These four quadrants embody  the core elements of learning: feeling, reflecting, thinking and doing.

• Oneness combines feeling and reflecting, the heart of meaning.      
• Twoness  combines reflecting and thinking, the heart of conceptualization.     
• Threeness  combines thinking and doing, the heart of problem solving, and
• Fourness combines doing and feeling, the heart of transformation.

Each of the core elements of learning – feeling, reflecting, thinking and doing – elicits a different and crucial question from the learner.

 

All successful learning deals with these four elements and answers four questions: Why? What? How? and If? 

In Quadrant One the union of elements creates personal meaning, the way we question the value of new learning  by connecting it to ourselves. And the question to be answered is “Why?” Why is this of value to me? Why do I sense the need to know this?

In Quadrant Two the union of elements creates conceptualized content, structuring knowledge into significant chunks that form the essence, the coherence, and the wonder of new ideas. The question to be answered is “What?” What is out there to be known? What do the experts know about this? What is the nature of the knowledge I am pursuing?

In Quadrant Three the union of elements creates usefulness (and the more immediate the better), the transferability into one’s life, problem solving with the learning. The question to be answered is “How?” How does this work? Will this streamline my tasks? How will this be of use in my life?

In Quadrant Four the union of elements creates creative integration, the way we adapt the learning into something new and unique. The question to be answered is “What If?” If I use this in my own way, what will happen? What can I create and how will that creation expand, enhance, and maybe even transform the world I know?