Maintenance Learning, Shock Learning, and Innovative Learning

In his classic work On Becoming a Leader, Warren Bennis talks about three kinds of learning: maintenance learning, shock learning, and innovative learning. I find this three-fold distinction provides a valuable lens for understanding the fast pace and unprecedented scope in which change is occurring in higher education today. Some of the changes happening around us appear to be driven more by economic and practical realities than by educational or pedagogical philosophies. Particularly in the realm of theological education, typically a more traditional segment of the educational world, changes in delivery modes and in pedagogy facilitated by technology have presented challenges for many schools. In my own context, one that has already embraced the use of technologically-mediated education, faculty and students are now wrestling with what it will mean to have some master's classes that run on an eight-week session instead of a full-term of fifteen or sixteen weeks. As a way of framing that change for myself, I outline below Bennis's discussion of these three kinds of learning.

Maintenance learning is the kind of learning that facilitates and maintains the status quo; learners are largely passive and seek to acquire the knowledge and skills that an authority has deemed valuable.

Shock learning is the kind of learning that occurs because it has to occur for survival; it is often in response to a crisis and is reactive. It is characterized by a sense of the learner not being in control but having to do only what the situation requires. At the moment, this mode may characterize some of the ways schools are responding to and learning from the real societal and economic changes occurring around them. It is not the students but rather the institutions of higher education themselves that are learning by shock.

Innovative learning is a kind of learning that is more dynamic, imaginative, and creative than either maintenance learning or shock learning. Innovative learning is anticipatory, participatory, and self-directed. Bennis explains the characteristics of innovative learning as including:

• Anticipation: being active and imaginative rather than passive and habitual; 
• Learning by listening to others;
• Participation: shaping events rather than being shaped by them (Bennis, 72)

By framing learning in this active and participatory way Bennis can talk about innovative learning as “a way of realizing vision” (72). He calls it “a dialogue that begins with curiosity and is fueled by knowledge leading to understanding. It is inclusive, unlimited, and unending, knowing and dynamic. It allows us to change the way things are” (73). These descriptors themselves offer a vision of positive, optimistic, and creative ways of dealing with change.

While it may be tempting to try to paint the recent history of higher education with these broad strokes, the most fruitful use of Bennis's categories is to consider ways that schools can foster and encourage innovative learning on the part of students and faculty, and on the part of the school as a whole. Rather than entering survival mode or simply reacting to each change that occurs, the concept of “innovative learning” provides a way to engage with the changes in higher education in a positive and healthy manner, one that focuses on how the individuals involved can shape the way forward.

In considering Bennis’s views on learning, I find encouragement to make a concerted mental effort to identify and move beyond a maintenance learning or shock learning mindset, and to foster an innovative learning mindset. Faculty and students with this kind of approach are the ones who will be able to learn together in meaningful and transformative ways even in times of rapid change.