Replying to LO30947 --
Mark replies in LO30947 to my comments in LO30940:
> Don:
> Now you're being cynical and it really doesn't suit you.
Not so much cynical as teasing, but you're right, it's not my
preferred style. Apparently, I misread the last sentence that I
quoted from your LO30834:
> In other words, there may be an optimum organizational learning process
> (or model) which, if achieved, will produce superior learning performance
> REGARDLESS of culture.
On a quick reading, that sounded prescriptive to me, and I bit. (Of
course, the devil made me do it. ;^)
> Let's cut to the chase. Can you name a form of life on Earth, much less a
> human culture, that does not learn according to the so-called learning
> cycle? That is, (in the case of Kolb) the Observe-Assess-Design-Implement
> (OADI) cycle. Or (in the case of Haeckel), the Act-Sense-Interpret-Decide
> cycle? Or (in the case of Stacey), the Choose-Act-Discover cycle? Or (in
> the case of Firestone), the Decide-Act-Monitor-Evaluate cycle? They're
> all the same.
Now that's a fascinating question! (Or is it a claim?) My sense is,
the more complex the organism (or population of organisms), the more
it's a learning system. Whether the learning cycle above applies to
all such learning systems, I don't know. It seems like a reasonable
hypothesis, but I wish I could take a few months and investigate the
biological literature on learning in living systems, as well as the
literature (philosophical, psychological, educational) on the
fundamentals of human learning.
I can imagine differences and variations, for example, even fixing on
3 or 4 particular "steps" such as the ones named above; the
relationships among them could well be more complex than a simple
sequential loop. Also, I wonder if the same cycle applies to second-
and higher-loop learning as well as "first order" learning. And what
of the kind of "revolutionary learning" that occurs in a Kuhnian
paradigm shift (which I think is similar to what At calls "bifurcative
learning", where a "creative collapse" is essential to break out of
the old paradigm)? I wouldn't be surprised if the typical cycle model
fails to give an adequate description of such a case.
> And yes, you're right, they're emergent. What can learn from that in
> terms of how to enhance organizational learning? I think you've already
> answered the question. You said:
{... snip my description of an emegent approach ...}
> But that said, Don, you make the mistake of lumping me into the
> alternative 'do it this way' school of thought in OL. Your remarks at
> least seem to. So I take it you are not aware of my work in arguing
> for the reverse -- contrarian view of how to enhance organizational
> learning.
My apologies for misreading you -- and I'm very happy it was a
misreading.
> My approach is simply as follows: Because learning behaviors (and
> knowledge) are emergent in human social systems, efforts to enhance
> learning should be deferential, not prescriptive. In other words,
> rather than thinking in terms of (learning) behaviors following from
> deterministic (teaching) policies, we should completely reverse our
> thinking. Teaching policies should follow from (emergent) learning
> behaviors. We need to strengthen the self-organizing tendencies of
> people to learn in their own endemic ways, not change them (the
> learning behaviors) by imposing contradictory or deterministic
> policies.
Sounds like we're basically thinking along the same lines.
Always happy to learn,
--Don Dwiggins "All models are false, but some are useful" d.l.dwiggins@computer.org -- George Box, "Statistics for Experimenters"
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