Communicology

Definitions:

1. The study of the structure and dynamics of communication and change when all experience and all behavior is defined and studied as communication.
2. The study of common factors in change work.
   
   

The education is designed as an intensive training programme consisting of:

• Basic Level: 4 training modules/weeks of 50 hours each - 200 hrs in all.
  
• Intermediate Level: Basic + 2 Advanced modules: Filter & PED - 300 hrs in all
  
• Advanced Level/Meta Level: Basic + 5-7 modules/weeks of 50 hrs each (250 to 350 hrs) - for total 450 to 550 hours.

  The programme gives up-to-date competence in interdisciplinary concise comprehended materials - the result of decades of subject-development/research within a range of subjects and and fields: educational science, counseling, health, therapy, negotiation, cooperation, management, ect.

  The training is made up of a variety of pedagogical frames of activity, e.g. lectures, demonstrations, filtering (recognition), supervised training, exchange of experiences, reflection concerning implications, transferring and translating knowledge/competence.

  The organization of the material, as well as exact sequencing and proportioning of pedagogical frames of activity, are main conditions for efficient learning and high level of competence.

  In addition, the programme is designed to create a continuous process of self-development, cooperation-training and managment-training.

  At the Advanced Level/Meta Level, self-evaluation is implemented as a continuous process. A student on this level must meet high standards of excellence - concerning both practical decisiveness, comprehension, and personal integrity.

  The educational programme is available to "anybody" - i.e. people with a wide variety of backgrounds, education and professional experience. It may be carried through as a basic training, as post-graduate studies for students with an academic background, and as higher education for those with other kinds of backgrounds.

  The material is built upon a research-approach best characterized as comparative research - once also called modelling, at another point in time called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)- and involves:

• Comparative studies of practitioners, methods, theories, models etc. within and between various subjects and fields. Studies of similarities and differences in vast amounts of information, knowledge, competence, concepts ect - for
  
• Identifying, elucidating and making accessible "masterkeys" - the active ingredients in Communication and Change - and
  
• Testing of potential "keys".

  The result:
  

• A new, interdisciplinary meta-subject: Communication and Change - and
  
• Educational training-programme leading up to Interdisciplinary Meta Competence (IMC)(Copyright: Sjøbakken & Fleiner 1995).

  The field, the material, and the competence are all interdisciplinary, because the "keys" are valid:
  

• across fields and subjects, and
  
• on different system levels (individual, relation, group, organization etc.)

  Meta Competence refers to two factors:
  

• The summary of vast amounts of expert knowledge
  
• Competence in competence

  The parameters in the material are simultaneously:
  

• Tools to carry out high-quality change-work...
  
• Filters to recognize "keys"
  
• An interdisciplinary language for description, and
  
• Quality criteria for evaluation

  This implies that
  

• the knowledge basis for the programme is highly comprehensive (extensive)
  
• the material of the programme is compressed/comprehended (small) and the application-potential is great, as is the range of uses: all contexts as well as all system levels - "any human activity" - where the goals can be described as "Change", and the means as "Communication"

  Scientific base and support:
  

• The new discipline builds upon a long and generally recognized academic tradition: the communication-tradition in general (including systemic thinking), and - since the 1950's - Gregory Bateson and the Palo Alto-school in particular.
• The research and subject-development by Jorunn Sjøbakken & Truls Fleiner since the 1970's - is mainly inspired by Bateson's interdisciplinary ambition - and John Grinders competence-research since the 1970's.
• The result of all this - when compared to systemic brain-research a la Matti Bergström - "fits like fingers in a glove".
• This - alltogether - draws the distinct outline of a new paradigm regarding both tangible interdisciplinarines and the approach towards research and practice in other respects.

© 1995/2001 Truls Fleiner & Jorunn Sjøbakken