An Inquiry in the Pedagogy of Teaching Self-Organization

The dilemma: As a participating of the LeadWise Academy Class Nathan finds himself perplexed by the learning model that is being applied to teach its participants about concepts of self-organization.

The learning outcomes of the class itself have still not been reveal, and in the absence of such the outcomes of this discrete assignment Nathan is participating lack a background thus creating the dilemma in the foreground which he is documenting here.

The first assignment is focused on generating 20 roles within an unspecific entity. Nathan seems to understand that in the absence of a definitive structure for the assignment the instructors believe that an “emergent” process will occur where each individual will spontaneously feel more of the things they wish to feel thus becoming something “more” of what they each have the potential to be. This will be achieve individually and collectivity through some assumed and preexisting processes the instructors are conducting on the participant without those processes being introduced in an overt manner.

As a byproduct some of these interactions the group Nathan is apart are facing a dilemma to converge on a set of agree upon norms and expectation in order to accomplish the assignment the instructors have put forward.

The nature of this dilemma is such that the group is struggling with a polarity between an “emergent” process to dictate to the outcome of the assignment, 20 roles, or to use one of the participants own interactions with an exterior organization as content so to produces the roles thus achieving the outcome of the assignment.

The major considerations: The major consideration within this dilemma is the covert learning model being applied without the awareness and thus consent of the participants. Based upon the absence of an overt learning model and discrete set of outcomes for the participants to achieve, the participants are creating their own dilemmas in order to explore the nature of self-organization. The assignment which was posed and its tasks underwhelm participants thus producing a new set of dynamics unforeseen from original direction the instructors set forth. This seems to lead naturally to the second consideration where the instructors seems to think this is the natural occurrence thus reaffirming their original stance of something like “it is how is should be”. However, in this stance what is missed is an awareness of the necessary controlling factors within human systems. How can human system function with out constrains? They cannot, those constraints are both self-imposing and imposed based upon a rule set which coordinate the larger group process.

Furthermore, the nature of development indicates the longitudinal accommodating development of each individual. The accommodating structure of individual development will influence the subjective interpretation of the dilemma at hand.

These factors directly above could lead to debilitating impacts on the participants because the implied structure or absence thereof is poses as intentional conflict masked as a gift of self organization — meaning the participants cannot assimilate the learning because their accommodating structure is ill matched to the dilemmas arising within this learning environment.

This last point regarding the accommodating development of the individuals is also a major constraints of individual and thus model which is left unexamined within the learning model of the class.

The prioritization of the considerations: In further iterations of this assignment Nathan would like to discuss how he would prioritize these considerations which he could discuss within this section.

The deliberation: In further iterations of this assignment Nathan would like to explicate a decision making process of which he would advocate for in order to deal with the dilemma at hand.

Outcomes: Here are the document of the 20 roles the silver fern group produced.

Unaddressed questions:

What is the purpose of this assignment?

How is assignment related to a larger scaffolding of our learning outcomes?

Building an organization purely out of the dynamics of the group nor based upon an foreign group seemed sufficient to this accomplish this excercise, what am I missing?

What does good look like of this assignment?

How does challenge play into this group dynamic?

What is safe chaos, what is not?

In the absence of structure power and authority what becomes a control function of the group dynamic?

Rebellion for the assignment seems as defeating to the outcome as does accomplishing it, what am I trying to learn out of this inquiry?

How can the outcomes of this assignment be scaffolded into further iteration of this learning model?

Note: I found working on this assignment in the third person helped me to deal with dilemmas I was trying to make sense of. While awkward to read it was helpful in my process to accomplishing the assignment.