Phillip, thanks for sharing the Dewey work and the historical
connections of your response.
While I am critical of the predominance of "learning by experience"
for its limitations, I do not want to be included in the group who
uses such phrases as "true" learning. I consider the most
mechanistic and small instances of learning to be, still, learning.
I am not meaning to denigrate them in any way and certainly don't
want to be taken as implying that they are not "true" learning.
I might distinguish transformational and innovative from incremental
learning. But distinctions are not normative. They are pragmatic.
> Leont'ev's Activity Theory suggests that true learning is innovatory in
> Dewey's 'experiential' sense in that it occurs when a person is confronted
> by 'disturbances' (snip)
It is the ability to recognise "disturbance" as information that is
key. We have tended to see it as a bother, as invalidating, as
challenging - worse, as noise - rather than as information.
The challenge is to "lean in" to what doesn't fit one's current
understanding rather than "push away" what doesn't fit. This,
however, cannot be an indiscriminate activity because the space of
possibility - the quantity and proportion of *not fit* is beyond
dealing with. That is, unless one has a theory or hypothesis or, at
least, a strong intention that is being thwarted.
> The empirical truth of Dewey and Leont'ev's model has been demonstrated in
> recent years by a number of studies by Engestrom, Raetihel and others in
> settings as wide as judges and office cleaners, which have shown that
> while experienced 'experts' outperform 'novices' in routine and repetitive
> tasks, novices typically outperform experts when new or unexpected
> situations arise.
And here is the heart of the matter in organisational life. When are
in the "routine" and when in the "unexpected"? This is far from the
easy call it seems.
Complexity work suggests that we can make at least general
assumptions about the circumstances of the matter and then design our
behaviour or strategies or organisations to match. It will always be
a matter of balancing and direction rather than specific and static
decision.
There is more than even the cyclic of Senge at al. There is the
emergent that is the most advanced of learning. It is a learning
which retains the old as building blocks yet creates something which
is entirely new. And retains both the old and the new.
-- Michael McMaster Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk