Phrases of the day: selective exposure, selective perception, principles knowledge, vicarious trial, change agent, and cue-to-action.

2019-01-26 22:15:59

I’ve been reading Everett Rogers’ book Diffusion of Innovations with a ‘learning lens’ on. I’m fascinated that the adoption of innovations is so analogous to some aspects of learning. After all knowing about, being persuaded by, deciding on, and implementing an innovation is a learning journey.

This entire paradigm of research (it spanned Rogers’ entire life) provides a model for thinking about mechanisms and stages of learning from a different perspective. The perspective of the implementation of new ideas and the social and cognitive process it involves. I see a particular interest in our work where we are trying to plan learning strategies to address concepts which may be new and could also be blind spots (unknown unknowns).

I’m not the first to make the link but it has been entirely absent in medical education discussions in recent years as far as I am aware. Rogers acknowledges the overlap of course and links to other models such as ‘stages of change’.

This diffusion of innovations work possibly needs reinterpreting as it predates the major discoveries of behavioural economics (or nudge theory) but Rogers covers ‘cues-to-action’ which gets quite close. A common concept perhaps between the two research paradigms.

From ... Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition: Quote shared via Kindle: "In developing a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward an innovation, an individual may mentally apply the new idea to his or her present or anticipated future situation before deciding whether or not to try it. This vicarious trial ...”

Source: read.amazon.co.uk

rogers innovations diffusion learning vicarious selective deciding stages

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Phrases of the day: selective exposure, selective perception, principles knowledge, vicarious trial, change agent, and cue-to-action.

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