Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Brenda Kaulback -
Number of replies: 25

Thanks Sylvia, Jennie, Roy, Simone

Wonderful topic. I can't be with you this afternoon, so wanted to share one thought about emergence and what it takes to cultivate emergent knowledge. I'm not sure cultivate is the right word, but haven't a better one at the moment. I think of a term that Harrison Owen, the creator of Open Space, uses to describe how he gets ready for an Open Space event --as the facilitator of the event. He meditates. He envisions the people arriving from all the different directions they will be coming from. During the event, he wanders around and picks up coffee cups and puts tape on posters that are beginning to fall from the walls. In other words, he opens the space, and then he holds it. I believe these things could be translated to an online world, and someone probably has, but that is how I remember Harrison describing it. 

I think holding the space is a good term to think about preparing or designing for emergent learning. I read something like it in the book by Nonaka and Takeuchi, The Knowledge Creating Company. There the authors talk about the Japanese concept of ba. Ba is similar in that it describes a space where people meet and something happens. (Here is a link and I see that ba has all kinds of aspects I didn't know about. I don't happen to agree with the one about tacit knowledge - I think there is tacit knowledge which can't be made explicit.)

At any rate, when I think of emergent knowledge, I like to think of the space where it happens - like that little three year old teaching herself to knit - beautiful! I think sometimes we create it by not getting in the way too much. And this is trickier in an online world where not getting in the way can mean no one even knows you are there!

It has something to do with attention, though. With people knowing that someone is waiting, wants to see what will happen next, cares that you have something to say. To me, those are important parts of the picture of emergent learning.

Again, thanks and I will be thinking of you all being together while I am in my meeting this afternoon - creating BA for you.

In reply to Brenda Kaulback

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by DR. ILA ALLEN -

Hi Brenda,

I have read Nonaka and Takeuchi and Ba.  When I first came across it I had to become familiar with the concept. When looking at online communities "space" can be and is every where, any time and place.  Knowledge can be learned, shared, and transfered from person-to-person in whatever space they habitat.  Just my take on it.

In reply to DR. ILA ALLEN

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Scott Johnson -

Ila,

Do we need to somehow designate a space specifically for learning or is it possible for people to realize this on their own? This comes to mind from an essay I once read about reminding students to be mindful of their role as learners. In some ways it feels silly to have to tell people to learn but I suppose that is a particular state of mind?

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Brenda Kaulback -

Hi Ila! NIce to see you here.

I see the point, Scott, about the line between informal and formal learning. I imagine it to be a little like setting aside time to meditate or to reflect. If you are constantly engaged in your practice and don't set time/space aside to come to the learning, then it probably isn't so likely to happen. The really good meditators aim to integrate being present with their meditative state in everything that they do, but in our busy world, it is a challenge.

I worked on a professional development project where the faculty from different colleges were given some released time from their teaching and administrative duties to participate. In their time together they kept journals and listened to what each other was doing and discussed their practice as part of what they did together.  They said over and over that that was one of the most valuable aspects of their participation in the project - just to have time set apart as a "learning space" to reflect on what they were doing in class, talk it over with others, and then go back to the class and do the next thing.

 So I think you are right that we not forget the fine line between informal and formal learning and also that we remember that it is important to remember to do it consciously.

In reply to Brenda Kaulback

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Scott Johnson -

Hi Brenda, Ila

Random thoughts.

Wonder if the need to remind people they are in a learning space is a means of calling a particular learning process to front of mind? If we exist in the present (it being the most insistent state of being) we might need a nudge to engage our mind in meditation or learning or almost anything not tugging on our attention. This seems purposeful, deliberate and unlike emergence that seems etherial and suggestive.

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Joyce McKnight -

Just a thought about emergence in nature...when a caterpiller "emerges" as a butterfly there is an intentional struggle...it is not simply "etherial and suggestive"...when a chick emerges from an egg, it pecks like mad because the time is right, when a baby is born there is pain and pushing...I am not sure that all emerging learning involves at least some kind of intentionality but I think at least some of it does.  On the other hand, I always have liked time lapse photography where a shoot pushes up from the earth, a flower opens in a smooth flow etc.  I think that happens too.  I also believe emerging learning happens to me when pieces that don't seem to make sense or have always seemed to fit in a single pattern are somehow transformed in new ways...and everything seems different somehow.

 

In reply to Joyce McKnight

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Jenny Mackness -

Hi Joyce - I have been thinking about your post since I first read it. Whilst I have often see the chick emerging from an egg used as an illustration of emergence (I have used it myself!), when I read your post and comments about intentionality (I know that there are mosre posts about this that I have yet to catch up with) - it didn't fit with my existing thinking about emergent learning. I have been trying to sort out in my head why this is so.

I still don't think I am clear about this - and I need to read through all the other posts, but I'm wondering whether emergent actions or emergent experience (which have been mentioned in the assessment thread) are the same thing as emergent learning. Not sure whether I've completely lost the plot here! Thanks for making me think!

In reply to Jenny Mackness

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Roy Williams -

Jenny, emergent learning, emergent actions, emergent experience (and all of the above) - wow. Food for thought ... 

If I try this on the 2 Popes 2 Chairs case study (see here ... )

  • Pope 2 is involved in an emergent action - who knows what the reaction will be, he doesnt, really, but I dont think he cares. 
  • Pope 1 is also involved in an action, and I dont think he cares about learning in the same way - he cares about consolidating tradition (which might be a different kind of lesson) 
  • Pope 2's  change of chairs will be a learning experience for both Popes, and for many cardinals too (past, present, and those with Papal aspirations for the future) 
  • The Church, the public, the media - many people will be learning different things, or dismissing it as a stunt, and not a learning experience at all - they wont see it as a learning event. 
  • Chair 2 might just be another chair (the first one has been taken away for a re-gilting job), so it might be a non-event ...
In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Joyce McKnight -

Scott--I don't know about a learning space, but there is definitely a "learning state of mind".  Years ago when I was working on my doctorate in Adult and Distance Learning at the Pennsylvania State University, fellow students and I reflected on why we seemed to learn better from conference telephone calls than from broadcast TV programs.  We concluded that while many professionals were used to thinking, solving problems and "turned our brains off "when presented with a movie or TV production...we expected to be passively entertained.   When we were reminded to actively try to learn from video presentations our sense of learning and ability to analyze and synthesize the material improved...

In reply to Joyce McKnight

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Scott Johnson -

Joyce,

It makes sense to have a mechanism for directing our attention or signaling a need to shift into a different thinking model. We might assume a professional to be quite adept at jumping in and out of their mode of engagement (their practice or disipline) in a deliberate and conscious way.

But emergence seems different and not so tightly bound to cause and effect? Interesting that you brought up the idea of expectation as a switching mechanism  "...we expected to be passivly entertained" to release the focus on being attentive in a particular way. Emergence seems like the embodyment of the unexpected?

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Joyce McKnight -

I wasn't really talking about "expectation" in a linear sense...I think that there are some situations (such as when I am traveling etc) that I naturally "expect the unexpected", other times in daily situations where I am surprised by it, and still other times when I am sick, bored, or stressed that I wouldn't recognize emergent learning if it bit me!

In reply to Joyce McKnight

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Scott Johnson -

Joyce,

Occasionally I'm aware of learning. When something stands out of synch with the usual babble playing in my mind. Now that I think of it, learning isn't something I "notice." It seems to appear after the fact.

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Roy Williams -

Hi All - I'll come in at this point in the 'space' - hopefully it will be at the right place (and I cant help thinking of the metaphors in Phillip Pullmans 'Dark Materials' trilogy (which I have finally made the space to read) - the metaphor there is using the 'subtle knife' to cut through to different worlds - it  keeps appearing in my mind (but that's just me). 

Intentionality (Joyce), opening space and holding it (Brenda), Ba as virtual space (Ila) ... (Stephen Downes, in the MOOC research JAM, yesterday, said he preferred 'presence' to 'space', but I think the terms overlap) and purpose (Scott) all really open up new thoughts and challenges for me - thanks. And I also love the idea of 'emergence as the embodiment of the unexpected'. 

Where does this go?  For me, it opens up a new train of thought which goes something like this: 

1. Emergence is often characterised as the co-evolution of structure (see 'space') and agency (of the participants).  

However ...

2. This rather assumes that the intentionality is on the side of the participant, and the structure (and the given) is on the side of the provider/designer/ teacher. 

What strikes me in all this discussion is that it might be better to see 'structure' as having its own intentionality (open, closed, challenging, comforting, consolidating, innovative, and so on ...) alongside the intentionality of the participant.  

This then shifts the model to ... 

3. The dance between the implicit intentionality of the structure / space (which has its own 'presence' if you take Stephen Downes view) and the intentionality of the participant.  Wow.  That moves things on very interestingly, though I am not sure where it will end up ... 

Perhaps one trajectory would be ... 

4. Learning which is open to transformation (that's another theme, opened up in posts above) is the co-evolution of these two clouds (?) of intentionality.  

But maybe I'm getting into metaphor overload here ... 

 

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Scott Johnson -

Hi Roy,

Try not to jump around too much.

As a visual tool, the footprint works fine. The dimensionality removes some of the distortion of change appearing to be so straight / direct and “sudden.” Have to work with the diagram itself but there seems room for all participants. I would add rest or re-consideration benches on the slope down to chaos.

One thing that came to me was my notion of emergence itself was too global. Maybe all the talk of “innovation” (linked to emergent ideas) as an economic driver had me thinking these things are public or openly noticeable when in fact they appear first as personal change. Something “emergent” to me may be entirely new to the whole universe or something new only to myself. I can chew AND blow bubbles with bubble gum. Why did I put what looked like a pencil eraser in my mouth anyway? And why bubbles? Can chew but can’t blow bubbles with broccoli—something in the colour green prevents it:-(

You mentioned dance and that connects to mirror neurons and enactment of the things others are doing. I’ve read Chimps will show their young how to crack nuts by demonstration. After a while the parent will leave a nut on a suitable anvil stone and a suitable hammering rock near by. This kind of intentional structure is suggestive over prescriptive and doesn’t “force” a particular interpretation style. Though this could also be seen as cultural conditioning, I think of it first as a path to personal realization and see ownership in the skill left to the young chimp (Stephen’s “participant” learning something new for themselves).

Understand Peter Rawsthorne’s point about measurement and testing. Doesn’t really show learning. Was thinking about tests for our mechanics’ ability to diagnose a mechanical breakdown. To me diagnosis is proof of interaction with a subject or process that reduces the simple reliance on memory, reveals paths of reasoning and encourages imaginative operations. Not all cases will allow for failure of this process (medical, aeronautical) but it does produce a measureable outcome that itself can be learned from. What I like about this is properly practiced it dishonour the attempt.

Dance:

Emily S Cross academia. Edu page: http://bangor.academia.edu/EmilySCross

Link “Research Interests” lower left of page then “Dance and the Brain”

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Roy Williams -

Scott, I love the idea of chimps creating learning objects which they place strategically for their young to explore - just like a Montessori environment.

Looks to me like we need to distinguish something like '[open] learning objects with intentionality', and [closed] 'learning objects with instruction' (corresponding to emergent and prescribed learning, perhaps?) - the point being that the learner can accept and explore the intentionality and internalise it in some way, but the instruction only allows for complicance, and there is no need (or motivation?) for internalisation.

This certainly applies to Montessori materials, and would be a useful tool to discriminate between 'well designed' Montessori materials, and (mere) 'learning objects'.  I can think of many examples, from the 'scubbing table' throught to complex mathematics. 

And ... I will have to set aside some time to visit Emily Cross at academia ... thanks ... 

 

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Nick Kearney -

to discriminate between 'well designed' Montessori materials, and (mere) 'learning objects'.

this has always seemed to me the key to the work we do, it is not a question of objects, but of carefully anticipated processes, that each require differing degrees of intevention and mediation

looking at it from this perspective, within contexts where we are charged with the responsibility of "making learning happen", emergent learning is just part of a range of mediation options, in which the mediator sets up a framework in which learning emerges, and then follows certain patterns in many cases...

it sounds churlish to say it, this is nothing new...we should be addressing the reasons why we have to keep saying it..

In reply to Nick Kearney

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Roy Williams -

Nick, love "carefully anticipated processes" - spot on. It complements, or reconfigures (?) the ideas on 'intentionality' in other discussions in these forums, no? 

And yes ... why do we have to keep saying all this? 

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Jenny Mackness -

Hi Roy - I'm struggling with the idea of intentionality in relation to emergent learning, in the same way as designing for emergent learning feels contradictory, and George Siemens' desire to create a conceptual framework for evaluating MOOCs (http://momentum.edthemes.org/about-mooc-jam/) feels contrary to the whole notion of openness in MOOCs.

I suspect that I have misunderstood what we are meaning by intentionality in this discussion, but it has certainly given me lots to think about!

In reply to Jenny Mackness

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Roy Williams -

Jenny, me too - I was rather shocked by the introduction of 'intentionality' - it seemed like it was introducing determinism (even if tacit) and predictability (of sorts) into emergence. 

However, I have become fascinated by it, probably because there is lots of work on affordances which talks of objects (and spaces) as being designed with intentionality.  Example, a chair is intended to be sat on (doesn't limit the affordances, but it does 'start the conversation' about how it can be used), and a lift in a building is intended to be safe.  

So 'learning objects' and 'learning spaces' might be intended for openness, or for compliance (and that might limit or channel the affordances to some extent).  In the footprints, where you are - where you start, where you come in (or are invited to come in) to a learning space might push or pull you into certain affordances (scary, comfortable, liminal, etc) - and choice is such a key part of openness (see Stephen Downes autonomy) that you should be able to choose different, or even new uses and affordances in an open learning space. 

I too am not certain that I will be comfortable with a 'strong' sense of intentionality in emergence, but I am very interested in exploring is here - at least for a while. 

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Deirdre Bonnycastle -

That reminds me that Cognitive Dissonnance can be a useful tool in teaching. It creates those moments when you become fully present. Sorry the site has new owners and the images were lost in the transfer.I build it into courses thru stories and images.

In reply to Deirdre Bonnycastle

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Jenny Mackness -

Ah Deidre - Cognitive Dissonance - this seems very significant in relation to emergent learning and I'm wondering whether it is implicitly covered by the factors we consider when drawing the footprints - or whether it is missing. We should hold that in mind when we draw footprints in Tuesday's webinar. Thanks for the thought.

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by DR. ILA ALLEN -

Hi Scott,

I thought about your question, designating a space for learning.  I think it may depend on the age and era of the person.  Adult learners vs traditional learners (grammer, HS, etc) all have differenct learning styles and how learning is approached.  Since I have only taught online adults (25+ in age) they tend to find a "space". I look at friends who have school age kids and they seem tobe comfortable doing it on the fy so to speak. I do agree that it is or can be a state of mind and how one needs to position themselves.  

In reply to Brenda Kaulback

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Jenny Mackness -

Brenda, Ila and Scott - this is such an interesting conversation and the perspectives you are sharing about open space are so helpful Brenda. I really like the idea of 'holding' space to prepare for emergent learning.

If you have had a chance to look at the factors and clusters that Roy, Simone and I have been working on to consider when drawing footprints of emergence - http://footprints-of-emergence.wikispaces.com/Factors+and+Clusters - you will see that the first cluster is open /structure. I think 'holding space' fits here. We have discussed this cluster a lot and whether the descriptions we have used are really what we want to say.

I haven't yet had a chance to look into 'ba' - but that also sounds intriguing.

Thanks Brenda.

In reply to Brenda Kaulback

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Peter Rawsthorne -

Brenda,

I am glad you also brought up Open Space... a very powerful approach for encouraging emergent learning. I have a friend (Chris Corrigan) who travels the world facilitating open space workshops. These workshops happen everywhere you can imagine. Chris speaks often of holding the space to allow amazing things to emerge and to have the conversations that matter. Open spaces can be designed to encourage a trajectory, this begins with the invite (call for participants)... the invite is what would provide the rudder to the sailing ship, where the participants provide the wind.

I see this applies directly to online learning; where the facilitator, or group of peers, creates the invite. The invite sets the terms of reference (subject domain) of the learning and then those with an interest show up to the space. It is this pre-selection toward an interest that keeps in on track... but, amazing learning can emerge from an amazing number of directions, leading to new directions. But again, it is the invite (almost a social contract) that can bring it back into alignment if it strays...

$0.02

Peter

In reply to Peter Rawsthorne

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Roy Williams -

Peter, if we are talking about the 'new open' space (forget about MOOCs for a moment, they are wonderful, but can be a distraction) ...

1. Its not so new - as in your example, and the variety of case studies we - and others - are exploring in terms of emergence. 

2. Redefining:  open / the new open / social learning / ... add to taste ... 

requires us to shift away from outcomes, goals, aims etc - certainly as they have been colonised by the bureaucratic administration of 'schooling' - which in the UK now includes the requirement that all PhD students report - in person - to their supervisors every one or two weeks - reimposing physical space on a hybrid, networked world - can you beat that?  

And 'an interest' that both opens up the space and invites people in, and 'holds' the space is a really neat way to reconceptualise / reconfigure that pedagogical discourse, thanks. 'Holding space' is such a tentative balancing act, full of paradox and ambiguity, no? 

 

 

 

In reply to Peter Rawsthorne

Re: Welcome to Footprints of Emergence

by Jenny Mackness -

Peter - I have just picked up a mention of Chris Corrigan in a blog post by Nancy White - http://www.fullcirc.com/2013/11/26/chris-corrigan-on-designing-with-introverts-in-mind/ who refers to his blog post - http://chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot/?p=3982

I would probably have overlooked this had you not mentioned his name.

It has also struck me that although his post is about designing with introverts in mind - it relates to one of the factors we have for drawing the footprints - solitude and contemplation. I usually come up as an introvert on the tests and certainly like plenty of solitude and contemplation and like Chris, I have found it important for emergent learning for me on a personal level.