|
Glenda Eoyang, Ph.D
© Copyright 1997. Chaos Limited. All rights reserved The learning community has received a tremendous amount of attention in leadership and management literature in the past several years. Senge, Kline, Saunders, Deming, and others have described the characteristics of a learning organization and provided clues about how one might build and maintain such an environment over time. To date, the literature has focused either on global characteristics of learning communities (Senge, Deming) or on tools and techniques to establish the preoccupation with learning in an organization (Kline, Saunders). The missing link in the literature is a mechanism that explains how a learning community comes to be and how it can be maintained.
I believe that the mechanism for individual and group learning in community must be:
This paper presents a model that meets these criteria and is based on the properties of complex adaptive systems
(CAS). The paper includes the following parts:
The Model
The model begins with the learner. She finds herself in an information rich environment of experience and received theory. In transactions with this environment, the learner is transformed as she develops understanding. This model focuses on the nature of the transaction between the learner and her experiential and theoretical contexts that constitute the learning process. The Learning Triangle explains how the learner moves from experience and received theory to emergent personal theory and applications of that theory over time. The Learning Triangle is based on the work of Patterson, Stansell, and Lee as described in Teacher Research: From Promise to Power. They present a model for theory building for practicing teacher/researchers. Their model is based on transactional theories of cognitive development and constructivist views of the relationship between a reader and a text (Rosenblatt, 1978, 1985). As a community of researchers, we have adapted the model and generalized it to include other contexts for learning and theory building. From the perspective of the Learning Triangle, the learner transacts with experience and with received knowledge. For example, a learner's action might generate an unexpected result. This difference between personal expectations and experience becomes the first step in learning. Or, the learner might be taught some concept that does not fit into her current theory base. This difference between the voice of an expert and her existing personal theory might become the foundation for learning. These discoveries of difference and subsequent transfer and transformation are shown as the base of the Learning Triangle. Each of the transfer relationships may result in self-organization--the generation of new understanding. Self-organization is represented by vertical lines in the model. Resolution of the differences in experience generate experiential understandings; and resolution of differences in received knowledge generate theoretical understandings. These new understandings are then available to influence future experience and options for collecting or understanding received knowledge. This is the first nonlinear step of the Learning Triangle. In addition to informing interactions with experience and information, the new understandings can also interact with each other. This transaction, reflects the same process. Differences between experiential and theoretical understandings are recognized, set into relationship, and a new level of self-organization emerges. This dissipative structure we have named emergent theory, and it appears at the apex of the Learning Triangle. Like the understandings from which it emerges, personal theory feeds back into the system by influencing later experience and received knowledge. The Learning Triangle meets the criteria for a mechanism of individual and group learning in community. The triangle and the behaviors it represents are nonlinear. The output of previous iterations influence the input for later transactions and transformations. The triangle is scalable. A group will become aware of differences in experience or knowledge base among members. They will transfer information and insights through verbal and nonverbal communication. As a result of the transfers, the original differences will be reconstructed into a new dissipative structure by individual members or by the group as a whole. The group's understanding of experience and its understanding of theoretical foundations interact to allow self-organization of the group's emergent theory. Finally, the Learning Triangle is dynamical. A small difference in the initial conditions (personal relationships, seating arrangement, lighting of the room, modes of dress, and so on) can have a profound effect on the ability of the group to recognize differences that make a difference, establish transfer, develop a collective understanding, and perform the creative act of self-organization.
Applications of the TriangleThe Learning Triangle gives a visual image that allows us to ask new questions about individual learners and the experience of a learning community. Using the language of the model we can ask new questions about how individuals learn.
|