Learning in the Perspective of Complexity

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Learning in the Perspective of Complexity
Jan Visser jvisser_at_learndev.org jvisser_at_santafe.e
du
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http//www.learndev.org
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EMERGING FROM

• Learning Without Frontiers
• http//www.unesco.org/education/lwf/

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The Trouble with Learning
Most currently held beliefs are out of touch with
todays reality.

• Linked to school or instructional settings
• Linked to particular age group
• Acquisition paradigm
• Seen as individual activity
• Takes place in the heads of people
• Empty vessel metaphor
• Preparation for life
• Reaction to change
• Disciplinarity
• Compartmentalization of knowledge
• Limited slice of the intelligence spectrum (seen
  as fixed)
• Limited to specific space-time frames
• Favoring only certain learning styles
• Extrinsically motivated

(This list can be continued)
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What it mostly looks like
CULTURE OF SCHOOLING
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What it should look like
CULTURE OF LEARNING
CULTURE OF SCHOOLING
How can we all contribute to bringing about a
change in culture?
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This is not a pipe.
René Magritte La Trahison des Images (The
Betrayal of Images)
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THIS IS NOT A METAPHOR!
Learning is an ecology

• Ecology A branch of science concerned with the
  interrelationship of organisms and their
  environments, esp. as manifested by natural
  cycles and rhythms, community development and
  structure, interaction between different kinds of
  organisms, geographic distribution and population
  alterations.
• Websters Third New International Dictionary

• The word ecologycomes from the Greek oikos,
  meaning household, home, or place to live.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1999

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Complex cognition is an evolutionary phenomenon

• Ecological interactions take place within an
  evolutionary context and in turn shape the
  ongoing evolutionary process.
• Simon Levin (1999)
• Fragile Dominion Complexity and the Commons.
• Reading, MA Helix Books

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LEARNING
CHANGE
GROWTH
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The Reinvention of Learning
Need to change beliefs, research, policy and
practice in line with todays reality.

• Conceive of school or instructional settings in
  wider context
• Learning as lifelong disposition
• Participation paradigm
• Seen as individual and social activity
• Takes mainly place outside the heads of people
• Is dialogic
• Inherent feature of life (humans prepare for
  lifelong learning)
• Constructive participation in change
• Disciplinarity, multi-, inter-, and
  transdisciplinarity
• Consilience
• Multiple intelligences that can develop
• Multiple space-time frames
• Accommodating different learning styles
• Intrinsically motivated (motivation awakened
  through dialogue)

(This list can be continued)
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Human learning

• Starts nine months before we are born and
  continues until we die (and it extends beyond our
  physical existence to the extent that we are all
  part of the social and historical process of the
  continual development of human knowledge)
• Occurs in multiple contexts
• Has multiple dimensions
• Is engaged in by individuals and social entities
  (collectives of people who share a purpose)

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Reasons to rethink learning

• Explosive change
• Increasing complexity

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The mind boggles at an exponential curve
(Koestler, 1967)
Three million years of hominid development
and now . . . . . .
Global population patterns from 1600 B.C. to the
present Reproduced from Sakaiya, T. (1991). The
knowledge-value revolution,or, a history of the
future (p.111). New York, NY Kodansha America,
Inc. (Original source Jean-Noel Biraben.)
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Critical timeframe

• A critical point is reached when information and
  technology become obsolete faster than the
  approximately 20-year timeframe in which the
  leadership of one generation is taken over by the
  next one. At that juncture the experience of the
  older generation is no longer all that helpful
  (Abraham Pais, 1997).
• Need to rethink the concept of culture What
  should be passed on from one generation to the
  other? And what is not worth passing on? And what
  do we in fact pass on?

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Other reason to rethink learning

• Learning is good for your health.
• Nussbaum, P.D. (2000). Learning Towards Health
  and the Human Condition. In In Search of the
  Meaning of Learning. Paper presented at
  Presidential Session, International Conference of
  the Association for Educational Communications
  and Tecgnology, Denver, CO, October 25-28, 2000.
  Online Available http//www.learndev.org/dl/Denv
  erNussbaum.PDF
• Gross, C.G. (2000). Neurogenesis in the adult
  brain Death of a dogma. In Nature Reviews
  Neuroscience, 1 (pp. 67-73).

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Ecological vision of learning

• Learning is an integrated whole
• It is a continual process of construction,
  deconstruction and reconstruction
• It is a social and dialogical activity
• It is engaged in by individuals and social
  entities
• It is the fundamental condition that allows us to
  interact in constructive ways with change,
  recognizing the complexity of our world.

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Learning undefined

• Human learning is the disposition of human
  beings, and of the social entities to which they
  pertain, to engage in continuous dialogue with
  the human, social, biological and physical
  environment, so as to generate intelligent
  behavior to interact constructively with change.

Human learning is the disposition of human
beings, and of the social entities to which they
pertain, to engage in continuous dialogue with
the human, social, biological and physical
environment, so as to generate intelligent
behavior to interact constructively with change.
Human learning is the disposition of human
beings, and of the social entities to which they
pertain, to engage in continuous dialogue with
the human, social, biological and physical
environment, so as to generate intelligent
behavior to interact constructively with change.
Human learning is the disposition of human
beings, and of the social entities to which they
pertain, to engage in continuous dialogue with
the human, social, biological and physical
environment, so as to generate intelligent
behavior to interact constructively with change.
Human learning is the disposition of human
beings, and of the social entities to which they
pertain, to engage in continuous dialogue with
the human, social, biological and physical
environment, so as to generate intelligent
behavior to interact constructively with change.
Visser (in print). Integrity, completeness and
comprehensiveness of the learning environment
Meeting the basic learning needs of all
throughout life. In D. N. Aspin, J. D. Chapman,
M. J. Hatton and Y. Sawano (Eds), International
Handbook of Lifelong Learning. Dordrecht, The
Netherlands Kluwer Academic Publishers.
(http//www.learndev.org/dl/IntHbChapter.PDF)
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Where should the emphases go?
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Rich learning environment

• Learning before, during (inside and outside) and
  after the school
• Intended and incidental learning
• Formal, non-formal, informal settings
• Multiple spaces for learning
• Physical closed and open architecture
• Virtual varied media infrastructure
• Social different social connections

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Poor use ofrich learning environment

• Learning before, during (inside and outside) and
  after the school
• Intended and incidental learning
• Formal, non-formal, informal settings
• Multiple spaces for learning
• Physical closed and open architecture
• Virtual varied media infrastructure
• Social different social connections

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My argument

• Perspective on learning requires
• broadening
• diversification.
• The learning environment requires greater
  integrity, completeness, and inclusiveness.
• Any learning event must be conceived as an
  integral part of the learning environment at
  large.
• Design concerns must reflect different levels of
  organizational complexity.
• Training of designers to be based on the
  principles of problem-based learning.

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Further argument
Humans, and the social networks they create, are
part of an ecology that encompasses other forms
of life at different levels of biological
organization. Technology, created by humans,
becomes increasingly part of that ecology. It
makes sense to extend the concept of learning
ecology to include animal learning and machine
learning in addition to human learning.

• Humans, and the social networks they create, are
  part of an ecology that encompasses other forms
  of life at different levels of biological
  organization. Technology, created by humans,
  becomes increasingly part of that ecology. It
  makes sense to extend the concept of learning
  ecology to include animal learning and machine
  learning in addition to human learning.

It is not surprising that at this time of rapid
change we choose to ask the question What is the
meaning of learning? By the middle of this
century we may well be asking What is the
meaning of being human? as our grandchildren
develop the capabilities to create new
intelligent species of biological, digital, and
hybrid life-forms. Jim Spohrer
http//wwwlearndev.org/d
l/DenverSpohrer.PDF
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The Learning SocietyMcClellans two-dimensional
analysis model(see http//www.learndev.org/dl/VS
3-00g-LearnSocMultDim.PDF)
change in shared lesson set
Koinosophic society
Knowledge society
learning of the whole
learning of the parts
Personal wisdom society
Skilled society
change in individual lesson set
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The Learning SocietyCurrent emphases
change in shared lesson set
learning of the parts
learning of the whole
change in individual lesson set
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The Learning SocietyDesired emphases
change in shared lesson set
learning of the parts
learning of the whole
change in individual lesson set
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Issue of concern

• Creating the conditions for the evolution of an
  ecology of learning.

• This requires a vision of the learning
  environment at large.

• Lets call this the learning landscape.

• Lets call this the learning landscape.

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Learning landscape

• Broad conception.
• Ecological vision of the learning environment,
  with nested frameworks of learning
• different levels of organizational complexity
• different timeframes
• different connotations of space.
• Learners and learning communities (learning
  entities) as complex adaptive systems.

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Learning entities and the learning environment at
large

• Learning entities
• live in the learning environment
• use resources present in the learning environment
• are themselves resources that make up the
  learning environment.

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LEARNING COMPLEXITY

• Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS)

• Characteristics
• multiple interacting agents
• aggregate behavior over and above behavior
  components
• non-linear interaction among agents (aggregate
  behavior ? sum of behaviors of constituent
  parts)
• agents both numerous and diverse
• capable of self-reorganization (diversity
  recognized by system)
• system evolves due to self-reorganization
  (perpetually novel aggregate behavior growth
  rather than settling for steady state)
• behavior of agents based on internal models of
  anticipation
• Source Holland, J. H. (1995). Can there be a
  unified theory of complex adaptive systems? In H.
  J. Morowitz J. L. Singer (Eds), The mind, the
  brain, and complex adaptive systems. Proceedings
  Volume XXII, Santa Fe Institute, Studies in the
  Sciences of Complexity. Reading, MA
  Addison-Wesley Publishing Company

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Diversity issues

• Communities vary in size, complexity, purpose,
  ethnicity, belief system, social fabric,
  language, etc.
• Individual learners vary in how they pertain to
  different communities, their thinking styles,
  intelligence make-up, learning styles, motivation
  to learn, aesthetic sense, the stories they grow
  up with (male/female old/young caste), etc.

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Putting the picture together
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Making the connections

• Creating integrated research development
  perspectives that are essentially
  transdisciplinary (research teams/workshops/dedica
  ted advanced learning events ex. LDIs Meaning
  of Learning project).
• Investigating phenomena at the level of units of
  analysis that are meaningful in themselves (ex.
  LDIs Learning Stories research).
• Exploring connections between learning at
  different levels of complex organization (ex
  Learning Cities).
• Ensuring that new generations of humans start off
  on the right foot and become cognitively
  socialized appropriately
• early mental development
• infant learning
• the family as transgenerational learning
  environment
• the school as a space for socialization into a
  life of lifelong learning with a proper emphasis
  on problem-based learning
• adult lifelong learning (part of the eternal
  dialogue).
• Taking a look at consciousness (metacognition) in
  the human-animal/primate-machine connection.
• Connecting cognition and emotion (and
  meta-cognition/emotion).

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The Learning-Complexity Connection

• Learning, by its undefinition, is itself a
  complex phenomenon.
• The environment in which human beings live is
  characterized by complexity. Learning is part of
  human behavior that allows individuals and their
  communities to cope with that complexity.
• The learning environment, i.e. the set of
  conditions that allow people and communities to
  define themselves as learning entities and to
  take on learning behavior, is complex, thus
  challenging the traditional notions of planning
  and instructional design.
• Complexity can be an object of learning. In one
  sense the goal of such learning can be a better
  understanding of the issue of complexity as it
  pertains to our knowledge in a variety of fields,
  such as in physical science.
• Complexity can also be an object of learning in a
  different sense. Its study can inspire the
  development of attitudes and skills that are
  generally described as the scientific approach.