Co-Design, Volume I
Practical Ideas for Learning
Across Complex Systems
Mark Gatenby
Stefan Cantore
Co-Design, Volume I: Practical Ideas for Learning Across Complex Systems
Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2019.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Keywords
Co-design; Complex Systems; Design; Education; Ideas; Leadership
Learning; Organizations; Practice
Contents
Series Introduction..................................................................................ix
Introduction...........................................................................................xi
Acknowledgments..................................................................................xiii
Chapter 1 Revisiting Learning............................................................1
Chapter 2 Beginnings.......................................................................15
Chapter 3 Mindset...........................................................................25
Chapter 4 Inquiry.............................................................................35
Chapter 5 Boundaries.......................................................................47
Chapter 6 Situation..........................................................................63
Chapter 7 Place................................................................................75
Chapter 8 Scaffolding.......................................................................87
Chapter 9 Self-managing..................................................................99
Chapter 10 Adulthood......................................................................109
Chapter 11 Becoming.......................................................................123
Chapter 12 Closing: I’m Too Busy to Learn......................................131
About the Authors................................................................................141
Index..................................................................................................143
Series Introduction
This book is part of a series on the subject of co-design in complex sys-
tems. Taken together, the three volumes provide a guide to practical ideas
about co-designing as a way of organizing in living systems:
While each volume stands on its own, and may attract readers from
different professional backgrounds, we believe the series as a whole is
more than the sum of its parts. A practitioner or student who explores
the landscape of all three volumes will find themselves better equipped
to think and act in complex systems—like business, politics, health care,
and education.
The marketplace for ideas has no shortage of introductory guides to
managing and leading in organizations. This series is distinctive for the
specific reason that it looks beyond individual organizations, using a sys-
tems lens to bring together domains that have remained apart. A complex
systems perspective, as we apply it, looks at things together in the short
term and the long term, the big and the small, and the dynamically in-
terconnected. By exploring how to combine the domains of design and
development with learning, practitioners can find new confidence in how
to work effectively within the most challenging of professional contexts.
Introduction
Regardless of how you currently define yourself, we think that you will
find much value in this work to support your learning. Those involved in
designing learning environments will find fresh ideas for curricula and ap-
proaches for cocreating learning experiences. Alongside introducing more
formal theories about learning, this book is full of practical ideas that you
can use straightaway.
Revisiting Learning
Mark Gatenby and Stefan Cantore
Imagine you are meeting a friend in a café. You arrive at the same time
and wait to order. In the queue you remind each other of the last time you
met up, share experiences of the traffic getting to the venue, and briefly
exchange bewilderment at the day’s news headlines. You are served your
drinks and both take a seat on a comfortable sofa by the window. Just as
you are taking your first sip of coffee, your friend sits back and asks:
“What are you learning at the moment?”1
You are surprised by the question and quickly search for some
thoughts. How would you respond to this question?
What we are learning is an unusual line of inquiry in our contempo-
rary culture. Some would see this as a personal question, even intrusive,
because learning is a private matter—it speaks of who we are, what ques-
tions we have, our frailties and needs, our desires and ambitions, our ethical
values, and even our social or economic value. There are many possible
meanings and intentions behind the question, and it would be easy to feel
defensive about the answer. For many people, learning is something they
were forced to do at school, or something they do only if required by their
employer. Learning is therefore something to comply with—something to
get through without too much pain. But for others, learning is a genuine
purpose for living, a reason they get up in the morning, and a central part
of their self-identity. New ideas, theories, techniques, skills, and practices
can be inspiring and empowering. But learning runs deep and asks so many
1
This question was inspired by the 2018 Workers’ Education Association (WEA)
Annual Lecture, given by Mathew Taylor, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of
Arts, London. Video available: “A place for Learning,” https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ckRliYTMTxo (accessed June 15, 2018)
2 CO-DESIGN, VOLUME I
thought since the ancient Greeks have placed lifelong learning at the heart
of human meaning. Learning is about self-understanding and self-mastery,
but it can also be self-less: bigger than any individual needs or desires. It
is both eternal and ever-flowing. Today, the UK National Health Service
(NHS) recommends a regular habit of learning as one of the main ingre-
dients of mental well-being—alongside connecting with community and
family, physical exercise, giving to others, and being mindful of the world
around us (NHS 2018). Perhaps health care providers should prescribe
patients courses of learning to make a happier society?
Despite its gifts, learning has been marginalized in society, in organi-
zations of all shapes and sizes, and in communities—even, strangely, in
educational institutions. Schools and universities no longer see it as their
primary mission to enable learning and imagination. Their main focus is
increasingly on narrow measures of performance and reputation, such as
league tables.
It is tempting to think that technology has freed us from the hard
work and effort of learning—perhaps even the need to remember any-
thing. Many people we have met in the process of writing this book have
pointed to technology as the answer to learning. If we don’t know some-
thing we can “Google” it or look it up on Wikipedia. If we want a practi-
cal skill we can watch a YouTube video to show us how it is done. These
tools and resources, growing at incredible rates with the participatory net-
works of the World Wide Web, are very useful, and we all use them. They
remove some of the obstacles and practical constraints, but they do not
offer a substitute for learning. We need to have an idea of what we want
to know, and what we want to do, before we trust an algorithm to help us.
Google can find us answers to questions, but it cannot find us the right
questions. Databases are efficient tools for storing and retrieving informa-
tion, but they are unable to imagine new possibilities. For this reason, we
can be open to the potential of learning technology but see it as only a
part of a larger system.
estimate that 90 percent of what we learn takes place outside of the con-
fines of school and other formal institutions (Cunningham 2017). We can
extend this further and suggest that 90 percent of what you learn at school
is not on the national curriculum or standardized tests. The things we
mostly learn in these situations, and throughout life, are a sense of self, our
relationships with other people, our relationship with power and authority,
and our membership of social structures—like gender, class, nationality,
religion, and culture. In Deschooling Society, the philosopher Ivan Illich
(1973) argued that, more than any ideas or subjects, what students mostly
learn at school is how schools work; their power, discipline, and control-
ling structures as mini societies. For example, if you think you are “clever”
or “stupid” you probably learned this at school. This label, and many oth-
ers, may have stuck with you for years, even decades. This means we should
be mindful of the influence of education as a mode of learning that has
influences on us way beyond any specific notion of knowledge and skills.
The sociologist Basil Bernstein (2003) highlighted how language can
determine much of our experience of education and learning. Looking
at the way students from different socioeconomic backgrounds move
through school, he used the concept of codes to describe how learning is
packaged up in a particular language, reflecting power structures and cul-
ture. All knowledge is codified in some way. Bernstein found at least two
distinct codes operating in schools and colleges—the formal code of the
classroom and written assignments, what is sometimes called “academic”
language today. And a more informal language-in-use code is used among
family members and peers. The students who perform well on tests are
those who can navigate between the different codes, whereas those that
struggle often fail to use the more formal code of the classroom. This
finding is relevant today, when a student from private school carries a dif-
ferent set of language codes to a student from a public school or when an
employee from one department fails to use the correct code of the board-
room or technical specialty. Bernstein reminds us that what we are trying
to learn and the language we use to describe learning are separate, but
connected, things. Language and culture are our way into learning. The
social and cultural insights into learning are fundamental to the perspec-
tive of this book. They support what are generally called social learning
and practice-based theories of learning.
Revisiting Learning 9
like books and apparatus. It is a system where the teacher represents the
sum total of the learning; consider the teacher who says, “I taught them
that, but they didn’t learn it” (Rogers 2007, p. 6).
In contrast to what is considered the traditional approach, for cen-
turies there has been a stream of thinking that starts from the interests
of the learner rather than the teacher. It looks to the social nature of
learning rather than an individualistic system of measurement and com-
petition. Some point to the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1979)
in the eighteenth century as a significant proponent for this perspective.
Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this view was
called Progressive Education and also New Education. In contrast to the
focus on teachers as pedagogues—with concern for discipline, punish-
ment, and preparing children for what was considered adult life—the
focus was on understanding the nature of development and growth in a
broader social context.
This movement also led to an increasing interest in adult education,
and the relationship between formal education and workplace learning.
For example, as cited by Knowles, Holton, and Swanson (2014, p. 23),
the first issue of the Journal of Adult Education published in 1929 con-
tained the ideas from a UK college principal: “At the risk of seeming
fantastic I will venture to say that the final objective of the New Educa-
tion is the gradual transformation of the industry of the world into the
university of the world.”
This was a vision of lifelong learning, learning organizations, and
learning cities—ideas that all emerged again at the end of the twentieth
century (Senge 1990; Longworth 1999). Communities of practitioners,
like The Progressive Education Association, founded in 1919, promoted
principles such as emphasis on “learning by doing”; integrated curricula
and practical projects with reflective theories of practice, group work,
and collaborative projects; creative use of learning resources beyond text
books; and an emphasis on lifelong learning. In progressive education
and adult education, we find a combination of ideas about what learning
is and how teaching and learning are different kinds of practices. These
principles fit well with what we call the co-design of learning.
We are moving into a world where learning situations and envi-
ronments are co-designed. This means that roles are more fluid and
12 CO-DESIGN, VOLUME I
References
Argyris, C. 2005. “Double-loop Learning in Organizations: A Theory
of Action Perspective.” In Great Minds in Management: The Process of
Theory Development, eds. K. G. Smith and M. A. Hitt. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press, pp. 261–79.
Ashby, W. R. 1952. Design for a Brain. New York, NY: Wiley.
Bernstein, B. 2003. Class, Codes and Control. Volume 1, Theoretical Studies
towards a Sociology of Language. London, UK: Routledge.
Bovill, C., A. Cook-Sather, P. Felten, L. Millard and N. Moore-Cherry.
2016. “Addressing Potential Challenges in Co-creating Learning and
Teaching: Overcoming Resistance, Navigating Institutional Norms and
Ensuring Inclusivity in Student–staff Partnerships.” Higher Education
71, no. 2, pp. 195–208.
Cunningham, I. 2017. Learning not Education, unpublished paper.
Cook-Sather, A., C. Bovill, and P. Felten. 2014. Engaging Students as Part-
ners in Learning and Teaching: A Guide for Faculty. New York, NY:
John Wiley & Sons.
Grayling, A. C. 2007. The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life.
London, UK: W&N.
Illich, I. 1973. Deschooling Society. Middlesex, UK: Harmondsworth.
Knowles, M. S., E. F. Holton III, and R. A. Swanson. 2014. The Adult
Learner. New York, NY: Routledge.
Longworth, N., 1999. Making Lifelong Learning Work: Learning Cities for
a Learning Century. London, UK: Psychology Press.
NHS. 2018. Five Steps to Mental Wellbeing. https://www.nhs.uk/condi-
tions/stress-anxiety-depression/improve-mental-wellbeing, (accessed
June 15, 2018).
Revisiting Learning 13
Pieper, J. 2009. Leisure: The Basis of Culture. Carmel, IN: Liberty Fund Inc.
Rakrouki, Z., M. Gatenby, S. Cantore, T. Rowledge, and T. Davidson.
2017. “The Opening Conference: A Case Study in Undergraduate
Co-design and Inquiry-based Learning.” International Journal for
Students as Partners 1, no. 2.
Rogers, J. 2007. Adults Learning. London, UK: McGraw-Hill Education.
Rousseau, J. J. 1979. Emile or, On Education, Translated by Allan Bloom.
New York, NY: Basic Books.
Senge, P. 1990. The Fifth Discipline. New York, NY: Currency Doubleday.
Index
Abstract conceptualization, 73 Becoming, 123–130. See also
Academic learning, 72 Competence; Three Stages
Action learning, 43–44 of Life
Active experimentation, 73 becoming with one another,
Adulthood, 109–120. See also 126–127
Andragogy; Pedagogue in groups, 129–130
authoritarian and authoritative, who and what we notice, 127–128
114–115 Beginnings, 15–22
discipline, 112–113 A-level (Advanced level), 19
emerging, 117–120 apprentice, 18–19
identity, 118 full-time courses, 19
individualism and collectivism novice, 15–16
in, 119 opening up, 21–22
patience, 111–112 peripheral participation, 16–18
role confusion, 118 practical learning, 19
Aesthetic movements, 76 theoretical learning, 19
Aesthetic stage of life, 123 T-levels (Technical level), 19
A-level (Advanced level), 19 Behaviorism, 9
Also Human, 60 Bernstein, Basil, 8
Andragogy, 115–117 Better Angels of Our Nature, The, 52
subject-centered to Boundaries, 47–60
learner-centered, 117 as an asset, 56–57
Appreciative inquiry (AI), 40–41 boundary-forming, 48–49
stages, 40 competition in, 55
design stage, 40 fixed and flexible boundaries, 59
destiny stage, 41 fixed boundaries, downside of, 58
discover stage, 40 geographical maps, 51
dream stag, 40 hierarchy and bureaucracy, 54
working with people, 40 in identification and differentiation,
Apprentice, 18–19 55–56
master and, 18 knowledge and learning, 54
Argyris, Chris, 9 levels, 53
Arnett, Jeffrey, 118–119 modularity, 54–56
Ashby, W. Ross, 9 private and public property, 51–53
Asset, boundary as an, 56–57 psycho-geographical map, 64
Auge, Marc, 81 roles and silos, 58–59
Authoritarianism, 114–115 service boundaries, 59–60
territory mapping, 50–51
Ballard, J.G., 134 Bowling Alone, 48
Bandura, Albert, 127 Buchholz, Todd, 132–133
Bateson, Gregory, 51 Burch, Noel, 124
144 INDEX
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