Designing for Depth: Insights from Four Approaches to Professional Development
Holding Space for Professional Development Series #2
Recent advancements in cognitive science have revolutionized our understanding of how we think and learn. This field reveals that cognition is not just a mental process confined to our heads but is embodied, embedded, extended, and enacted. In other words, our thinking is deeply connected to our physical experiences, the external world, interactions with others, and active engagement with our environment.
Building on this foundation, my friend and mentor Geoff Marlow added more layers of meaning to the concept of mindset. An individual’s mindset represents the cognitive stance they adopt in different contexts and encompasses more than just explicit thinking. It involves three progressively more tacit layers: doing, seeing, and being. These layers together shape how we process information and respond to various situations.
Understanding the deeper layers of cognition and mindsets — doing, seeing, and being — can greatly influence how we design and hold space for professional development. By incorporating the…
