courses are taught by specialists in the respective field. At present, the most prevalent specialties are:
- cognitive-developmental coaching
- leadership development consulting
- integral talent management consulting
- dialectically focused conflict resolution (mediation)
- business strategy design conversations
- building an organization culture to confirm with business strategy
- and others
Credentialing
After partaking in the three modules of the program described, participants earn the IDM Certificate in Using the Dialectical Thought Form Framework (DTF). The certificate is associated with 20 CEUs acquired over 5-6 months.
Study Materials
Upon registration, students receive the following materials:
- A set of slides titled “Introduction to DTF”
- Volume 2 of Laske’s Measuring Hidden Dimensions which includes the Manual of Dialectical Thought Forms.
- Article: “On the autonomy and influence of the cognitive line: Reflections on adult cognitive development peaking in dialectical thinking”
Slides specific to a particular application (Step 3) will be provided at the appropriate time.
Registration
Steps 1 and 2 are registered and paid for as one unit. Step 3 presupposes the first two steps. Payments are accepted in form of check, money order or major credit card using our secure online system.
Register for Steps 1 and 2 of the DTF Program
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Register for Step 3 of the DTF Program
Payments are accepted in form of check, money order or major credit card using our secure online system.
Pay via credit card |
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Pay via check or money order |
Make check or money order payable and sent to: |