Tag: Richard Bawden

TB872: Bawden and transforming worldviews

Posted on March 8, 2024May 1, 2024 by Doug Belshaw

Note: this is a post reflecting on one of the modules of my MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice. You can see all of the related posts in this category.

An abstract representation of a learning system visualized as a network of interconnected, glowing nodes, each signifying individuals or subgroups within a community. The nodes, varying in colors and sizes, represent diversity and are linked by both tense, sparking wires and harmonious lights, illustrating the dual nature of tensions and potential growth within the system. This metaphorical image captures the dynamic and complex relationships within critical learning communities.

This post focuses on the arguments made by Richard Bawden in his two chapters of the book Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice. As I will show, his understanding and foregrounding of ‘worldviews’ is central to this.

In Chapter 3, which was originally written in 1999, Bawden (2010) sets the stage by illustrating the journey that faculty at the Hawkesbury School of Agriculture underwent. Shifting from a production-centric to a focus on “responsible rural development,” they also moved from a teaching approach to one focused on learning, and from a paradigm they realised was reductionist to one much more holistic.

The chapter highlights the challenges involved in transformation at both the individual and community levels, with Bawden identifying the “tensions of difference” within the sub-systems making up the overall learning system. These tensions, he believes, are crucial to the effectiveness of critical learning systems in community development. Bawden criticises prevailing non-systemic models of development as being inadequate in addressing the complexities and uncertainties of modern life. Not only are they deterministic and materialistic, but they are individualistic, leading to community disintegration and a deficit of trust.

The way forward, Bawden argues, is to transform communities into learning systems which are capable of adaptive learning. He proposes a synthesis of ‘inspirational’ and ‘experiential’ learning to allow meaning to emerge, with an integrated model which weaves these elements together. Bawden then concludes the chapter with a list of practical considerations for those seeking to establish, develop, and/or evaluate learning communities.

Moving to Chapter 6, which was written specifically for the edited collection, Bawden (2010b) reflects on his experiences at Hawkesbury, focusing on the collective beliefs of the faculty. He discusses worldviews specifically and how they influence systemic action. This chapter is much more focused on issues around wellbeing, ethics, and the growing climate crisis.

Bawden transitions from talking about theoretical issues to more practical applications, ending with a discussion on the global and systemic nature of contemporary challenges. Whereas in the previous chapter, Bawden spoke of “critical learning systems” in this one he explicitly talks of “Critical Social Learning Systems” (CSLS), defining this as “a group of people that have decided to collaborate in order to seek systemic improvements to some messy complex situation that together they regard as critically problematic” (Bawden, 2010b, p.94). “In other words,” he says:

a CSLS is a collection of individuals who agree to act together as a coherent group of people who are prepared to ‘collectively learn their way through’ an issue that they all agree is problematic in some way or another to them all. They accept that in addition to learning all they can about that issue as ‘the matter to hand’ as the prerequisite for taking informed action to improve it, they will also address, and respond to two other ‘levels of learning’ as they proceed: In essence they will be learning in three dimensions concurrently. So even as they are investigating the matter to hand they will also be critically reflecting on the processes of learning that they are bringing to bear: their ‘meta-learning’. These
reflections will include (i) their own impressions on the actual processes that they are using to generate shared knowledge and understanding from their experiences, (ii) how they are testing the quality or validity of that knowledge, (iii) how they are designing plans for action in the face of the knowledge that they are generating and decisions that they are beginning to formulate in response, and (iv) how they might actually put those plans into action for change. In this manner, they are seeking improvements in the way that they are learning even as they go about that learning.
Bawden (2010b, p.94)

Central to Bawden’s argument is the concept of worldviews: mental models that shape our interactions with the environment, influence our sense-making processes, and serve as the context for our judgments and the foundation of our moral compass. He emphasises the transformative potential of worldviews, questioning whether our cultural perspectives leave us equipped to handle life’s complexity. In fact, he wonders whether we are even aware of our own worldviews.

Worldviews, according to Bawden, comprise “personal presuppositions” about the following:

(a) the nature of nature (or ontology, philosophically speaking),
(b) the nature and origins of the universe, of life itself and, especially, of the spiritual essence of mankind (or cosmology),
(c) the nature of knowledge (or epistemology) and
(d) the nature of human nature especially as it relates to motivations, dispositions
and values, especially ethics and aesthetics (or axiology).
Bawden (2010b, p.96)

By recognising and transforming our worldviews, Bawden believes that we can better address the “complex messiness” of today’s challenges. Although this transformation must take place on an individual level, it is also crucial that it happens collectively: a communal shift towards reflective, adaptive, and holistic learning systems.

References

Bawden, R. (2010). ‘The community challenge: the learning response’. In Blackmore, C. (ed.) Social learning systems and communities of practice. London: Springer. pp.89-101. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2.
Bawden, R. (2010b). ‘Messy issues, worldviews and systemic competencies’. In Blackmore, C. (ed.) Social learning systems and communities of practice. London: Springer. pp.89-101. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2.

Image: DALL-E 3

TB872: Choosing between CSLS and CoPs

Posted on March 1, 2024May 1, 2024 by Doug Belshaw

Note: this is a post reflecting on one of the modules of my MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice. You can see all of the related posts in this category.

For my End of Module Assessment (EMA) I have to choose between using two traditions. One is Critical Social Learning Systems (CSLS) and the other is Communities of Practice (CoPs), with the CoPs being familiar, and CSLS being new to me as of studying this module.

I’m choosing CSLS instead of CoPs for my EMA inquiry, for three reasons:

Familiarity / novelty — as I’ve already mentioned, I’m new to CSLS, so I’m interested in learning more about it. This, after all, is the whole point of self-funding this MSc in Systems Thinking.
Relevance — as I’ll explain below, while CoPs tend to focus on the practical application of knowledge and learning in an informal community, CSLS is more about social dynamics and power relations. I feel like the latter is more relevant for my inquiry, as it involves systemic change within Higher Education.
Challenge — some of what I’m attempting to help change in my inquiry is what some would call a complex situation, or a ‘hybrid matter of concern’ which is messy and global in impact. CSLS seems more suited to this.

Chapter 6 of the course text was written by Richard Bawden specifically for the book (Bawden, 2010). In the introduction to the chapter, he notes that there were five “beliefs or tenets that came to be held collectively” (ibid., p.89) by the faculty at Hawkesbury Agricultural College in Australia, from which CSLS developed:

Experience is a critical source of human learning and development

Such experiential learning is essentially a multi-dimensional, developmental system of cognitive processing by which we make sense out of the world around us as the foundation for the actions that we take as we live our lives in it

What we learn about the world is markedly influenced both by the way we go about that learning and by the limitations that are imposed by the particular intellectual and moral perspectives (worldviews) that each of us (usually tacitly) adopts through which we ‘filter’ our ‘sense-making’

Worldview perspectives are themselves capable of development as reflected in transformations of basic value and belief assumptions which are achieved essentially through ‘higher order’, critical cognitive processing

The ability to act systemically in the world, with an acute appreciation of ‘wholeness’, ‘inter-connectedness’ and ‘emergence’, is a function of particular intellectual and value assumptions concerning the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge and of knowing, and the nature of human nature.

Bawden (2010, pp.89-90)

Bawden continues by citing the work of Foucault to talk about “epistemic development,” meaning “the transformation of worldviews” which “involves profound changes to the beliefs that we hold about… the world around us, as well as to the values that we cherish, that together constitute our intellectual and moral ‘sense-making’ frameworks”. We are “abysmally ignorant,” he notes, “of the fact that we even hold to particular epistemes or worldviews” let alone be “conscious of the extent to which they influence the way we live our lives” (Bawden, 2010, p.91).

These worldviews “comprise a set of personal presuppositions” about the following:

(a) the nature of nature (or ontology, philosophically speaking),
(b) the nature and origins of the universe, of life itself and, especially, of the spiritual essence of mankind (or cosmology),
(c) the nature of knowledge (or epistemology) and
(d) the nature of human nature especially as it relates to motivations, dispositions
and values, especially ethics and aesthetics (or axiology).
Bawden (2010, p.96)

In Chapter 3 where Bawden (2010b) goes into depth about Karen Kitchener’s model of cognitive processing. I discussed this in a previous post, but didn’t include the following diagram:

A circle labelled 'Learning' nested inside two ovals, the first labelled 'Meta learning' and the second 'Epistemic learning'

Combined with the experiential model of learning developed by David Kolb, the Hawkesbury group created a framework for developing learning practices that focuses in turn on:

(a) learning about the matter to hand and how to transform that for the better,
(b) learning about the learning processes that are brought to bear to learn about the matter to hand (meta-learning), and how to improve them, and
(c) learning about the limitations to learning that are imposed by prevailing worldviews (epistemes) (epistemic learning), and how these can be appropriately characterised, challenged and, where indicated, transformed.
Bawden (2010, p.92)

In terms of the third of these, the epistemic learning, a critical social learning system is ‘critical’ in three areas (ibid., p.95):

Of conditions within the environments within it is embedded (and seeks improvement)
Reflexive (i.e. critically reflective) of its own structure
Critically conscious of the implications of each boundary judgement (i.e. what and who is included/excluded)

Citing Vickers, who I have written about elsewhere, Bawden talks about appreciative systems, and seeing our lived experiences as a two-stranded braiding of events with ideas. As far as I understand it, CSLS takes a step back from even this, to create a three-stranded braid which also includes worldviews. It is all very well understanding the world by linking ideas (including value judgements) with lived experience, but shared worldviews allow us to take action in the world.

I’m choosing CSLS over CoPs, then, for my inquiry, because of the resonance with Bawden’s claims that “we [are] victims of our own, particular, culturally embedded way of ‘seeing’ what is happening about us” (ibid., p.100). Although he was talking in terms of the climate emergency and “the looming global energy crisis” I can see this as well with the focus of my own inquiry.

Useful resources

This is mainly a note to myself, based on the course materials (The Open University, 2021):

	CSLS
Designing a learning system	Chapter 4 (Woodhill) – sections ‘Institutional design’ and ‘Facilitating institutional design’ Chapter 5 (Ison) – section ‘Social learning systems in practice’
Practitioner (P)	Chapter 3 (Bawden) – sections ‘Worldviews’ and ‘The inspirational subsystem’ Chapter 5 (Ison) – section ‘Becoming aware of our traditions of understanding’ Chapter 6 (Bawden) – section ‘Worldviews and their influence’
Framework of ideas (F)	Chapter 6 (Bawden) – section ‘The nature of critical social learning systems’ Chapter 4 (Woodhill) – section ‘Towards a paradigm of social learning’
Methods (M)	Chapter 3 (Bawden) e.g. the diagrams
Situation of concern (S)	Chapter 3 (Bawden) – ‘Genesis’ Chapter 4 (Woodhill) – ‘Introduction’ Chapter 5 (Ison) – ‘Creating the contexts to foster social learning’

References

Bawden, R. (2010). ‘Messy issues, worldviews and systemic competencies’. In Blackmore, C. (ed.) Social learning systems and communities of practice. London: Springer. pp.89-101. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2.
Bawden, R. (2010b). ‘The community challenge: the learning response’. In Blackmore, C. (ed.) Social learning systems and communities of practice. London: Springer. pp.89-101. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2.
The Open University. (2021). ‘3.4.1 Making your choice of tradition’, TB872: Managing change with systems thinking in practice. Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2171593&section=3.4.1 (Accessed 1 March 2024).

Image: DALL-E 3

TB872: Bawden and living as a constant process of learning

Posted on February 25, 2024May 1, 2024 by Doug Belshaw

Note: this is a post reflecting on one of the modules of my MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice. You can see all of the related posts in this category.

An intricate, wide illustration of a giant tree symbolising the Hawkesbury approach, with diverse branches of knowledge and leaves as academic disciplines, in a dynamic rural Australian setting, without any text elements.

Next on the list of systems thinkers to deal with in this module is Richard Bawden, who (oddly) doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. It’s weird how ‘notability’ works on that site. His background is in education and sustainability, particularly in a rural Australian context.

Bawden was part of the ‘Hawkesbury approach’ which includes other Australian academics such as Ray Ison and Jim Woodhill. Ison is one of the authors of this module and a professor at the Open University. This post draws on a video in the course materials (Open University, 2021) and a chapter in the book Social Learning Systems and Communities of Practice (Blackmore, 2010).

By way of introduction, Blackmore mentions that “two distinguishing factors of the Hawkesbury approach are that epistemology and ethics are valued… as important to learning” (Blackmore, 2010, p.36). In other words, different types of knowledge are valued, and there is a ‘critical’ element to the approach. It’s a good example of systemic praxis, that is to say people blending theory and practice.

The book chapter, which was originally an invited plenary paper to a conference which took place in 1999, includes quite a few diagrams. To use a goldilocks metaphor, some I find too simple, some too complex, and some ‘just right’.

Let’s begin with the video in the course materials, in which Bawden talks about three levels of learning:

Well, I’ve found a marvellous model of learning back in the early 1980s by Karen Kitchener. And she argued that there were really three ways, three levels if you like, of learning. There was learning about the matter to hand, there was learning about how we learn about the matter to hand, and there was learning about the limits to learning. And she labelled these cognition, metacognition, and epistemic cognition.

So for me, transformation is at any or all of those levels, which means that we change what we do as a result of the way we answer the questions at those three levels. So “what is the situation around me meaning to me?” would be the matter to hand, and then how I deal with it. At the meta level, it’s “how am I dealing with the way I am dealing with the issue?”, what you might call methods. And you could contrast, for instance, a scientific way of looking at something with a religious way of looking at things, which are two meta questions.

And then at the epistemic level, transformation at that level means that I expose my worldview, my set of beliefs and values, to self-critique. And then if I find them inadequate, then the transformation occurs at that level. And in my opinion, higher education should be, should be epistemic cognition.

In other words, we should be really trying to deal with how we make sense of the way we make sense. And that sounds philosophical, and in some ways it is. But it’s a profound question. So higher education, really, is about the way what we know is limited by how we go about knowing and valuing.
(The Open University, 2021)

Bawden is a proponent of experiential learning (i.e. learning by doing) which he sees as “adaption to change, based on a rigorous process of transformation” (Blackmore, 2010, p.47). Reflecting on this experiential learning Bawden calls ‘epistemic cognition’ after Kitchener, mentioned in the above quotation. “It is through epistemic learning,” he says, “that we learn to appreciate the nature of the worldviews and paradigms which we hold as the contexts for what and how we know” (ibid.).

A 2x2 grid with 'relativism' on the left, 'objectivism' on the right, 'holism' at the top, and 'reductionism' at the bottom.

This creates four areas: 'holocentric' (top-left), 'ecocentric' (top-right), 'egocentric' (bottom-left), and 'technocentric' (bottom-right)

The above diagram is a simple framework with the vertical axis reflecting different ontological positions: “the idea that one either accepts the irreducible wholeness of nature and other systems (holism), or one does not (reductionism)”. Epistemological differences are represented by the horizontal axis, with “one either accept[ing] that there is ‘a permanent, ahistoric matrix or framework to which we can ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality, knowledge, truth, goodness, or rightness’ (objectivism) – as Bernstein (1983) put it – or we do not (relativism)” (ibid., p.48).

One of the key points that Bawden wants to get across is that of emergence, and that, as Heraclitus pointed out when talking about a river, not only does it change, but we change too:

[I]f learning is the process by which we make sense of the world around us in order to adapt to it or adapt the world, then the way we live is determined, essentially, precisely by that. So the whole point about living is a constant process of learning. And at the base of all of that is the notion of improvement or development. So there is this constant idea that because the world is constantly changing, we too have to constantly change. And so the way we live, our lifestyle, our well-being, is in the end related to the way we make sense of the world about us.
(The Open University, 2021)

Bawden’s context was rural communities dealing with “immensely complex dynamic[s] and slowly degrading environments – socio-economic politico-cultural and bio-physical – in which they increasingly recognised they were deeply embedded” (Blackmore, 2010, p.39-40). The Hawkesbury approach is much more generally applicable, however, and has been developed into Critical Social Learning Systems (CSLS).

It’s perhaps a function of me being new to this area, but I find the following diagram a bit… much? It’s an attempt to integrate everything discussed in the chapter, which is itself an overview of work which has happened over a number of years. It includes elements of Kolb‘s learning cycles, Vickers‘ appreciative systems, and it even gives a nod to Habermas in terms of power.

A complex CSLS diagram, including many circles and labels.

Thankfully, Bawden notes that “as with any conceptual model it is vital to remember that the ‘map is not the territory'” so the above diagram is “just that: An image, a mental construct, which has been generated through the application of theory and insights to help create meaning from real world experiences, which have in turn, helped in the modification of those theories and the creation of fresh insights” (ibid., p.53).

Although I find this diagram somewhat confusing, I suppose it’s in the realm of what I would call ‘creative ambiguity‘ and makes sense to those who have studied it enough. I’ll end with Bawden’s checklist of what consitutes an ‘effective learning community’:

In its application, [the Hawkesbury approach] suggests a series of important factors to consider whenever the establishment, development and evaluation of a learning community is being mooted. It illustrates a number of key aspects of ‘social learning’ indicating some of the domains and dynamics that need to be considered. These are worthy of review under the rubric of an effective learning community as one which:

Has achieved a sense of its own coherence and integrity.

Contains a requisite level of variety and diverse tensions of difference which are essential for its own dynamic.

Is clear about its purpose and the influence of this on the boundary of its concerns and indeed its structure.

Combines both experiential and inspirational learning processes in its quest for meaning for responsible action.

Is conscious of meta and epistemic cognition, and of the influence of both cognitive and normative worldviews as frameworks for the way meaning is created.

Is critically aware of its own emotional ambience, and competent at the intelligent management of those emotions.

Is aware of the emergence of properties unique to different levels of its own systemic organisation, just as it is to the dynamics of chaotic change and the potential of property emergence following reorganisation.

Appreciates the nature of the environments (suprasystems) in which it operates, and is conscious of both constraining and driving ‘forces’ in that environment.

Is critically conscious of its own power relationships and those which exist between it and the environment about it, and knows what influence this has as a potential distorter of communication.

Is self-referential, critical of its own processes and dynamics, and capable of
self-organisation in the face of continual challenge from its environment.

Exhibits leadership as well as meaning as an emergent property.

This ‘checklist’ of systems’ characteristics provides a framework for the sort of conversations and discourse which guide a community which is intent on improving its own capacities for learning its way into better futures.
(ibid., p.54)

References

Blackmore, C. (ed.) (2010). Social learning systems and communities of practice. London: Springer. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84996-133-2.
The Open University. (2021). ‘3.3.4 Bawden: critical social learning systems’, TB872: Managing change with systems thinking in practice. Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=2171593&section=3.3.4 (Accessed 25 February 2024).

Image: DALL-E 3