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Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice
Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice is a collection of classical and contemporary writing associated with learning and systemic change in contexts ranging from cities, to rural development to education to nursing to water management to public policy. It is likely to be of interest to anyone trying to understand how to think systemically and to act and interact effectively in situations experienced as complex, messy and changing. While mainly concerned with professional praxis, where theory and practice inform each other, there is much here that can apply at a personal level. This book offers conceptual tools and suggestions for new ways of being and acting in the world in relation to each other, that arise from both old and new understandings of communities, learning and systems. Starting with twentieth century insights into social learning, learning systems and appreciative systems from Donald Schön and Sir Geoffrey Vickers, the book goes on to consider the contemporary traditions of critical social learning systems and communities of practice, pioneered by Richard Bawden and Etienne Wenger and their colleagues. A synthesis of the ideas raised, written by the editor, concludes this reader. The theory and practice of social learning systems and communities of practice appear to have much to offer in influencing and managing systemic change for a better world.
240 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 2010
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November 28, 2021
This book is a collection of writing associated with social learning and systemic change.
It's quite an interesting book which has three distinct sections which in many respects are quite different but the later parts draw on the thinking and learning of what has come before. I guess the first section focuses on 'societal learning' and also appreciative systems, that notion of society receiving feedback and responding. There is a bit of a nod to the thinking in the 1950's and cybernetics. Some of this looks a little bit dated now (particularly about what the role of government is and it's role in societal learning) but it's an important base for the rest of the book.
Part II's focus is on Critical Social Learning Systems and the 'Hawkesbury Tradition' (an agricultural college in Australia that recognised it needed to rethink how they taught their curriculum, which then led to them thinking about how people learn and how differing voices and praxis could emerge). This section was particularly interesting as many of the others considered their approaches in solving the world's biggest 'messy' problems. I saw a lot of links when reading this section thinking about Michael Jackson's Critical Systems Heuristics and that focus in understanding that there are different boundaries and paradigms and recognising them.
Part III builds on this work and reflects on Communities of Practice. Communities of Practice are quite well known now and I guess have taken on a life of their own since they were first described (they have always existed, but perhaps it is only recently that we have explicitly used language to describe and think about them. There's a lot of really informed thought in these sections, considering how Communities of Practice form, how they maintain their 'terms of reference' (formally or informally), how they maintain their members - with thinking about who gets in and who isn't. There is some brilliant insight about when they don't work so well or where they can be dysfunctional or have power imbalances (I would have liked to have seen more on this issue).
Overall, I think I enjoyed it, but perhaps in places I didn't find it too accessible (the book is aimed at a postgraduate Systems Thinking audience). I think I would benefit from a re-read at some point or time to really reflect (It doesn't help when there is so little silence when I want to concentrate on a text!).
A few observations about the world around us as I was reading this:
Jim Woodhill's piece 'Sustainabilty, Social Learning and the Democratic Imperative: Lessons from the Australian Landcare Movement' is an important piece recognising that looking at what to do with 'land' was viewed through a political and free market economic lens and how sustainability was hard to bring forth as a lens. It's a really good piece exploring ways for government and institutions to behave differently. One line in particular though bugged me a little,
"All may not be well with current forms of democratic governance, but...anarchy are hardly desirable alternatives"
It bothered me because it was a complete misunderstanding of what anarchists think and do and what anarchism is! I get that not everyone understands but in a section about considering alternative lens and paradigms it annoyed me as an anarchist. It's a common mistake but anarchism is an absence of hierarchy but not an absence of co-ordinated activity and anarchism does have democratic 'governance', but this is from below and not from above and is mandated, not delegated!
The author then describes 'social learning' as follows:
"Social learning, then, I define as: Processes by which society democratically adapts its core institutions to cope with social and ecological change in ways that will optimise the collective well-being of current and future generations."
Few anarchists would disagree with that and I felt the statement reflects closely the increased freedom, democratisation and mutual aid anarchists aim to bring about! It was funny because reading the authors eight principles of institutional design, I found they largely followed anarchist principles anyway!
(It was a good piece and I perhaps have written far to much about a minor quibble in language).
Richard Bawden's piece 'Messy Issues, Worldviews and Systemic Competencies' brought a tear to my eye, reading it as COP26 drew to a close and the catastrophic failure of world leader's to truly address the crisis we are facing. This felt like a punch...
"Yet paradoxically, while we are increasingly aware that we are in a large part responsible for fouling our own nest, as it were, we are seemingly fundamentally loathe to do very much about changing our ways of being in any socially coordinated or profoundly necessary manner as citizens of the world."
I feel a little powerless reading this and reading the work of people trying to bring about learning systems to undertake change that we desperately need. I shouldn't be downhearted but I think of all the people researching, learning and thinking about creating a better, fairer, healthier world and realising that the biggest blockers are the greed of those who feel they have everything and will do nothing. It is so true that so many issues are looked at through an economic or consumer lens are but such small part of all this.
A later introduction to a chapter describes the impact of the scientific community in responding to SARS. Obviously, we are living in a post-COVID world but it accentuated the importance of global communities in responding to wicked problems. Again, I wonder just how hampered our global scientific and health communities are constrained by 'politics' and 'economics'. In these sections I was particularly struck by the fractal nature of Communities of Practice and how they could exist alongside and within other systems, which reminded me about the Viable System Model and systems existing within systems. Again there was an existing observation questioning if Communities of Practice can exist without sponsorship - of course they can, as bottom up and fractal federated communities (don't want to bring the 'A' word into it, but this is something that isn't that unusual in those communities).
There is an interesting essay from 2006 talking about the role of digital in supporting Communities of Practice. Obviously, the technology examples are dated but there are some splendid examples of how technology can enhance social learning and developing Communities of Practice, and also how technology can remove the barriers between 'teacher and student' and the 'lectern and the audience'. I often consider myself a bit of a Luddite where technology is concerned, although I recognise that technology is 'neutral', it depends on who uses it for what purpose. I often find myself pushing back significantly against the Digital Revolution / Transformation but reading this did make me reflect. I would say about 90% of my knowledge and learning that I am passionate about in relation to systemic change has come about through blogs and Communities of Practice of fellow travellers. I have gained SIGNIFICANTLY from the 'community of practices' that exist in digital spaces, and the sharing of learning of others (which has taken me down a few garden paths) so I really had a good chance to reflect here.
I did reflect quite a bit reading this book about the Communities of Practice I am in, am on the periphery of or are not part of but I know exist. For all their strengths, I reflected that some groups by their boundary settings are exclusionary, I reflected on my roles on the periphery of some that I have the potential to be a 'connector' and a 'networker' but in reality I am neither. It was interesting to reflect on themes of identity and how they interrelate into 'who I am' but also how they exclude me from some groups (intentionally or otherwise).
For instance I was an anarchist before I was a systems thinker but I realised that a lot of the ideas I was forming about a world without hierarchy and oppression necessitated thinking about the 'whole', rather than the self, and also that a lot of the approaches in societal or business or ecological change required more democratic and more inclusive structures. I may be searching for threads which are not there but am left with the impression that anarchists have a lot to learn from systems thinkers and systems thinkers have a lot to learn from anarchists! However, I feel my interest leaves me on the fringes rather than 'in it' because the world of academia or 'professionalism' is one closed to me. Indeed, it is one of the reasons why reviewing this book is such a challenge - each chapter has something insightful and worthy of discussion but I am not sure I have the 'academic chops' to do them justice... Even so those thoughts about accessibility and expertise have made me really think about what makes Communities of Practice work and what is still a constraint.
I suppose the most helpful chapter was the one by the editor at the end of the book as she attempts to sythesize the praxis coming out of the theory and practice of Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice - I am grateful for this as it brought together a number of themes which I perhaps had not made the same links.
All in all, it's a decent starting point for those interested in the subject matter but perhaps of limited accessibility or interest for others.
It's quite an interesting book which has three distinct sections which in many respects are quite different but the later parts draw on the thinking and learning of what has come before. I guess the first section focuses on 'societal learning' and also appreciative systems, that notion of society receiving feedback and responding. There is a bit of a nod to the thinking in the 1950's and cybernetics. Some of this looks a little bit dated now (particularly about what the role of government is and it's role in societal learning) but it's an important base for the rest of the book.
Part II's focus is on Critical Social Learning Systems and the 'Hawkesbury Tradition' (an agricultural college in Australia that recognised it needed to rethink how they taught their curriculum, which then led to them thinking about how people learn and how differing voices and praxis could emerge). This section was particularly interesting as many of the others considered their approaches in solving the world's biggest 'messy' problems. I saw a lot of links when reading this section thinking about Michael Jackson's Critical Systems Heuristics and that focus in understanding that there are different boundaries and paradigms and recognising them.
Part III builds on this work and reflects on Communities of Practice. Communities of Practice are quite well known now and I guess have taken on a life of their own since they were first described (they have always existed, but perhaps it is only recently that we have explicitly used language to describe and think about them. There's a lot of really informed thought in these sections, considering how Communities of Practice form, how they maintain their 'terms of reference' (formally or informally), how they maintain their members - with thinking about who gets in and who isn't. There is some brilliant insight about when they don't work so well or where they can be dysfunctional or have power imbalances (I would have liked to have seen more on this issue).
Overall, I think I enjoyed it, but perhaps in places I didn't find it too accessible (the book is aimed at a postgraduate Systems Thinking audience). I think I would benefit from a re-read at some point or time to really reflect (It doesn't help when there is so little silence when I want to concentrate on a text!).
A few observations about the world around us as I was reading this:
Jim Woodhill's piece 'Sustainabilty, Social Learning and the Democratic Imperative: Lessons from the Australian Landcare Movement' is an important piece recognising that looking at what to do with 'land' was viewed through a political and free market economic lens and how sustainability was hard to bring forth as a lens. It's a really good piece exploring ways for government and institutions to behave differently. One line in particular though bugged me a little,
"All may not be well with current forms of democratic governance, but...anarchy are hardly desirable alternatives"
It bothered me because it was a complete misunderstanding of what anarchists think and do and what anarchism is! I get that not everyone understands but in a section about considering alternative lens and paradigms it annoyed me as an anarchist. It's a common mistake but anarchism is an absence of hierarchy but not an absence of co-ordinated activity and anarchism does have democratic 'governance', but this is from below and not from above and is mandated, not delegated!
The author then describes 'social learning' as follows:
"Social learning, then, I define as: Processes by which society democratically adapts its core institutions to cope with social and ecological change in ways that will optimise the collective well-being of current and future generations."
Few anarchists would disagree with that and I felt the statement reflects closely the increased freedom, democratisation and mutual aid anarchists aim to bring about! It was funny because reading the authors eight principles of institutional design, I found they largely followed anarchist principles anyway!
(It was a good piece and I perhaps have written far to much about a minor quibble in language).
Richard Bawden's piece 'Messy Issues, Worldviews and Systemic Competencies' brought a tear to my eye, reading it as COP26 drew to a close and the catastrophic failure of world leader's to truly address the crisis we are facing. This felt like a punch...
"Yet paradoxically, while we are increasingly aware that we are in a large part responsible for fouling our own nest, as it were, we are seemingly fundamentally loathe to do very much about changing our ways of being in any socially coordinated or profoundly necessary manner as citizens of the world."
I feel a little powerless reading this and reading the work of people trying to bring about learning systems to undertake change that we desperately need. I shouldn't be downhearted but I think of all the people researching, learning and thinking about creating a better, fairer, healthier world and realising that the biggest blockers are the greed of those who feel they have everything and will do nothing. It is so true that so many issues are looked at through an economic or consumer lens are but such small part of all this.
A later introduction to a chapter describes the impact of the scientific community in responding to SARS. Obviously, we are living in a post-COVID world but it accentuated the importance of global communities in responding to wicked problems. Again, I wonder just how hampered our global scientific and health communities are constrained by 'politics' and 'economics'. In these sections I was particularly struck by the fractal nature of Communities of Practice and how they could exist alongside and within other systems, which reminded me about the Viable System Model and systems existing within systems. Again there was an existing observation questioning if Communities of Practice can exist without sponsorship - of course they can, as bottom up and fractal federated communities (don't want to bring the 'A' word into it, but this is something that isn't that unusual in those communities).
There is an interesting essay from 2006 talking about the role of digital in supporting Communities of Practice. Obviously, the technology examples are dated but there are some splendid examples of how technology can enhance social learning and developing Communities of Practice, and also how technology can remove the barriers between 'teacher and student' and the 'lectern and the audience'. I often consider myself a bit of a Luddite where technology is concerned, although I recognise that technology is 'neutral', it depends on who uses it for what purpose. I often find myself pushing back significantly against the Digital Revolution / Transformation but reading this did make me reflect. I would say about 90% of my knowledge and learning that I am passionate about in relation to systemic change has come about through blogs and Communities of Practice of fellow travellers. I have gained SIGNIFICANTLY from the 'community of practices' that exist in digital spaces, and the sharing of learning of others (which has taken me down a few garden paths) so I really had a good chance to reflect here.
I did reflect quite a bit reading this book about the Communities of Practice I am in, am on the periphery of or are not part of but I know exist. For all their strengths, I reflected that some groups by their boundary settings are exclusionary, I reflected on my roles on the periphery of some that I have the potential to be a 'connector' and a 'networker' but in reality I am neither. It was interesting to reflect on themes of identity and how they interrelate into 'who I am' but also how they exclude me from some groups (intentionally or otherwise).
For instance I was an anarchist before I was a systems thinker but I realised that a lot of the ideas I was forming about a world without hierarchy and oppression necessitated thinking about the 'whole', rather than the self, and also that a lot of the approaches in societal or business or ecological change required more democratic and more inclusive structures. I may be searching for threads which are not there but am left with the impression that anarchists have a lot to learn from systems thinkers and systems thinkers have a lot to learn from anarchists! However, I feel my interest leaves me on the fringes rather than 'in it' because the world of academia or 'professionalism' is one closed to me. Indeed, it is one of the reasons why reviewing this book is such a challenge - each chapter has something insightful and worthy of discussion but I am not sure I have the 'academic chops' to do them justice... Even so those thoughts about accessibility and expertise have made me really think about what makes Communities of Practice work and what is still a constraint.
I suppose the most helpful chapter was the one by the editor at the end of the book as she attempts to sythesize the praxis coming out of the theory and practice of Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice - I am grateful for this as it brought together a number of themes which I perhaps had not made the same links.
All in all, it's a decent starting point for those interested in the subject matter but perhaps of limited accessibility or interest for others.
Displaying 1 of 1 review