Metaphors for emergent learning

Re: Metaphors - light - for emergent learning

by Roy Williams -
Number of replies: 3

Scott, your question about emergence and diagnosis ...

Might it be that although the process of intervention - in mechanics - might be very specific, with little room for the luxuries of 'emergent thinking', the process of arriving at a diagnosis (and even tentative prognosis) might be of a different nature, and might involve tacit, fuzzy, decisions about not what specific interventions to employ, but what metaphors or homologies to employ in thinking about the diagnosis.  

This reminds me (I hope this is pertinent) of a piece of research into mis-apprehensions in problem solving in science, in which the root of the mis-apprehensions was in the misapplication to either a calorific or a Brownian conceptualisation of heat, which led to 'bugs' in thinking through the problem, and that in turn led to an inability to think through a strategy to achieve the solution. It was only when the two frameworks were made explicit, and discussed openly, that both students and the teacher realised that the two frameworks / metaphors / models were appropriate to different kinds of context. 

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Metaphors - light - for emergent learning

by Scott Johnson -

Roy,

Wonder if I'm substituting emergence for interruption in diagnosis. Many diagnostic strategies seem to rely on assumptions of causality that need to be questioned or 'interrupted' or displaced from their comfortable placing.

I like the idea of there being alternate successful paths or proceedures to reach a viable solution and agree that making them explicite and discussed openly is critical. Moving from one decided thing to anouther until a final decision is come to isn't diagnosis as far as I'm concerned. I've seen unsuccessful diagnosis done from a manual without thought because it was considered the right proceedure.

How would we force ourselves to openly observe the evidence without constantly coming to conclusions about it?

In reply to Scott Johnson

Re: Metaphors - light - for emergent learning

by Roy Williams -

By learning to live on (and love) the edge of chaos.  

No, that's too easy. Avoiding jumping to conclusions is a prerequisite for learning, and for many unusual diagnoses, no?  

A favourite of mine: in my (brief) days as a medical student, I worked in a rural hospital, including a Leprosy unit - in which 'feeling no pain' is the key evidence for the disease (nerve degeneration leads to loss of sensation), which is why it is missed so often by doctors who don't normally see cases of Leprosy, and 'can't imagine' why NOT feeling pain would ever be a key symptom for disease.  

So ... the rarer it is, the more difficult it is to diagnose. 

In reply to Roy Williams

Re: Metaphors - light - for emergent learning

by Scott Johnson -

Roy, jumping to conclusions is definately a bad habit in diagnosis. In your example 'feeling no pain' is also improprly placed in the brain as a category wellness and unnecessary of further investigation. I imagine it as a kind of switching phrase to relieve obligation to act.

My cardiologist's booking clerk likes 'no news is good news.' The problem is, she's busy and can't follow up to see why I never received the news that was bad news.