Models of Growth: David Cavallo

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Models of Growth David Cavallo

• Deane Neubauer
• Victor Ordonez
• East West Center

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Why New Approaches to Implementation?

• The two primary approaches to school reform dont
  work
• (A) Predetermined, massive, top down reform
• (B) Take a particular change, test it in small
  setting and then attempt to spread it throughout
  the system

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We tend to use the wrong language

• Terms replication and scaling are mis-leading
  
• Both are top-down and hierarchial
• View education as series of de-personalized,
  de-contextualized steps carried out by willing,
  receptive and non-transforming agents
• These conditions are rarely present

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New Framework for Change and Growth

• Kuhns paradigm elements
• Exemplars--examples of the new paradigm
• Models--what one should expect to happen--what
  behaviors are paradigmatic
• Symbolic expressions--the language of description
  for the new paradigm
• Goal create an emergent design that does not
  plan every step in detail searches for models of
  robust growth and uses models of Kuhns
  descriptions of components to provide principles

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Another Definition of Paradigm

• All knowledge operates through the selection of
  meaningful data and the rejection of data that
  are not meaningful. It does so by separating
  (distinguishing or disjointing) and unifying
  (associating, identifying), and by organizing
  into hierarchies (the primary, the secondary) and
  centralizing (around a core of master notions).
  These operations, which use logic, are in reality
  driven by "supra-logical" principles of
  organization of thought, or paradigms the hidden
  principles that govern our perception of things
  and of the world, without our being conscious of
  them. (Morin, 2006)

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Change as Learning--Micro and Macro

• Organizational change within a system is itself a
  learning process
• Many of the tools of successful learning at the
  micro level, can work on the macro level. (See
  power point on de-statusting leadership)
• Organizational change is more than information
  transferit is learning

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Organic (rather than mechanical) models of change

• Ecological
• Viral
• Genetic
• The notion of emergent design--evolutionary
  design in which we are not passive observers
• The design of learning projects evolves and
  changes in dialogue with personal, collective and
  local interests, conceptions and needs.
• Other models of learn from viral, open-source
  soft-ware, small-world networks,peer to peer
  sharing--all examples of effective, distributive
  non-hierarchial models.

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Characteristics of Fertile Environments for growth

• Volition--people must want to do things
• Appropriation and experimentation--people need to
  try their own ideas
• Concrete exemplars--need to experience real
  examples of the ideas
• Community and communication--peer to peer
  interchange, explanations from practitioners
• Feedback--see the results and get feedback from
  others
• Debugging--the chance to make mistakes and learn
  from them

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• Materials--need to work with materials that
  facilitate the new paradigm, not just the tools
  of current practices
• Language--new paradigms re-appropriate old terms
  for new connotations, and invent new terms to
  describe new ways
• Bottom up and emergent--change through many
  little contributions
• Time and continuity--sufficient continuous time
  to experience and develop ideas to their full
  complexity
• Hope and expectation--people must come to believe
  that improvement is both desirable and possible.

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New Models of macro-level learning

• The reflective trial and error method of creating
  exemplars
• Change occurs when the critical mass of data
  contradict or do not fit the prevailing paradigm
• Importance of generators--ideas that make more
  things--people as generators through experiential
  activity

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Emergent Design for Macro-level Change

• New paradigms do not start out operating
  full-scale at the macro-level
• People see a need for change out of the context
  of gathering contradictions
• New models are posited
• New technologies often prompt the change as they
  open the possibility for new ways of seeing the
  world