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TALE: Supportive Immanent Development

Oliver Ding
TALE500
Published in
11 min readFeb 1, 2023

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How to support creative talent?

The above cover image represents a possible theme:

  • Name: Supportive Immanent Development
  • Clue: The Art of Collaborative Strategic Exploration
  • Type: knowledge theme
  • Contributor: Daiana Zavate

The theme was born from the reflection on the Thematic Conversation project about “Strategic Exploration”.

In fact, the project is a “Collaborative Strategic Exploration”. In the past two weeks, I worked with my friend Daiana Zavate. The day before yesterday I closed the early stage of the project with an outcome called “the Field of Meta-learning (v1.0)”.

You can visit the links below to follow our conversation:

The short journey is a great example of Collaborative Project Engagement.

In the 2010 book An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity, Andy Blunden gives an archetypal unit of a project:

“Two people working together on a common project”

Source: An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity (2010, p.315)

How can two people work together on a common project?

How does it happen?

In Oct 2022, I developed the ARCH framework and use it to curate knowledge resources about interpersonal interactions and collaborative project engagement.

One sub-diagram is called “Think Together: Shard Theme”. See the diagram below.

The primary theoretical resource behind the above diagram is “Themes of Practice”. You can find more details in Themes of Practice (2019–2021).

In July 2021, I conducted an empirical study titled Themes of Practice, Social Media, and Interpersonal Communication and wrote a 56-page report. Some ideas are adopted for the present model:

  • Primary Theme
  • Existing Themes and Emerging Themes
  • Interpretation
  • Mentionship

I also consider Relevance Theory as a theoretical background.

However, I didn’t have an answer to the following question:

How do two people help each other on developing emerging themes?

After reflecting on the Thematic Conversation project about “Strategic Exploration”, I found an answer: Supportive Immanent Development.

What is “Immanent Development”?

In 2020, I worked on expanding Andy Blunden’s approach to Activity Theory. He uses a method called “Immanent Critique” to develop his new solution: “Project as a unit of analysis”.

In the 2010 book An Interdisciplinary Theory of Activity, Andy Blunden reviewed the development of the Goethe-Hegel-Marx-Vygotsky approach to the “Unit of Analysis” and the development of Activity Theory.

Activity theorists often talked about the “Unit of Analysis”. According to Andy Blunden (2017), “Vygotsky appropriated the term ‘unit of analysis’ from social science, in which it meant the ‘resolution of the analytical microscope’, so to speak, the smallest entity which is taken account of in a given theory. In mainstream social science, the unit of analysis is usually taken to be individuals, sometimes groups, classes, or even nations. The difference between how Vygotsky uses the term is that for him, the unit of analysis already represents a concept of the whole. That is, he merged this analytical concept with Goethe’s idea of the Urphänomen as a representation of a Gestalt.”

Since there are two views of “Unit of Analysis”, I personally use two terms to represent these two views. The “germ-cell” refers to the Goethe-Hegel-Marx-Vygotsky approach to the “Unit of Analysis”. The “levels of analysis” refers to the mainstream view of the “Unit of analysis” in social science.

Blunden has written many articles about the notion of “germ-cell”. You can start with this one: The Unit of Analysis and Germ Cell in Hegel, Marx, and Vygotsky (2020).

Blunden points out, “What Vygotsky did was to produce one study which would function as an exemplar for research in Psychology; that one study addressed the age-old problem of the relation between thinking and speech, and by solving this one problem in an exemplary fashion, he created a paradigm for research in all domains of Psychology, and as a matter of fact, in all the sciences. Vygotsky in fact left us as many as five different exemplars of analysis by units.”

According to Blunden, “…in order to understand a complex process as an integral whole or gestalt, we have to identify and understand just its simplest immediately given part — a radical departure from the ‘Newtonian’ approach to science based on discovering intangible forces and hidden laws” (2020)

Blunden argues that Activity Theorists should return to the Goethe-Hegel-Marx-Vygotsky approach and find a new “germ-cell” for an interdisciplinary theory of Activity. Moreover, he believe that “Project” is a perfect candidate for the new “germ-cell”.

Each year, I always pick one idea I learned within one year as the idea of the year. The notion of “germ-cell” is so powerful, that I just pick it as my idea for 2020.

Moreover, I applied the same idea to develop Andy Blunden’s ideas. For example, I developed the idea of “Germ-cell Diagram”.

A germ-cell diagram is a special type of meta-diagram that can easily generate a diagram system with the same intrinsic spatial logic. A typical structure of a diagram system is a multiple-level analysis system. The first challenge of adopting a germ-cell diagram is to design a spatial logic that can apply to different levels of a multiple-level diagram system. In other words, we only need one spatial logic for the whole system since the one spatial logic is a whole.

The above diagram is a “germ-cell” diagram for Project-oriented Activity Theory. It is better to think about this diagram as a room with two windows and one door.

A room is a container that separates inside space and outside space. There are some actions people can do within a room. I pay attention to one special type of action: connecting to the outside space from the inside space. Let’s call it “Process”. The two windows are interfaces that refer to two “Tendencies”, Window1 refers to “Tendency 1” while Window 2 refers to “Tendency 2”. Each window has its own view of the outside space. Finally, there is a door that allows people to actually go out of the room. The door refers to “Orientation” which represents a direction of a real action of going out of the inside space. Once you get into the outside space, you can consider the new space as a new room and repeat the diagram.

This is a special type of spatial logic. The terms such as “Process”, “Tendency” and “Orientation” are placeholders of texts for describing the spatial logic. From the perspective of my diagram theory, the pure meta-diagram doesn’t need texts. For instance, the Yin-yang symbol or Taijitu is a meta-diagram, can you find one text from it? However, we can add some texts as placeholders to a pure meta-diagram in order to better describe it.

I applied the Germ-cell Diagram to different levels of analysis. The diagram below is an example. You can find more diagrams in Activity U (VIIII): Project-oriented Activity Theory.

I named my method “Immanent Development”. In 2021, I wrote a chapter about it in The ECHO Way.

Both “Immanent Critique” and “Immanent Development” are about continuing to develop a thing according to its own logic. We don’t have to add our logic to the thing. What we have to do is to discover unique aspects of the thing.

What is “Supportive Development”?

One of my favorite psychological theories is Self-Determination Theory (SDT) which is an established psychological theory about human motivation.

There are so many established motivation theories. The reason why I choose SDT is that it is particularly concerned with how social-contextual factors support or thwart people’s thriving through the satisfaction of their basic psychological needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy.

SDT is an empirical humanistic psychological theory. As an empirical approach, SDT is developed with empirical methods such as operational definitions, observational methods, and statistical inferences. As a humanistic approach, SDT rejects the behaviorist perspective of psychology.

According to Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, “…one can observe the human capacities to be apathetic and alienated, to disconnect from and dehumanize others, and to behave in ways that imply fragmentation and inner division rather than integration. These seemingly contradictory human natures, with capacities for activity and passivity, integrity and fragmentation, caring and cruelty, can be theoretically approached in different ways. As briefly mentioned, one approach, taken by the more behavioristic schools of thought, has assumed that organisms can be conditioned, programmed, or trained to be more ‘positive’ in functioning, or they can be programmed, conditioned, or trained to be more ‘negative.’ In other words, the contradiction is resolved within such theories by assuming a relatively empty or highly plastic organism that is shaped to be either more positive or more negative, with little need to consider the constraints or contents of human nature.” (2017, p.9)

If we want to develop creative talent, we should pay attention to the above three basic psychological needs, especially Autonomy.

In 2021, I develop the Life-to-be-Owned framework for developing creative talent. You can find more details in The Customer Profile and Life-to-be-Owned.

The Life-to-be-Owned framework also discussed the “Self — Other” relationship. However, I only mentioned a framework about Relevance.

Now we can use “Supportive Development” to expand the Life-to-be-Owned framework.

What is “Supportive Immanent Development”?

If we combine “Immanent Development” and “Supportive Development” together, we get a new concept: “Supportive Immanent Development”.

What does it mean?

It means respect for a person’s own developmental tendencies and the object’s own logic.

It means supporting both the development of the person and the object.

In the past two weeks, I worked as a curator and help Daiana Zavate curate some of her good ideas into a meaningful whole. We started from scratch and we didn’t know where we should go to.

Each time Daiana brought some new ideas for our discussion and I selected some of them and placed them in the main diagram.

Eventually, we developed a framework called “the Field of Meta-learning”.

On Jan 18, I mentioned an aspect of the primary theme “Strategic Exploration” in TALE: Start A Thematic Conversation.

“Strategic Exploration” is a good candidate because it points to a clear direction, indicates a clear boundary, and represents a meaning which connects to Daiana Zavate’s creative life as a strategic designer.

Moreover, there is a dramatic element behind the theme of “Strategic Exploration”. There is a structural tension between “Strategy” and “Exploration”.

This structural tension is similar to “Creative Curation” because “Creativity” and “Curativity” are opposite to each other.

In 2021, I worked on several independent research projects. The theme of “Creative Curation” was discovered from the Milanote (BACK TO W.E.C.) project.

The term “Creative Curation” is pretty interesting because there is a paradox behind the term: Curativity against Creativity. Creators tend to think and act without any frame. However, Curators tend to give a frame to think and act in order to make a meaningful whole.

Virtual Whiteboards make a balance between Curativity and Creativity. For example, Milanote is understood as “the Evernote for Creatives”. It also uses “Get organized. Stay creative.” as its slogan.

I also found the theme of “Creative Curation” from the BACK TO W.E.C. program which can be understood as an example of platform-based social practices. The program was designed as a two-month program. After one month, the program host discussed the progress with me and told me that they struggled with the style of program curation: open v.s. control.

This is interesting because the theme of “Creative Curation” appears in both the technological environment and the social environment.

You can find more details about the Milanote (BACK TO W.E.C.) project in The “5A” Slow Cognition Model.

This is a good technique to design a knowledge theme: A + B (with a deep opposite dimension). You can find a list of opposite themes for discussing life strategy.

In a “Collaborative Strategic Exploration” project, we can see a pair of roles: Creator — Curator. While Creator aims to explore more new ideas, Curator aims to curate some good ideas from the creative flow.

If we accept the notion of “Supportive Immanent Development”, we can support creative talent’s development collectively.

Related Articles

Themes
Talent Development
Collaboration
Motivation
Development And Growth

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Oliver Ding
TALE500

880 Followers
Editor for

Founder of CALL(Creative Action Learning Lab), information architect, knowledge curator.

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