Replying to LO29051 --
Dear Organlearners,
Ellery July <ejuly@NWAF.org> writes:
>We have decided in our creating a learning organization
>process by identifying our actions, dreams, and outcomes
>using the Wheel of Learning. We intend to spend a couple
>of hours putting those actions, dreams, outcomes for each
>quadrant.
>
>Is there any feedback out there among the OrgLearner
>community? What have others learned from focusing initially
>on the Wheel of Learning?
Greetings dear Ellery,
My memory is not what it used to be. But i think it is your first step
into our LO-dialogue. Thank you and may it not be the last. Your
foundation has very important work to do. As its mission says: "To help
communities in our eight-state region reduce poverty." We will gladly
learn from your experiences because poverty has brought many countries to
their knees.
Since you have decided to use the Wheel of Learning (WoL), the only
two things remaining to do are
(1) use it to learn more of the topics indicated
(2) evaluate the usefulness of the WoL.
In other words, you will have to do some double loop learning here.
Some fellow learners may want to know what the WoL is. It is a
learning method developed by Charles Handy, first presented in his
"Age of Unreason" 1991. See the short article at
< http://www.ourfuture.com/arts02.htm >
where he places this method in a larger context. Fellow learner John
Dicus long ago discussed it shortly in our own LO-dialogue with
"Reading on Culture Change LO13127"
< http://www.learning-org.com/97.04/0049.html >
A comprehensive summary of it can be found at
< http://www-bus.colorado.edu/faculty/larsen/learnorg/handy.html >
Since you have asked for it, but without wanting to criticise Handy's
method, I have to point out that it may become detrimental to
authentic learning in any information driven organisation in which
information and knowledge are regarded as the same thing. When
Handy writes: "organizations have no choice but to reinvent themselves
almost every year", this method becomes a deadly trap in information
driven organisations. For example, see how the WoL becomes
presented in, for example,
< http://www.techednz.org.nz/proceedings/bob/sld025.shtml >
Here "solution" (i.e. information in a solutions applied to problem
context) dominate the wheel. See even Handy's own thinking in
"A New World of Work" at
< http://www.ati.ufg.ac.at/~workcult/e713.htm >
I myself would suggest that you might seek to understand Handy's
WoL in the wider context of the cyclic nature of learning as other
thinkers on learning also tried to articulate it. See for example
"The Kolb Learning Cycle" at
< http://www.css.edu/users/dswenson/web/PAGEMILL/Kolb.htm >
You may also have a look at the work of, for example, Deming or
Argyris.
Ellery, the following extensions is not directed to you, but to some
fellow learners wishing to understand the complexity of learning. Working
with a particular method of learning may easily distort the comprehension
of learning as a very complex act. For example, scientists learn on an
advance level through what they call research. In this research they
employ the scientific method which may also be visualised as a wheel with
four quadrants (since it is an iterative method) :
(1) reflection (seeking mental inconsistencies)
(2) observation (experential or experimentation)
(3) speculation (inventing or exploring theory)
(4) falsification (weed out faulty conclusions with experiements)
(5=>1) reflection .......
But even in using this scientific method a paradigm shift may occur as
Thomas Kuhn pointed out. It happens when inconsistencies actually build up
during the many iterations of the scientific method intended to get rid of
inconsistencies. This is called normal science. It is then when someone
like a Newton, a Darwin or an Einstein with profound creativity shifts the
normalised paradigm into a new paradigm at a higher level of thinking.
A normal science proceeds along the digestive phase of creativity. As its
order becomes mature (equilibrium state), some scientists become aware
that this form of science has created imbalances in the greater whole of
understanding. They then begin to correct these imbalances by switching
over to the bifurcative phase of creativity, seeking to give birth to a
new order in that form of science.
The same swinging between digestion (low entropy production) and
bifurcation (high entropy production) also happens in every form of art.
Shakespear with his plays and Beethoven with his compositions were masters
of dancing between these two assymptotes of creativity.
Recognition of this dance is not a post Rennaisance phenomenon. For
example, more than two millenia ago Socrates in Greece said that his
midwivery is intended to assist this "birth of a noble thought" in
learning. Thus he prepared the way for students like Plato and Zeno to
come forwards with such profoundly new thinking (Plato in Greece and Zeno
in Rome) that the ancient kind of civilisation like in Mesopotamia and in
Egypt was ended for good.
Meanwhile, in the far east Confucius gave the Chinese people a
similar creative way in coming to wisdom. He arranged his personal
sayings (LY4) into groups of three like in:-
4.8 The Master said, If one morning he should hear of the way, and
that evening he should die, it is enough.
4.9 The Master said, If an officer is dedicated to the Way, but is
ashamed of bad clothes or bad food, he is not worh of taking counsel
with.
4.10 The Master said, The gentleman's relation to the world is thus:
he has no predilections or prohibitions. When he regards something
as right, he sides with it.
4.8 is an emergent insight, the result of a bifurcation. 4.9 is a mature
insight, the result of its digestion. 4.10 is again an emergent insight
generated by the previous digestion. (By the way, only LY4 seems
to be te work of Confucius self. It is far more superior than
LY1-LY3 and LY5-LY20. )
It is this dance which we have to try promoting in authentic learning.
Senge, for example, articulates the digestive phase by "adaptive learning"
and the bifurcative phase by "generative learning". Sadly, by associating
adaptive learning with coping and generative learning with creating,
creativity itself is reduced into a merely bifurcative phenomenon. Other
thinkers articulate these two phases of learning by different word pairs
like evolutionary, quantitative or normal (for digestive) and
revolutionary, qualitative or novel (for bifurcative).
The first point which I want to make, is that various word pairs are in
use to articulate one and same dance underlying creativity and all its
higher outcomes like learning and believing. We must not stare ourselves
blind at a particular word pair. In other words, we have to try
distinguishing between specific information in front of us and actual
knowledge within us. This knowledge may very well be already more general
than the information, but much of it may be of tacit knowing. Should we
allow the information to displace this tacit knowing, then we will not
gain in our capacity to act.
The second point which I want to make, is that they are not dialectical
(opposite) pairs (whatever the names chosen to articulate them), but
complementary pairs. That is why we can speak of a cycle or loop in the
first place. The one phase serves the other so that neither can exist
independently without the other. A valley cannot exist without mountain
ridges surrounding and vice versa. That is why we can also speak of them
as forming the ruggedness feature of a landscape. The more the ridges
(bifurcative) and the valleys (digestive) between them occur in the
landscape, the more rugged is the landscape.
The landscape of learning has to be rugged to make a meaningfull and
joyfull difference between our past and future actions. I am afraid that
exploring such a rugged landscape with a rigid wheel may become too bumpy.
The next step would be to pave the straight highway of information so that
the wheel can turn smoothly. This will be fatal and the organisation will
not transform into a learning organisation.
Dear Ellery, my experience of people living in poverty is that their
knowing of learning is very little. They have to be helped with
compassionate care not only what to learn, but also how to learn. Should
you use the WoL (Wheel of Learning) which is a simple method of learning,
use it wisely. What I mean is:- use the WoL when it seems to work. But do
not keep on using it as soon as you observe they use it fluently. Switch
over to another simple method of learning which works and stop using it
when they also use it fluently. Etc., etc.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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