[ba-unrev-talk] Fwd: [issues] Re: [ACC] The Warfield Program Part "A"
This post to the isss.org list set off a floury of surfing this morning,
not that I have that much time...
For instance:
http://www.theworldcafe.com/
"World Café Conversations are an intentional way to create a living network
of conversation around questions that matter. A Café Conversation is a
creative process for leading collaborative dialogue, sharing knowledge and
creating possibilities for action in groups of all sizes.
The challenges of life in the 21st Century require us to find new ways to
access the wisdom and intelligence inherent in groups both small and large.
The need for collaboration, insight and coordinated action has never been
greater. Café Conversations are one way that communities, businesses,
governments, and people from all walks of life are using to create a common
purpose, share knowledge, make more intelligent decisions, and create
life-affirming futures." (01)
Sound familiar? (02)
And then there is http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/resources_marshall.html
""We need to create learning and teaching communities that enable learners
to direct their own learning toward greater rigor, coherence, and
complexity; to increase their intellectual, social, and emotional
engagement with others; and to foster collaborative and dynamic approaches
to learning that enable them to develop thoughtful and integrative ways of
knowing. We must create a learning culture that provides a forum for risk,
novelty, experimentation, and challenge and that redirects and personalizes
learning. We must create learning communities for learners of all ages that
can give power, time, and voice to their inquiry and their creativity.
Such a community is governed by the principles of learning, not schooling,
and is:
ˇ Personalized, flexible, and coherent (learning is connected to real-life
issues)
ˇ Internally and externally networked and not bounded by physical,
geographic, or temporal space
ˇ Invitational, with students engaged in meaningful research and serious
inquiry
ˇ Accountable to the learner to provide adaptive instructional environments
ˇ Rich in information and learning experiences for all learners
ˇ Open to emergent and generative knowledge
ˇ Self-organized around core principles, beliefs, and a shared and mutually
created purpose
ˇ Intergenerational in the configuration of learning experience
ˇ Flexible, diverse, and innovative
ˇ Interconnected and collaborative, fostering interorganizational linkages
ˇ Engaged in authentic dialogue with members of the internal and external
community
ˇ Focused on inquiry, complex cognition, problem finding, and problem
resolution
ˇ Committed to increasing what David Perkins, in Outsmarting IQ, calls the
"learnable intelligences" of every individual
ˇ Comfortable with ambiguity and paradox
ˇ Playful
ˇ Trusting
ˇ Responsible
ˇ Lovable
If we are truly going to create learning communities for the twenty-first
century, we must view our schools as dynamic, adaptive, self-organizing
systems, not only capable but inherently designed to renew themselves and
to grow and change."
The author, Stephanie Pace Marshal, calls for a new covenant in learning,
one that sheds the machine-based paradigm of the past and which embraces a
holistic paradigm, and a new pattern language (ala Christopher Alexander)
for the future." (03)
Well, that sounds like my favorite rant... (04)
Moving right along, there is the notion of strategic questioning:
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC40/Peavey.htm (05)
"I'm from Idaho. I don't know if you know what that means, but it's very
hard for a person from Idaho to think of cleaning up the Ganges River. When
a friend from India asked me to help him clean up the river, I knew I had
no experience cleaning up rivers. What I did know about was how to build a
strategy for social change.
When I first went to India I used strategic questioning. I began by
building a series of questions, starting with how the people saw the
problem themselves. What do you see when you look at the river? How do you
explain the situation with the river to your children? How do you feel
about the condition of the river? I listened very carefully to how they
explained to themselves what they saw. Essentially I was looking at their
logic as well as their words. I was looking for the cultural wiring around
the river. I couldn't say, "Oh, I see the river's polluted." That would be
like my saying in a Western context, "Your mother is a whore." It would be
a cultural insult. I had to find out how they explained the pollution to
themselves." (06)
I conducted this surfing exercise in light of my own views that
the present Newtonian, mechanical approach to problem solving will
not serve us in the 21st century
the present Newtonian, mechanical approach to "teaching" will not
serve us in the 21st century
a new pattern language is needed
strategic questioning is liable to be a crucial aspect of that new
pattern language
IBIS or some evolutionary outgrowth of that brand of inquiry,
coupled with strategic questioning will
be a part of the new pattern language
be a part of the new learning system (07)
I hold these views very important to my own explorations in and around the
OHS paradigm. (08)
Jack (09)
>From: Thommandel@aol.com
>Sender: owner-issues@isss.org
>
>In a message dated 07/04/02 10:33:55 PM Central Daylight Time,
>bvogl@cruzio.com writes:
>
>>Hi all, Tom expresses an interesting development in online
>>conversation. For the first time I see more clearly how important the
>>Spoken word is. I think this ACC discussion indicates how much we each
>>need to be listened to. And I'm wondering if that can occur with the
>>written word?
>
>
>OK, Barb, let's fast forward and do something about it.
>If we are going to be serious about communication,
>about doing something pragmatic, let's do it!
>So, who has the best system to get it done?
>And is there even a system to look at?
>Is there something the systemic community has to offer anyone?
>I think there is.
>The one I am most familair with right now is Warfield's Work Program of
>Complexity. (This is not to ignore Banathy's Angoran home)
>Complexity is a product of the not-understanding mind, Warfield, et al,
>says. And it's resolution is to understand and then the complexity
>evaporates, leaving even more interesting questions and answers. Warfield
>differentiates the Program into two ontological catagories he calls
>Discovery and Resolution. And these further differentiate -- Discovery
>into Description and Diagnosis while Resolution is differentiated into
>Planning and Implementation. When Warfield talks about Discovery, he means
>it. The idea is to get all the significant "cards on the table." This is a
>brainstorming or what he calls ideaforming. Everyone is asked to put his
>ideas down on paper, Warfield has many subtleties in his book. There are
>many different kinds of idea forming schemes he elaborates on. Warfield
>elaborates on a lot of things, seems there are many pitfalls in group
>work. Citing key logicians such as Peirce, and de Morgan. he points out
>how we look so hard at the elements and ignore or take for granted the
>relationships. We give lip service to the relation, to be sure, but we
>still hold the element supreme. What Warfield wants us to do is to collect
>all these suppusitions and presuppositions, all the significant ideas of
>the "problem situation" and then catagorize them creating the first
>product called the "Problematique."
>
>And this is the significant contribution that Warfield has to offer us I
>think. The Probematique. Warfield says that in order to understand
>complexity we need to go beyond prose. We need to adopt a prose/modeling
>approach that can transcend both. He mentions sophisticated models made of
>simple premises and simple models made of sophisticated premises, or
>something like that. Warfield uses a relationship modeling and thus the
>Problematique is a grapical and prose interrelation model. It is a
>presentation of the contributing factors, their relationships,
>as a whole. Only then, when we can see the whole story, so to speak, Only
>then can we begin to grasp the myriad movements within the problem
>situation. Only then can we begin to understand where before there was
>only perplexity.
>
>Now, there is more to it. Warfield requires that the INFRASTRUCTURE
>required to accomplish this group process is the first step. Not only is a
>special situation room with tables, paper pencils available, the
>Probematique deserves a model of the Lourve,
>and indeed
>Aleco informs me that the has done something like that at Ohio State or...
>We are NOT talking dreams here
>They call this hall of knowledge the Observatorium. Here all the ideas,
>the Problematique, are presented by means of large, very large, well,
>posters, I guess, or whatever is appropriate. Warfield says that if a
>corporation is going to spend One hundred million on a complexty, what's
>one million for an Observatorium? The hall of Knowledge, presented with
>the respect it calls for. The idea is to get all the ideas together so
>that they may be presented to a larger supersystem. Because after they are
>gathered and their relationships determined, then the expert diagnosis
>people come in and figure out what is wrong. Once this is determined, then
>the group takes over again and determines a plan and Implements it.
>
>So to continue this dialogue, I would like to ask Aleco exactly what the
>Problamatique and Observatorium are. Or maybe it would be better to ask
>how did you DO IT Aleco?
>
>I would like to add something. There is a lot of talk about diversity.
>There are some systemists who would have diversity first. BUT let me
>remind you that diversity, if we are talking about the diversity nature
>has produced, is NOT arbitrary. On the contrary, true diversity is
>grounded in order. The Universe is not an accident. Like it or not, the
>Universe does have a system. Warfield talks a lot about the requirement to
>know, tp understand, and to acknowledge the Formal Principles. This is not
>being done in the systemic community. Somehow we all asume that we have it
>all down pat an it isn't necessary to revisit these simple ontological
>principles. But like Warfield says, if we don't know what our
>presuppositions are, then we end up NOT with an ordered evaluation of the
>situation, but a restatement in terms that are only spelled differently.
>Ken Wilber calls this "insidious" because, he says, we are the ones
>supposedly showing everyone else and we don't practice what we preach.
>Incidently, Wilber has a four quadrant model too, knowledge in the
>literature, he says, emerges in one of four perspectives. First there is
>the Internal, then the External, then the Other and finally the
>Interother. And while I am at it, let's not forget Bela Banathy's model of
>Philodophy, Theory, Methodology and Practice. Warfield's Program not only
>takes this into account but displays the knowledge in a respectful way.
>
>When my father was dying, I had a chance to ask him how to build a house,
>which is what he did for a living. I asked him to say it in one sentence
>because I was worried that he would overexert himself. He looked at me,
>and in his eyes I saw the whole lifetime of the man I loved, he said
>"start straight."
>(Paul Mandel 1900-1976)
>That's how the Bohemians do it.
>
>Thanks for the opportunity to express myself. My contributions to the
>Problem Situation, the Problematique are at the end of this letter.
>Finding out the real problems, the diagnosis, is the hardest part. When
>this is done, then we can plan and implement in a more sane way.
>
>Tom
>
>Please see Part (B) next letter (010)