Over the past few years, we have been involved in innovation projects where a wide range of players have been learning about how to change things in their local context, and then periodically joining together with one another in a learning community, to amplify and exchange learning. In the setting of this learning system-of-systems, one of the things on which everyone seems to agree is that the experiences they are having are ’emergent’.
It is never absolutely clear what is meant by this term….and in the discussions of ‘what do you mean by emergent?, a range of things get stressed. Things like
- the role of difference in stimulating new ways of seeing things and new ways of acting
- the challenge of planning in an emergent reality, where you do not know what is likely to happen (indeed where the broadening of possibility is part of what you are doing)
- reflecting on what it is you are thinking and doing
- how appreciative inquiry is a more useful stance in an emergent context that focusing on problems and decay
- …and more….
We have tried to capture these things in an emergent learning framework which links together the dynamics of emergent learning with what it feels like to be in intimate relation to emergent learning.
Slingshot