2 Critical social learning systems
CSLS is one example of a learning systems tradition that has been used in managing change using STiP. In the context of developing the idea of CSLS, Richard Bawden and his colleagues were responding to the sort of messy situation described in Box 1 below. In relation to such situations, Bawden suggested that: ‘We need to learn how to be rigorously critical, act collectively, transform our shared new experiences into new knowledge and approach these issues systemically’.
Box 1 Situation in need of Critical Social Learning Systems (CSLS)
Farming in Australia has always been a particularly anxious business for those whose business it is: The climate is harsh and the weather variable, the soils are generally poor and surface water is scarce, and markets are often very remote and essentially uncertain […] By the beginning of the 1970s, … the level of anxiety about agricultural practices, and the paradigm that they reflected, were beginning to surface … Australian and international consumers alike were starting to voice their concerns about the possibility of the contamination of the food that they were buying from the chemical pesticides that they came to know were being used ‘down in the farm.’ Tourists were starting to express disappointment at the widespread ‘die-back’ of trees in the countryside, and the ‘rape’ of the landscape through land clearance. Environmentalists were beginning to mount media campaigns drawing the public’s attention to the loss of biodiversity on the continent, to the misuse and abuse of the ‘water resources’ of the nation, and to other matters environmental. Health professionals were starting to talk more urgently about the dangers associated with the extensive use of antibiotics and other ‘synthetic promotants’ in animal production, whereas animal liberationists were beginning to grab media headlines with talk of the ‘cruelty’ and lack of respect for ‘animal rights’ in much of livestock production. And through all of this, voices of reason were also calling attention to the lack of rights to the land of their ancestors by the aboriginal population of the nation.
Bawden argued that we need to learn how to:
- be rigorously critical of the way that we are currently living our lives and we need to learn how to harness that criticism to achieve constructive changes in our ways of being-in-the-world
- act collectively as families, tribes, communities, organizations and societies, as it is only through such social collaboration that our circumstances can be improved on the scale that present circumstances dictate
- This item started with ‘learn to’ so have deleted that. If it was in the original source quote then I’ll add it back in. Do let me know.transform our shared new experiences into new knowledge that we can then use as the basis for our collective, consensual judgments about desirable, feasible and defensible actions to take in the name of responsible and sustainable improvements
- approach these issues systemically, with a sense of their wholeness, their patterns of inter-connectedness, their dynamics, their embeddedness, and their emergent properties.
Activity 1 What does it mean to work as a Critical Social Learning System (CSLS)?
Drawing upon your current appreciation of CSLS, try to remember (or imagine yourself into) a situation where you have been working with a group considering an appropriate response to a situation you have been looking at together. Looking back, reflect on how you met (or not!) the four principles of CSLS: Were you critical of the situation, its ethics and its core assumptions? Did you engage in social/collective inquiry and action? Was there any learning? Did you approach the situation systemically? Write down three or four potential implications for the group process in working together as a critical social learning system.
Another tradition that aligns well with learning systems for managing change is the tradition of Communities of Practice (CoPs).Was there anything more that you wanted to add to this sentence? Feels like it ends abrubtly.