(För introduktion till denna serie bloggtexter, se http://blog.perspectus.se/?p=693)
8. Perspective skills
Skills in seeking, understanding and actively making use of insights from contrasting perspectives.
This can be regarded as a family of skills, ranging from rather basic to very sophisticated (and quite rare) skills. A basic perspective skill is simply to be aware that your view of the world and its issues and events is a view: an interpretation based on a limited and selective set of data and complemented by assumptions and judgments not backed up by proven facts. More sophisticated skills involve a keen awareness of the durable, complex and systemic patterns of perspectives, both one’s own and those of others. This entails an awareness that one’s own perspective necessarily is incomplete and has blind spots, which in turn generally leads to an inquiring orientation. A person with well- developed perspective skills is generally open and curious, and may actively seek out and try to understand perspectives that are very different from one’s own and make use of several perspectives in order to make sense of issues and processes. Theo Dawson (2020-2021) has described a large number of concrete micro-skills contributing to skillfulness in working productively with multiple perspectives.
Perspective skills are related to Openness and Learning mindset, Sense-making, Complexity awareness, Critical thinking and Inclusive mindset and Intercultural competence.