Sherri,
You've very nicely pointed out two big weaknesses in my letter, ones which
I was aware of but could not resolve. 1) I failed to deal with the
question of whether microworlds/reflective practice in LO had connected to
organizational life, and asked only whether they had been used. 2) I
equated reflective speech with your 'head reaction' category. I eliminated
a big section discussing why this might not be true, but I threw that out
because we are really not talking the same language on that point.
Yes, the Wheatley Dialogue kind of exercise could work better, but I thin
that even if you achieve discipline and have analytic machinery ready,
there's a problem with making the participants the object of analysis
rather than the ideas and case material they offer. We can get very
personal on this list, but not very analytical about the personal. That's
therapy.
My purpose was to identify microworld cases, and to contrast some
situations where microworlds were not in use. A microworld is only one
mode or technique of learning, and there are surely situations where it is
inferior both to plain talk and to classical experimentation (as learning
techniques). Among the varieties of microworld practice, their success
varies a lot with the situation. I won't weasel out completely. I get
the impression that the McMaster variety holds up well in the disorder of
this list, and that the Wheatley Dialogue variety doesn't do as well, even
if further disciplined. My evidence is completely impressionistic. It
wasn't just the statements of Mike and Ben, but a vague feeling that
several people understand the world more after having struggled with the
microworld of complexity framing. There has been change due to Wheatley
Dialogue, but it doesn't seem to be more understanding of the world, and
isn't as easily attributed to the microworld mode, if that can be split
from the personal connections that were made in that thread. These are
difficult questions, and I was upset that the letter became so difficult
to write. All I wanted to do was see whether I could detect a microworld!
--Kent Myers myersk@us.net Alexandria, VA nice sunset tonight over the Potomac
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>