From Problem-Solving Paradigm to Co-Ontogenic Drift: How Do Learning Narratives Self-Generate?

g e n e r a l

a r t i c l e

From Problem-Solving Paradigm to Co-Ontogenic Drift: How Do Learning Narratives Self-Generate?

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Johann van der Merwe and Julia Brewis

ingh [1] reports that in South Africa, as in Britain, the U.S, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the redevelopment of institutions of higher learning has necessitated that academics shift their teaching and learning approaches so that their methods more effectively engage with new and changing world circumstances. One facet of this evolution is the need to deal with a broader student intake and, in South Africa, to accommodate the needs of the poor and undereducated, as corroborated by Nwoah [2]. Our design educational scenario has shown a further educational reality: that, while students have a range of abilities, from totally under-prepared to “well educated,” they all have one thing in common: They have not been taught how to learn. These realities have accentuated two questions, “What is learning?” and, subsequently, “What is teaching?” We discuss both here. Constructivism, an approach to teaching and learning that abnegates the easy transfer of knowledge and focuses on the individual’s ability to construct a personal model of learning, is the official educational approach in South Africa [3,4]. A Higher Education South Africa (HESA) report [5] makes clear that even at the undergraduate level our universities should allow the spirit of research inquiry and orientation to be the formative approach to teaching and learning, while not denying the necessity that students be able to find a way into “the basics of the discipline where the mastery of a body of existing knowledge and practices is of the essence.” We have found, however, that we need to teach students not to learn content but how to learn. Our approach takes into account that many of our students were taught using a structured and rational approach to education, with varying degrees of success. Thus, in our classroom, learning is experiential. Knowledge is gained through project information gathered by the group and then further enhanced by consequent in-depth contextual discussions. When bringing experience into education, Dewey believed such material should start with what students know and then should progress “into a fuller and richer and more organized form” [6]. We see this as authentic learning, a cognitive process that engenders formative change. It is never simply a feat of memory. Learning how to learn includes helping students observe their own thought processes. They ask how to make

abstract

It is now an accepted maxim

in design theory and practice that real-world problems needing the attention of design practitioners are not neat and well-structured, but ill-structured and “wicked”—part of a larger, complex social situation. For design education, then, to take its lead from contemporary social, political and economic structures, it will have to seriously re-think its problem-solving paradigms. The authors investigate the use of self-generating learning narratives in the classroom and contrast the approach they introduce with the still-tooprevalent notion that knowledge can be transferred from teacher to student. Their methodology draws from ideas formulated by Maturana and Varela on autopoiesis, specifically the notion of co-ontogenic drift.

their sense impressions “ring true” when compared to those of their classmates (this is an activity of authentication). Feedback from their experiences alters their (initial) line of reasoning, because new information from the world outside is accommodated. Our model of learning therefore acknowledges the interconnectedness of body and mind, learning and (practical) experience. The sum total leads to that amorphous sensitivity the students would recognize as “spirit,” or a general feeling of accomplishment of their own development. It is an intertwining achieved through the twin capabilities of engagement and critical theory. John Seely Brown [7] makes a significant point in establishing design studio practice as the training involved in “‘learning to be’ a full participant in the field”—an act of “self-generation” in the constructivist learning cycle that Takayama referred to as “portals of engagement . . . what initially grabs us” [8] in the activities of the group, even when that participation starts out as a peripheral act [9]. In other words, we believe that design is a social act, an approach underpinned by Nwoah’s [10] and Greyling’s [11] critically theoretical stance on that questioning attitude provided by a social perspective as opposed to an individual one. Learning how to learn involves learning about the self (not Fig. 1. Student free-flow performance. (Photo © Julia Brewis)

Johann van der Merwe, Department of Research, History & Theory of Design, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, PO Box 652, Cape Town 8000, South Africa. E-mail: . Julia Brewis, Department of Surface Design, Faculty of Informatics and Design, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, PO Box 652, Cape Town 8000, South Africa. E-mail: .

©2011 ISAST

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we need to help them move from a perspective that favors ideas grounded on universal rational principles to an embrace of the principles of care, responsiveness and responsibility [16]. In the words of Slamat, we help them learn how to “look through the eyes of others” [17]. One student, Miriam, explained the process as follows: I need to take time out each day and reflect on what I have done . . . I need to consult my classmates, as peer learning is an important part of my education, discussing what they are doing and asking for feedback on my ideas. —Miriam [18].

Fig. 2. Students interacting with audience. (Photo © Julia Brewis)

learning by one’s self) by participating in a group activity. This type of learning includes becoming part of what Lave and Wenger [12] call a community of practice, a “portal of engagement” opened up by the individual into the scaffolded learning environment driven by peers and overseen by lecturers. We do not dispute the value of a structured and rational curriculum that allows access to the basics of the discipline. Rather, our experience has shown that a critical and questioning attitude is not as likely to emerge if students are only taught to learn as individuals who operate outside any group formation. Therefore, our focus is not on the basic curriculum per se but on “developing a complete transformation in attitude of the student . . . [to trigger] an excitement to learn and explore and create” [13]. We attempt to reverse the Cartesian emphasis on subject content and focus instead on development of the student within a group engagement. In these groups students address real-life problem research that is “consistent with the narrative psychology view that the realities of life and work may be seen as ongoing and emergent narratives constantly to be re-storied” [14]. This article maps the learning narratives process we use in our classroom. A learning narrative is a way of evaluating what one has learned from one’s own experience. The student learns to describe what he or she knows, assesses what he or she can do and/or summarizes what valuable attitudes and insights developed as a result of a particular task. In other words, learning helps students

self-generate. Key within this is that they work in groups as well, using a guided project to develop their process of learning. This approach helps students understand the difference between a disembodied solution to a problem and one that corresponds to Maturana’s notion of co-ontogenic structural drift (discussed below in the section Evolutionary Drift).

First Year Blues Teaching in a tertiary institution highlights that one of the biggest problems in education is the fragmented sense of self many students bring to the classroom. They often do not perceive that who they are includes an authentic self who is both an individual and a person interacting with the environment. Moreover, each student is not just a “self” alone in the world, so recognizing who he or she is is a part of the learning process. Here the term authentic signifies that students need the courage to make the difficult choices that can broaden their personal experiences and choices. Moving away from what is familiar to them can help broaden their minds. Yet, moving toward unfamiliar territory can bring about an ontological anxiety [15]. Offering a learning environment that can lead to creative possibilities is a part of our classroom. Our students “actively” play a role that makes them aware of possible transitions. Our role as educators is to help them become aware of the designers within themselves, to reach out for new potentials. It may seem to them initially that we all function in two incommensurable areas of existence and experience;

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In the traditional Cartesian model, the self is a self-contained and disembodied entity. This focus bred non-situated relationships with the world—predictable, detached and safe. The embodied and contextual methodology we use encourages more process and exchange. It is a relational and interactional approach that shifts emphasis from the purely cognitive and intellectual to the affective and motivational. Students learn to question their “original position” and to see the value of relationships through learning relationally. This helps them learn the difference between dynamic, creative thinking and a definitive, structural (i.e. static) position [19]. More specifically, the paradigmatic shift moves them from seeing design as product to seeing design as process, a process that entails relationships, mutual interdependence and a responsive way of seeing the world. Below we sketch a proto-profile of our typical entry-level Surface Design student. Surface Design is the nomenclature for a program originating in the university’s old Textile Design course. This new hybrid uses fields of knowledge previously, and exclusively, used by textile, fashion, product and interior design, as well as Fig. 3. Structural coupling, after Maturana and Varela [31]. (© Johann van der Merwe)

information systems. It was found that during the first “embodied line” project, most of the students were initially influenced by a disembodied frame of reference. This included extremely high levels of “noise” (i.e. external social and cultural influences). Using only a single drawn line (i.e. “design by constraint”) that progressed from inactive to active, the students learned the difference between such (communicative) terms as meaningful, beautiful, clichéd, predictable, sensitive and hesitant. This approach is based on the notion of critical rationality and assumes that an educated person gives reasons for his or her decisions that are also compelling to reasoning others [20], thereby communicating some of the principles of care and responsiveness alluded to above. The end results were printed both as lengths of fabric and as a three-dimensional product, an ottoman, which was sold as office furniture. We felt that the embodied line project should not end there and developed the core further. Our next step was an instructional public performance. The students performed as a collective, illustrating their journeys of discovery from a disembodied to an embodied experience. Accompanied by appropriate music, with duct tape covering their mouths in order to keep them focused on the phenomenon happening at that moment in time, they originated completely unchoreographed movements. The process allowed each individual to create his or her own story. At the same time, each was interacting with the ottoman blocks, each other and the 8-meter lengths of paper available for drawing on the floor (Fig. 1). When the performance had drawn to a natural close, students removed the tape, and the instruction lesson started as members of the audience were invited for a drawing experience with a student tutor (Fig. 2). The students’ confidence grew exponentially as they embodied their work and understood how to identify with their tools and their chosen field of design. What follows introduces the theory underpinning the practice.

Biological Origins Based on what Piaget, quoted in Doll [21], describes as “operatory logic,” the logic-from-practice that stems from a particular context, we began focusing on the “logic” of relationships leading to action, with the knowledge that change and transformation are accepted as inherent elements in this process. This approach was meant to create awareness among

Fig. 4. Heséré’s performance and cardboard on steel dummy. (Photo © Julia Brewis)

the students that a social and generalized reality, acceptable to a group, might not be the same as a “single-view” reality that engenders feelings of authenticity for each individual student, allowing them to understand that they each respond differently to stimuli, affording the development of their own situated selves through a felt awareness of a shared environment. The intra-action taking place within the learner and the inter-action between the learner and the environment equally contribute to this field of embodiment, as explained by Maturana and Varela’s groundbreaking work on the organization of living systems [22] (see Fig. 3). In Fig. 3, the environment, indicated as a wave pattern, is shown to always interact with a (biological) system-in-progress. In our educational context the system-inprogress is the designer/design process combination. The designer, indicated as a circle in space, interacts and communicates with the environment, which can include the design idea (design brief). The “external environment” also includes other systems-in-progress (represented by other people/designers), in which case a structurally coupled (combined) system with another designer or designers become possible. These social connections, in which designers can mutually influence each other, occur in the consensual domain where new patterns are formed. In this context the circle represents an individual (system-in-progress) situated in a contextual environment. The sys-

tem’s boundary is “porous,” open to the external environment and communicative. An informationally and structurally open system allows interaction. A closed system, by contrast, has absolute boundaries that disallow new information. A social human being, especially in a learning environment, normally relies on our social stock of knowledge (what has been learned). An “operationally closed” system of knowledge may hold it to be most efficient to rely on what one knows to get anything done. However, no system, not even a social system (social or cultural group), can afford, in the long run, to maintain an absolute border between itself and its environment if it is to renew itself and not stagnate. Therefore a system must deliberately strive to be structurally open, allowing “external information” to become part of its (internal) social stock of knowledge. This process is too often simply taken for granted, as if it were uncomplicated and unproblematic, and the end result often amounts to surface or rote learning. Deeper learning requires structural changes. When new data are added, fundamental changes take place in our very stock of knowledge and change the “shape-of-knowing” as well. With this, we create new patterns of organization (as discussed below). In other words, structural changes must take place if learning is to be successful, but these changes cannot be enforced by external sources alone. Changes can only be effective if they are the result of internal, and therefore voluntary, structural changes.

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Fig. 5. Weyers’s thoughts turn to, Now What? (Photo © Julia Brewis)

Evolutionary Drift Using a living-systems approach alters the classroom. A network of relationships develops that offers a sharp contrast to a hierarchical chain of command. One key component of the network framework is how it allows and encourages communication among people and between people and objects. In the problem-solving paradigm, the observer is outside this (w)ebb [23] of life, whereas human beings, as observers of others and of the environment, and as their own self-observers, are regarded as fully immersed in the process we may call the ontogeny (development of individual organisms) of living systems, described below as co-ontogenic structural drift. “To sum up: evolution is a natural drift, a product of the conservation of autopoiesis [self-generation] and adaptation” [24]. This definition also sums up the relationship-of-discovery between operationally closed (autopoiesis/selfgeneration) and structurally open (informationally adaptable). When any living system reaches out to its environment (whether unreflectively/unknowingly or knowingly), it is as if that system is drifting in the medium formed by its holistic environment, which, in human terms, is all inclusive. “Ontogeny is the history of structural change” [25] in the living system; this observation correlates with Giddens’s notion that: A person’s identity is not to be found in behavior . . . but in the capacity to keep a particular narrative going. The individual’s biography . . . must continually integrate

events which occur in the external world, and sort them into the “story” about the self [26].

The notion of co-ontogenic drift and the self-generation of learning narratives, as a coherent approach to design problem-solving in the real and complex world, serves students far better than an analytical recipe for solutioneering could, since the world is made up of other living systems in continual structural coupling with one another and with designed objects, the very subject matter we are dealing with in the academic environment of the classroom. We simply cannot accept ontogenic structural drift (a process of movement in time and in understanding) as true if we continue to treat design education as if the real-world environment remains conveniently inactive and stable. Our explanation of co-ontogenic drift, in the context of design, is that an important part of our collaborative and biological meaning-making in the moment happens when we enter into a network of co-creation, before any change happens and we are diverted onto the next moment of revelation, change and adaptation. It is an awareness of life as it happens, enacting a (symbiotic individual/ collective) narrative, allowing for structural changes and the co-emergence of new worlds of meaning and therefore of worlds of constructed reality. Co-ontogenic drift is a biological and natural process of change in a life system since it points to a continual and active selection of what is at hand. In terms of design,

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rather than analytical and deterministic problem-solving, this process leads us to the possibilities inherent to the idea of co-creation. Capra in Web of Life notes that Maturana believes the way we perceive the world must not be mistaken for an external reality, but must be understood as a continuous creation of new ways of relating and being [27]. In this respect relating and being implies a network of relationships with others. If design could move from existing independently outside our lives to coexistence as part of our experience of life, creativity would flourish and innovation would become a natural process of adaptation. This theory was put into practice within a project with a group of second-year Surface Design students in 2007.

A Project as Conscious Experience At the end of the group’s first year of study, the students were confident about their experience of and exposure to systems theory and embodied design. They then had to create a 3D sculptural form representing the concept of “caring for the Earth,” in particular the issues surrounding global warming. It was the first time these students had attempted to build and represent a multidimensional layering of a lived experience. The students did not plan or draw their ideas first but constructed their concepts with cardboard formed into 3D shapes mounted on steel frames (Fig. 4). Their “tools” were their embodied feelings,

Fig. 6. The cognitive process in action. (© Johann van der Merwe)

their memories, their imaginations, their experiences of self-becoming and each other. Of course, no system of education can work in exactly the same way for all students: The emotions I felt while working with this project were positive, while last term negative emotions and feelings made me unenthusiastic. So, last term I did not give 100%, but this term I did. —Monita [28]

The students were exploring and cocreating, constantly moving from an inner world of reflective consciousness to grapple with the multiple feedback loops generated by group discussions and their own interactions with the real-world environment where culturally defined “answers” are too easily found. They were also dealing with emergent ideas that stem from yet another complex communication network, in the sense that each time the “message” changed direction or content, it was necessary for them to reconsider anew what they knew up to that point (Fig. 5). The planning-in-action was intended to limit assumptions of linear relations when dealing with dynamic phenomena. Because human thought is constrained by the conceptual tools available, it takes care to keep the process dynamic and

self-generating. Every stage in the process became an elaboration of the preceding one, and iteration of lines and planes allowed these recursive processes to develop into unexpected (“unthoughtof”) forms representing global warming (Color Plate E). The following examples will explain how co-ontogenic drift functions within the process of structural coupling (i.e. when two knowing systems interact they structurally couple, leading to co-ontogenic drift; see Fig. 3) and consequently in the process of work on this Caring for the Earth project. The students accepted information for this project from three different lecturers and watched Al Gore’s 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth, a vivid rendering of the state of the environment. These four systems all contained information external to themselves with which they had to structurally couple while maintaining the existing interaction between themselves and their “usual” environment. “I was shocked after watching the documentary that relates to global warming . . . I did not realize how big the problem really was.” —Zanne-Marie [29]. The students’ first realization was that patterns of organization as well as of structure need to be understood as a

point of departure. This also meant that for information to serve as learning systems the students needed to test it with their own organization and structure. In Fig. 6, if A is the student, then B represents the elements in the external environment (for example, another person, a photograph, a book, a conversation) that are needed for the design moment to progress. There is no space for subjectivity or for objectivity in this configuration, because an embodied designer is continually interacting with the environment and self-generating within each system. What students need to learn-asexperience is that, for A to make use of the possibilities of B, the self of A must, as it were, become selfless, and open itself to the other, not to invite externals-as-is into its system, which is organizationally closed, but to allow its structural system (represented by its nervous system, i.e. its communicative ability or cognitive dimension) the opportunity to changeas-progress (B, in order to be used, also becomes selfless). For that, as self-generation, to happen, students need to observe their own systemic evolution in the process of co-ontogenic drift, a process we (simplistically put) normally understand as the making of meaning. The students explored and co-created by constantly moving from an inner world of reflective consciousness (A) to structurally engage with elements in the environment (B). The students found that each time the “message” changed direction or content, they had to reconsider “what they knew” at all points of the progression of the project. Knowledge is always created as a form of movement, and the co-ontogenic drift that both systems (A) and (B) are involved in relies on the communication between two systems—a reciprocal movement, if you will. It is neither the body nor the mind that is primarily involved in this process but the consciousness of the self in its pure cognitive state. The elements of (B) that are chosen by (A) are brought into the “grasp” of system (A)’s consciousness and, like two conjoining amoebae, find that neither is the other but both are augmented and renewed through the interaction.

Fig. 7. The true nature of co-ontogenesis. (© Johann van der Merwe)

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Structural changes happen only internally to the system, and as Fig. 7 shows, the external elements chosen by the system become an integral part of that system. While the (B) elements are changing into (A) elements, (A) itself, because of this process and as a knowing system, is changing as well. As cognitive systems, a.k.a. human beings, we all change in the moment of true knowing, in the moment of discovering how “the design” wants to evolve, since, at that moment, we are the design.

A Study of Conscious Experience: A Student Report on Julia Brewis’s Teaching Methods In essence [our lecturer] has been our facilitator, merely acting as a constructive perturbing unit. In her application of holistic teaching she has perturbed us in all relevant areas of our development to trigger reactions in our structures that would result in drift, or growth. [She does not] determine the exact direction of that drift or growth [and yet] as a consequence of her experience she could trigger drift in areas of our development where it was most relevant and essential. There has been a lot of change evident in all of the students in the class. When we came from high school we had just come out of a twelve year period during which we had been conditioned in our ways of thinking, reasoning, doing and being. We had been taught to think in ways suggested by a society created in the minds of our elders, we were taught to act in ways acceptable to this same society. We had no self-knowledge and were completely unable to define ourselves, even to ourselves. In the last year-and-ahalf, one focus of our lecturer’s holistic approach has been our self knowledge and our living within our own bodies. In order to bring about the change that would enable us to break out of the societal shell we had been cast into, Julia started to agitate our ways of thinking and perceiving . . . by questioning us, challenging us and forcing snippets of light through our shells that have by now been cracked by our emergence from a deep society-enforced sleep. Inside, in our minds, our ways of thinking and perceiving the world, we are changing. —Weyers [30].

Conclusion We have a need as design educators and co-learners to explore a design-specific educational approach. Inasmuch as the process of creativity is a continual intracontextual voyage of discovery, teaching and learning should mirror the experiential whole. The journey begins with

self-constructed spheres of knowledge within peer groups, such that there is no choice but to play an active role in cocreating a group-determined learning environment that may lead to enhanced learning possibilities. We take the stance that identity depends on the capacity to keep a narrative going, and thus the process of movement in time and space is dependent on being in the here and now, in the moment. Being in the present is the awareness of life as it happens; it is precisely here that the exploration of co-creating becomes the medium for the process. In this defining moment (personal and design) possibilities emerge without interference from ego-related limitations. The personal and narrative testimonies from the students and the designs they produce are greatly encouraging, and thus we are confident that this baseline of respondents and results are in and of themselves authentic nodes of verification that will keep us inspired to pursue this method of educational inquiry. References and Notes Unedited references as provided by the authors. 1. R.J. Singh, “Radical change of the university classroom: The views of some academics,” South African Journal of Higher Education Vol 22, No 5, 1059–1069 (2008). 2. Solange Nwoah, A Breakthrough Model for Weaving Underprivileged Youths Back to the Fabric of Society. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Midwest Academy of Management, October 2–4, 2008, St. Louis, Missouri (2008). 3. Gauteng Provincial Government (2006). Gauteng Department of Education “Assessment for Learning” Conference, 6 May 2006, . 4. Western Cape Provincial Government (2006). WCED Redesign Project/WCED Literacy and Numeracy Strategy 2006—2016, . 5. HESA, Spirit of Inquiry: Knowledge creation in South African higher education (Pretoria: HESA, 2006), . 6. John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Touchstone, 1997) pp. 73–74. 7. John Seely Brown and Richard Adler, “Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0,” EDUCAUSE Review Vol 43, No 1, 16–32 (January/February 2008). 8. Kathy Takayama, “Communities, Voices and Portals of Engagement,” International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Vol 3, No 2 (July 2009); . 9. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007) p. 34. 10. Nwoah [2]. 11. W.J. Greyling and P.H. Du Toit, “Pursuing a constructivist approach to mentoring in the higher education sector,” South African Journal of Higher Education Vol 22, No 5, 957–980 (2008). 12. Lave and Wenger [9] pp. 98–100.

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13. Nwoah [2]. 14. Greyling and Du Toit [11]. 15. “Ontological anxiety” should be compared to “perturbations” or disturbances leading to re-examination of the known. See Ernst von Glasersfeld, “An Introduction to Radical Constructivism,” in Paul Watzlawick (ed.) The Invented Reality (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984) p. 36. 16. D.M. Levin, The Listening Self, Personal Growth, Social Change and the Closure of Metaphysics (London: Routledge, 1989) p. 221. 17. J. Slamat, “A pedagogy of compassionate rationality and its consequences for teacher education,” South African Journal of Higher Education Vol 23, No 6, 1148–1160 (2009). 18. M. Haynes, comment from “Caring for the Earth Project Evaluation Notes” (2007). 19. Levin [16] p. 221. 20. Slamat [17] p. 1149. 21. W.E. Doll, “Response to Proulx: ‘Maturana Is Not a Constructivist’ . . . Nor is Piaget,” Complicity Vol 5, No 1, 27–31 (2008). 22. Humberto Maturana and Francesco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding (Shambhala: Boston, 1998). 23. Capra talks about the Web of Life in his book by that name. We have used the term (w)ebb here to reference Capra’s systemic approach and to emphasize the ebb (or process) aspect of student development using learning narratives. See Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1997) p. 96. Note that this (w)ebb of life seems to succinctly encompass the strategic difference between the notions of operationally closed and structurally open. Our nervous systems are operationally closed, much like a (spider’s) web, while, as humans, it is necessary for us to interact with our environment (a.k.a., “learning”), which is closer to the ebb and flow of the oceans, constantly touching and letting go, “knowing” the shoreline, but also, in the process, changing that very “system” with which it is in a structural coupling. 24. Maturana and Varela [22] p. 117. 25. Maturana and Varela [22] p. 74. 26. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991) p. 54. 27. Capra [23] p. 96. 28. M. Rademan, comment from “Caring for the Earth Project Evaluation Notes” (2007). 29. Z-M. Blom, comment from “Caring for the Earth Project Evaluation Notes” (2007). 30. W. Marais, comment from “Caring for the Earth Project Evaluation Notes” (2007). 31. After Maturana and Varela [22] p. 74.

Manuscript received 26 October 2009.

Johann van der Merwe is Head of Department of Research, History & Theory of Design at Cape Peninsula University of Technology and has just finished his doctorate in design theory. Julia Brewis is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Surface Design at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. She has an M.Phil. in Education and her research field is Experiencing Embodiment, Complexity and Emergence theory in Creative Design.

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