There’s no rest for the wicked and, so after submitting my first tutor-marked assessment marking the end of Part 1 of this module, it’s time to get started with Part 2. I’m in Vienna at a conference next week, and then of course it’s Christmas, so I’d like to front-load as much of the work in this part as possible.
Part 2 is designed to enable you to become an effective Systems Thinking Practitioner and to use your STiP literacy and capabilities to undertake systemic inquiries which effect change that can make a difference.
In the course materials, Part 2 starts with some fantastic quotations, some of which I’d like to share here:
A caterpillar grows by getting longer and fatter, but this can only go on for a while before it reaches the limit…. It has to go through a transformation in how it is organised and how it relates to the world around it. The caterpillar changes the pattern of its life, abandoning the old and adopting the new. Similarly, we recognise the need for transformational change when we see that the way things are getting done now has limit; that we cannot get beyond these limits however much we try to improve the existing system, and that we must, as a result, create a new pattern of life for the future we want and need.
(Sharpe, 2020 p. 5; as quoted in Ofir, 2020)
This analogy captures a core principle of Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) around the necessity for transformational change in systems. Like the caterpillar, systems have inherent limits to incremental growth and ‘efficiency improvements’. At some point, continuous small-scale enhancements are no longer sufficient, so a fundamental reorganisation/overhaul of the system is required.
The caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly is symbolic of the emergence of new patterns and behaviours in a system. The analogy is also instructive in terms of the need for the proactive creation of new systems aligned with desired future states. In other words, the caterpillar doesn’t become a butterfly by being more caterpillar.
When we must deal with problems, we instinctively refuse to try the way that leads through darkness and obscurity. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness.
(Jung, 1933, p. 111)
This quotation from Carl Jung emphasises the importance of embracing complexity and uncertainty in systemic problem-solving. With STiP, complex problems often have many interdependencies and hidden factors (“darkness and obscurity”) meaning that STiP practitioners need to be ready to engage with uncertain and ambiguous situations. Real-world problems rarely have obvious, clear-cut solutions, so journeying into the complexities to find a solution can involve courage to face the uncertain.
Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.
(Bateson, 2001 p. 14)
As I’m learning in the book Systems Thinkers there were quite a few prominent people relating to systems thinking with the surname Bateson. All were related. This quotation is from Mary Catherine Bateson, and emphasises how systems are dynamic. A ‘stopping place’ is therefore not just a static point but part of a larger, continuously evolving process. In others words, every state within a system is provisional and transitional.
This is similar to to something I often say in terms of “every technology is a bridging technology”. In other words, it’s the direction of travel that’s important when thinking about technologies, not whether this or that is the perfect technology for all time. Bateson’s reference to evaluating a place as both good to remain and to move on from resonates with me in terms of continual learning and adaptability.
With STiP, it’s important to keep reassessing situations, acknowledging that strategies and solutions effective in one context may need changing or adapting for future challenges. This mindset is forward-looking, and the value of any current state is assessed not only in terms of its immediate benefits, but but also by its capacity to enable and support future growth.
The final thing I need to do before working on TMA01 (i.e. my first tutor-marked assignment) is to complete a learning contract. The things I’ve worked on so far build towards the assignment, so it’s like a coral reef, with my learning and understanding building up through accretion.
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The above table is based on a template made available in the module resources section. It covers the elements of the PFMS heuristic, asking which of them I’m focused on. It’s a worthwhile thing to do, although oddly framed as a ‘learning contract’ (that framing seems to be a dead metaphor along the same lines as a ‘skills passport’)
The table is to be completed in the first instance by ranking your current priority (nil, low, medium, high) against the possible sites for change in the left-hand column. Do one entry per line and use a Y (yes) or N (no) to indicate your current priorities. You can make this framework more illuminating by adding short notes to key cells explaining your priorities.
When you have completed [the table] use it to make some preliminary notes about the sorts of changes you would like to see as a result of having studied the module.
As you can see by the way I’ve completed the table, I’m really interested in all of it. Although I’m not specifically doing this MSc (and therefore this module) for work, I do expect Systems Thinking to be an important part of the way I interact with clients and networks I’m part of, going forward.
I haven’t adapted the table as I don’t have any ‘reporting requirements’, such as justifying my organisation’s spend on my fees (as I’m self-funding it), nor do I have to prove/demonstrate the impact of my learning to my boss (as I don’t have one).
Part 1 of the module closes with a fantastic quotation from Stafford Beer, which I hadn’t come across before, so I’m going to share it here:
It is not the living, breathing human being who resists change in [their] very soul. The problem is that the institutions in which we humans have our stake resist change (…) The power has remained where it resided. (…) Every time we hear that a possible solution simply cannot be done, we may be sure on general scientific grounds that it can. Every time we hear that a solution is not economic, we ought to ask: “for whom?”- since it’s people, just people who will have to pay. Every time we hear that proposal will destroy society as we know it, we should have the courage to say: “Thank God, at last.” And whenever we hear that it will destroy our freedom we should be very cautious indeed. (…) This is the simplest method that the powerful have to cling to power: to convince people that any other concession of that power would be unsafe.”
Beer, S. (1974) Designing freedom. Toronto: CBC Learning Systems.
I won’t be sharing my TMA01 assessment submission, for obvious reasons, but given that it will be based on what I’ve already shared here, you’re not missing out! I have to do things like: update and comment on my trajectory diagram, assess my systems literacy, and share/explain the above learning contract. The main part of it (45%), however, is to use the PFMS heuristic to reflect upon and explain an example of my current or past practice.
As we near the end of Part 1 of the TB872 module, we encounter something which I could write about all day: Communities of Practice (CoP). I’m going to reference some recent writing I’ve done and workshops we’ve run through WAO, partly to help jog my memory, but also to find again easily should I need it for one of my assessments:
There are other ones, which are more adjacent to this which are more focused on Open Recognition, especially Using Open Recognition to Map Real-World Skills and Attributes (Part 1 / Part 2). I’m surprised that those latter two haven’t had more interest and the ideas in them taken up, but I digress.
Before going any further, it’s worth defining what a CoP actually is:
Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other cope.
‘Introduction to communities of practice’ (2022), 12 January. Available at: https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice (Accessed: 25 November 2023).
CoPs all have the following:
Domain: there has to be a shared identity defined by a commitment to a ‘domain’ of practice. Being a member of the CoP implies some kind of commitment to this domain, as opposed to being a member of a ‘network’. Being part of the domain doesn’t necessarily confer ‘expertise’ but rather what Wenger and Traynor call a “collective competence”.
Community: somewhat obviously, a CoP has to have members which engage with one another with the domain. They talk with one another, sharing information, helping each other, and (crucially) they actually care about their relationships with one another. Sometimes drawing a boundary around a CoP is difficult, because it’s not based on job title, or visiting the same online forum as someone else; a CoP depends on interaction and learning. Even if the actual practice that people do is solitary (e.g. hiking long-distance trails) there can still be a vibrant CoP around it.
Practice: the ‘practice’ is what the members of the community actually talk about and help each other with. This goes beyond a community of ‘interest’, as members of a CoP are practitioners. They are not merely people who all like the same things. For example, the Taylor Swift fandom could be a Community of Interest, but if they start actually doing stuff together (e.g. collecting memorabilia, creating a database of performances) then they may start edging into a CoP. The important thing isn’t necessarily that people realise that they’re engaging in a practice within a community in a given domain — I’ve been part of lunchtime discussions in staff rooms as a teacher which could be considered a CoP.
The course materials ask us to reflect on our experiences of being part of communities as opposed to networks. One image that’s stuck with me since 2006 is from Stephen Downes, who drew out the following at a conference in Auckland to illustrate a point he was making:
‘Groups and networks’ (25 September 2006). Available at: https://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=35866 (Accessed: 25 November 2023).
This was very much the Web 2.0 era, and the very next day he followed up with a post reflecting on the pushback he’d got from some quarters:
It took exactly 24 hours for someone to propose a “middle way” (this is what passes for innovation these days). “Could there be “middle way” or “third way”? Something that would be between the ‘closed groups’ and ‘individuals in open networks’?”
It will soon be noticed that a person can be both an individual (and hence a member of a network) and a member of a group. That they can belong to many networks and many groups. That any number of ‘middle ways’ can be derived from variations on this theme.
[…]
The core of the issue is whether learning in general should be based on groups or networks. Everybody says, ‘learning is social’, and thus (no?) must be conducted in groups. But networks, too, are social. Learning can be social and not conducted in groups. Where to now, social construction?
The reason I share this here, other than the fact that Stephen has been a critical friend to my work for almost two decades, is that one could see the concept of a CoP as a ‘middle way’ between a group and a network. That is to say, there is a boundary, so it is group-ish. But it depends on people interacting with their full identity, rather than being subsumed into the group, and therefore is network-ish.
The assignment that I’m responding to in this post asks me to:
Review your own experiences of communities and networks in relation to your practices and plot them in some way, possibly using a timeline or a spray diagram. Discuss with others, possibly on the module discussion forum, whether and how these groups have been important to you in helping you improve your practices. If networks and communities have not been a significant part of your experience or if you do not consider them important to your practice, consider whether increased involvement and networks is desirable or feasible in relation to your practice.
As I’ve known for 15 years, the way my brain is wired not only means I get migraines, but I also am mildly synaesthetic. In my case, this means that I see time very visually, which, I understand from talking with other people, isn’t “normal”. I see it as a bit of a superpower, being able to zoom into different periods of history. It’s not that I get to choose how to represent it, that’s just how my brain works.
All of this is by introduction to my timeline of the CoPs to which I think I’ve belonged. The timeline is how I see the period from about 2000 to now, in my head. For some reason there’s always a ‘turn’ at the end of a decade. I’m never sure why it goes the direction it does. As my wife says, I’m weird.
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It’s important to note that this is meant to be in some way three-dimensional. There are no ‘peaks and troughs’. I could have spent longer on this to try and get the colours to overlap and interact with one another, but life is short.
I’m currently a member of the Open Education is for Everybody (ORE) and we’re currently working on an Open Recognition Toolkit (ORT) to be launched at ePIC 2023. This is what CoPs do: they come together to talk, share information, and create resources. By doing this, members encourage one another.
Reflecting on my membership of different communities, I turned from a lurker into an active community member due to the specific invitation of someone to start posting on the School History discussion forum. That was a revelation to me, as I then had a community beyond the walls of the school in which I was working. It transformed my practice, and the ‘audience’ for the work I was doing went beyond the stakeholders of my organisation (a school) and into the wider world.
Likewise, this set the scene for sharing my work openly on my blog and via Twitter, which is the best CoP I’ve ever been part of. It’s easy to consider social networks to be, well, networks but they can foster people coalescing around hashtags, and around practices such as online chats on particular topics at certain times. There’s a boundary that can be drawn around the practice.
My volunteering for Mozilla led to being employed to them. I still go along to MozFest and would consider myself a ‘Mozillian’ which, I guess, is part of a community identity — even if it has changed quite a lot over time. One of the most fulfilling communities I’ve been part of has been the Open Badges community which has morphed into Open Recognition when ‘microcredentialing’ sucked the life out of the original vibe.
And then, of course, there’s We Are Open, the cooperative I co-founded with friends and former colleagues in 2016. This has been a wonderfully sustaining organisation for me, starting off as a part-time thing, and then evolving into something I do ‘full time’ (for some definitions of ‘full’). This is very much a community of practice as we work together on a daily basis, evolving what we do as we learn from each other, our reading, and our work.
In closing, I’d note that the CoPs I’ve been involved in have had a ‘boundary’. That’s what gives them the domain of practice. Membership has been clear, as has (usually) what we’re working on. What CoPs do, in my experience, even if I haven’t always realised I’ve been part of one, is elevate my aspirations and interest in my practice. They’ve stimulated and encouraged me to go further in the work that I do, knowing that I’ve got an audience for the things that I find frustrating or fascinating.
I’m looking forward to being part of a Systems Thinking CoP. I guess the TB872 module is one, although I don’t feel very connected to fellow students yet. Perhaps I should post more in the forum.
