Working with
meaning schemas

Meaning schemas are mental constructs that help us to make sense of and to engage effectively with the world around us. 

• Structured approaches such as ReCoCa, Socratic questioning, reflection loop prompts, clean language and MECSTAT can help to probe different aspects of your meaning schemas

• Archetypes, metaphors, VITAE, causal layered analysis and episodic unpacking can be ways of recognising common meaning schemas that might be active in a particular situation

• Mindfulness practice and naming can facilitate more conscious awareness of active meaning schemas

• Actively examining the influence of meaning schemas on your perceptions and memories by looking for examples of cognitive biases or using the ladder of inference

• Group activities, such as action learning sets, can help you to become more aware of your own meaning schemas by comparing them with those of other people