The Knowledge Curation Toolkit #5: WIDENESS for Multi-theory Curation
A canvas for building curated knowledge frameworks
This post is part of a series of articles that aim to introduce a set of tools for the Knowledge Curation project.
Today I am going to review the fifth tool: The WIDENESS canvas. See the picture below.
The WIDENESS canvas is based on the WIDENESS model. See the diagram below.
This article focuses on the WINDNESS canvas and multiple-theory curation.
Content
1. Multiple-theory Curation
2. The WINDNESS Model
3. Approaches, Focuses, and Perspectives
4. Phenomena, Heuristics, and Frameworks
5. The Bottom-up Approach
6. The Top-down Approach
7. The Dialogue Approach
8. Flow, Story, and Model
9. Epistemic Development
10. Summary
11. CALL for NEXT: The Life as Activity Framework
1. Multiple-theory Curation
The Knowledge Curation project started from Single-theory Curation because it is a simple version of Multiple-theory Curation.
Single-theory Curation is defined as a special type of activity that aims to understand the landscape of a theory, a theoretical concept, or a theory/concept-related practice such as learning, teaching, creating, etc. You can find more details in The Knowledge Curation Toolkit #1: Theme U for Single-theory Curation.
Multiple-theory Curation adopts more than one theoretical approach as knowledge resources for developing a new theory, applying theories to practical situations, and making a new integrated knowledge framework to connect theory and practice.
We have at least three ways to conduct a Multiple-theory Curation project.
- The Bottom-up approach: developing a new theory.
- The Top-down approach: applying theories to practical situations.
- The Dialogue approach: making a new integrated knowledge framework
For a particular Multiple-theory Curation project, we can work with two or more theoretical approaches.
2. The WINDNESS Model
The WINDESS Model is similar to the “When Theory Meets Practice” diagram because both use the same meta-diagram: WXMY.
The difference between them is that they use different terms. Also, they use two different approaches for applications.
The “When Theory Meets Practice” diagram defines six types of objects of knowing:
- mTheory: Meta-theory
- sTheory: Specific Theory
- aModel: Abstract Model
- cModel: Concrete Model
- dPractice: Domain Practice
- gPractice: General Practice
An established theory or theoretical tradition may have various applications at different levels of abstraction. The above terms focus on this significant aspect. You can find more details in The Knowledge Curation Toolkit #2: WXMY for Interdisciplinary Curation.
The WINDNESS model uses the following terms:
- Theoretical Approaches
- Conceptual Focuses
- Practical Perspectives
- Integrated Frameworks
- Operational Heuristics
- Practical Phenomena
Though these terms are also different levels of abstraction, the WINDNESS model is more about curating multiple theories together.
The other difference between these two models is their applications. The “When Theory Meets Practice” diagram uses a simple version named Theme U for applications. See the example below. We can directly add data to the Theme U diagram. In this way, the diagram becomes a canvas.
However, we can’t apply the same approach to the WINDNESS model because multiple-theory curation requires more data. We need a bigger space for a curation project.
That’s the reason that I developed the WINDNESS canvas.
3. Approaches, Focuses, and Perspectives
I use the following three terms for the THEORY side:
- Theoretical Approaches
- Conceptual Focuses
- Practical Perspectives
What’s the difference between these three terms? Let’s see an example.
The screenshot above is part of a Canvas for the integrated knowledge framework of “Life Strategy”.
- Theoretical Approaches: Relevance Theory, Anticipatory System Theory, and Activity Theory
- Conceptual Focuses: Self—Other, Present—Future, and Object—Outcome
- Practical Perspectives: Transactional Anticipatory System, Second-order Activity
Theoretical Approaches refer to academic theories or theoretical traditions. Conceptual Focuses only focus on particular concepts or aspects of theoretical approaches. Practical Perspectives transform Conceptual Focuses for practical applications.
Here we see three levels of abstraction. However, the most magical thing of the Multiple-theory Curation is the cross-theory connection. For example:
Self-Other + Present-Future = Transactional Anticipatory System
Anticipatory System Theory doesn’t discuss the “Self — Other” relationship, if we adopt the notion of “Self — Other” from Relevance Theory and connect it to “Present — Future”, we can find a typical complex:
“Self, Other, Present, and Future”
In August 2021, I discovered this complex and developed a framework to understand it. See the diagram below. You can find more details in D as Diagramming: The iART Framework.
In this manner, I found the notion of “Second-order Activity” on Sept 9, 2021.
Later, I combined these two notions together and developed the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework. You can find more details in Slow Cognition: The Development of AAS (August 21, 2021 — August 26, 2022).
4. Phenomena, Heuristics, and Frameworks
I use the following three terms for the Practice side:
- Practical Phenomena
- Operational Heuristics
- Integrated Frameworks
Let’s use the “Life Strategy” canvas as an example again.
On Jan 8, 2022, I had a 99-minute conversation with a friend who was running a youth development program. The primary theme of the conversation is about applying theories to youth charity education and youth development in general.
After the meeting, I adopted the ECHO Way meta-diagram and designed a new diagram called Drama-fit. See the diagram below.
In this case, a youth development program belongs to Practical Phenomena while the Drama-fit framework belongs to Operational Heuristics.
Both are related to life development which is the primary theme of the “Life Strategy” integrated framework.
The picture below is part of the “Curativity” canvas.
In the past ten years, I worked on many curation-related projects (Practical Phenomena). These projects inspired me to create many frameworks (Operational Heuristics). Later, I also made several higher-lever frameworks such as Brand Commons (2014) and Curation as Activity (2017), these frameworks are Integrated Frameworks.
5. The Bottom-up Approach
As mentioned above, we have at least three ways to conduct a Multiple-theory Curation project.
- The Bottom-up approach: developing a new theory.
- The Top-down approach: applying theories to practical situations.
- The Dialogue approach: making a new integrated knowledge framework
The Bottom-up approach is based on practice-based reflection and it emphasizes induction reasoning. On the WINDNESS canvas, we move from the Right side to the Left side. See the example below.
The above canvas uses my “curativity” as an example. The three big black arrows mean the following three movements:
- The Flow — Story Curation (Reflection | Ecological Awareness)
- The Story — Model Curation (Generational | Mediating Instrument)
- The Model — Theory Curation (Meta-analysis | Epistemic Development)
The Flow—Story Curation emphasizes practice-based reflection. It encourages people to reflect on their own life experiences. It inspires people to pay attention to ecological awareness which refers to perceiving differences and similarities in changes in environments.
Though I wrote the book Curativity in 2019, I developed several frameworks in 2012 and 2013.
The Story—Model Curation emphasizes the process of generalization. It encourages people to discover deep insights behind Operational Heuristics.
For example, I developed an operational heuristic called Brand Commons in 2014. It was about the open brand movement. Later, I expanded to Open Action Wisdom which is an integrated framework.
The Model — Theory Curation emphasizes the process of meta-analysis. It encourages people to move from Integrated Frameworks to Conceptual Focuses, from Conceptual Focuses to Theoretical Approaches.
This path is similar to Grounded Theory which is a structured methodology for social science research.
To be honest, the above screenshot doesn’t represent the Model — Theory Curation. In fact, I used theory-based reflection to develop Curativity Theory. You can find more details in Slow Cognition: How did I develop Curativity Theory?
So, the “Curativity” canvas is not a perfect example of The Bottom-up approach. That’s fine because we have more than three approaches to using the WINDNESS canvas.
6. The Top-down Approach
The Top-down approach is for applying theories to practical situations and testing theories. You can also use existing theories to generate brand-new theories.
On the WINDNESS canvas, we move from the Left side to the Right side. See the example below.
The above example is the Diagramming as Practice framework. In Dec 2021, I developed the framework in order to close the D as Diagramming project (phase I). I also used the framework to write a book titled Diagramming as Practice.
The diagram below is an integrated Framework for studying knowledge diagrams. The framework uses four Practical Perspectives to curate various theoretical approaches together.
- Cognitive Representation
- Cultural Significance
- Ecological Situation
- Mediating Instrument
Where did these four Practical Perspectives come from? They come from the following four Conceptual Focuses (also called Thematic Spaces):
- “Architecture” > Cognitive Representation
- “Relevance” > Cultural Significance
- “Opportunity” > Ecological Situation
- “Activity” > Mediating Instrument
You can find more detail in The Diagramming as Practice Framework.
Where did these four Conceptual Focuses come from? They come from the following Theoretical Approaches:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Spatial Cognition Theories
- Conceptual Space Theory
- Construal Level Theory
- Cognitive Anthropology
- Cultural Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Phenomenological Sociology
- Social Representation Theory
- Activity Theory
- Social Practice Theories
- Ecological Psychology
- The Ecological Practice Approach
The picture below is the full version of the canvas.
The primary theme of the D as Diagramming project is Diagram and Thought. I realized that most of the above theoretical resources are adopted from the field of psychological science. Thus, I also named the above canvas case study The Psychology of Diagramming and Beyond.
The Top-down approach highlights the following three movements:
- The Objective — Subjective Curation (Thematic Orientation | Epistemic Development)
- The Approach — Application Curation (Heuristic Orientation | Intermediate Instruments)
- The Explanation —Operation Curation (Situated Orientation | Double Containers)
Building and developing a Conceptual Focus (also called Thematic Space or Conceptual Space) means the Objective — Subjective knowledge curation. You need to connect established theories with your own personal life/work experience. There is a lot of work to do for this type of knowledge curation. You have to select theoretical approaches and identify the similarities and differences between various theories. You have to reflect on your own experience and imagine your future work in order to find relevant themes to curate theoretical approaches. Finally, you need to name your conceptual focuses.
Some scholars use a similar approach to build toolkits for research. For example, Davide Nicolini introduces six different ways of theorizing practice in his 2013 book Practice Theory, Work, & Organization. However, their works are about Objective Knowledge Curation because they aim to produce public knowledge for academic researchers. My notion of Conceptual Space is for building Personal Epistemological Frameworks and personal epistemic development in general.
Conceptual Focuses are dynamic since a person could learn new theories and work on new projects. His experience of learning and working could change his conceptual focuses. These changes also impact his further learning and working.
The purpose of Practical Perspectives is to bridge the gap between Epistemological Frameworks and Practical Frameworks. Since Epistemological Frameworks are formed by several Conceptual Focuses, they can’t directly apply to practical projects. For example, it is hard to directly use the concept “Architecture” to explain something because it is just a name of a set of similar theoretical resources.
We can select one or several theoretical concepts or principles from conceptual focuses and group them together as a practical framework. For example, I selected the following four perspectives to form the Diagramming as Practice framework:
- Cognitive Representation
- Cultural Significance
- Mediating Instrument
- Ecological Situation
We can use established theoretical concepts from a particular theoretical approach for Practical Perspectives. The “Mediating Instrument” perspective is directly adopted from Activity Theory. We can also use normal words to refer to a direction. For example, “Ecological Situation” is not a theoretical concept, but a normal word for highlighting the field of ecological psychology in the Opportunity conceptual focus.
Why do we need a new term such as Practical Perspectives? Can we just use Concepts or Perspectives?
The term Practical Perspectives refers to the Approach — Application Knowledge Curation. This type of knowledge curation is about turning personal tacit knowledge into real-life work. For example, the D as Diagramming project is a real-life work about diagrams. The Diagramming as Practice framework is an application of theoretical knowledge and my tacit knowledge.
If you read my articles about the Diagramming as Practice framework, you will find many micro-thinking tools such as Principle, Typology, Spectrum, Formula, Canvas, etc. I used them to organize my writing and the content of my articles.
For the Model of Knowledge Curation, I called these micro-thinking tools Operational Heuristics. Below is a list of Operational Heuristics I made during the process of writing articles about the Diagramming as Practice framework.
- A Principle for Designing Diagrams and Canvases
- A Typology of Relevances
- The Means—End Spectrum
- The Past—Present Evolution
- The Part-Whole Curativity
- The Ambiguity — Precision Dynamics
- The Opportunity Formula
- Typology of Space Affordances
- The Opportunity Space
As a bridge between perspectives and phenomena, Operational Heuristics refer to the Explanation — Operation Knowledge Curation. While Perspectives are great for guiding explanations, it is effective and convenient to use abstract perspectives if we have tools to model the structure of such explanations. Heuristics offer such tools at the operation level. Thus, turning perspectives into heuristics means the Explanation — Operation Knowledge Curation.
7. The Dialogue Approach
The Dialogue approach is a special way of connecting THEORY and PRACTICE. It can be used to develop a new integrated knowledge framework.
On the WINDNESS canvas, the approach requires moves from two sides and meets in the middle.
The Dialogue approach also requires the following four types of knowledge curation activities:
- The Flow — Story Curation
- The Story — Model Curation
- The Objective — Subjective Curation
- The Approach — Application Curation
The Flow — Story Curation is guided by Reflection. The goal is to turn daily life experience and work experience into tacit knowledge. The key is Ecological Awareness.
The Story—Model Curation is guided by Generalization. The strategy is to design Mediating Instruments which could be considered cognitive containers.
The Objective — Subjective Curation is guided by Thematic Orientation. The goal is to build Thematic Spaces to support long-term tacit knowledge development. The key is Epistemic Development.
The Approach — Application Curation is guided by Heuristic Orientation. The strategy is to design Intermediate Instruments which could be mediating tools for the cross-boundary activity.
8. Flow, Story, and Model
The above discussions mention Flow, Story, and Model. I’d like to offer more details about these three terms. See the diagram below.
The above diagram is a metaphor for discussing the context of Developing Tacit Knowledge.
- Flow > Experience > Life as a continuous flow
- Story > Film > Project as a film with a prominent theme
- Model > Floor Plan > Thematic space as a floor plan
I use “continuous flow” as a metaphor to describe Life and Experience. This metaphor is inspired by William James’ metaphor “Stream of Thought”.
In fact, James used a group of metaphors around the notion of “Stream of Thought”. According to Jeffrey V. Osowski, the following other metaphors or images were part of the stream family (1989, p.132): train, chain, path, current (both water and electric), channel, line (with segments), procession, kaleidoscope, and fabric. “By using these metaphors, James was able to capture the concepts of continuity, constant change, direction, connectedness, pace, rhythm, and flow, all of which were important characteristics of thought or consciousness.”
James used the stream metaphor to reject the British empiricists’ view of consciousness which refers to the chain or train metaphor. According to James:
“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness or of subjective life. (vol. 1, p.239)
What James emphasized is the Subjective Life. I follow this metaphor and directly use Life as a continuous flow to describe a person’s subjective experience of his own life. You can’t use a knife to cut a stream, you only can use a container to contain it.
The water doesn’t have a form which also means a structure, but the container has a form. The form of our experience is perceived as an interaction between our immediate actions with ecological situations which refers to physical environments and social environments.
The Flow layer means the ground of Developing Tacit Knowledge and the source of Story and Model.
The Story layer refers to the level of social communicative context. At this level, a person could tell his journey of developing tacit knowledge with others. I use Film as a metaphor for this layer.
The Story layer is also inspired by my experience of writing my learning autobiographies and working on learning narrative-related projects. I often write reflection notes for each project. I also share my journey with others. For example, I had a 99-minute conversation with a friend of mine on Jan 8, 2022. I briefly introduced my journey of epistemic development from 2019 to 2022. I spent about 60 minutes sharing my story and some core ideas of several major works.
At the Story layer, a person could know the themes of his stories and the structure of his stories. However, this type of knowing is based on Synthesis. If he wants to explore the Analysis-type of knowing, he needs models.
A model is not a reality, but by modeling reality, we have a special way of knowing. By using models, a person could explore the knowing of Analysis.
The process, the result, and the value are totally different from the Story layer.
However, we should remember the model is not our destination. The model is a mediating instrument for producing our outcome of tacit knowing activities. We need to return to the Story layer from the Model layer. We need to transform insights from Analysis into actionable guides by Synthesis.
Finally, the actionable guides should be transformed into real actions in ecological situations and returned to the Flow layer.
The three-layer structure also represents the concept of Double Selectivity:
- The Selectivity of Perceiving: Similarity v.s. Difference
- The Selectivity of Thinking: Variant v.s. Invariant
The Concept of Double Selectivity is adopted from my work the Ecological Practice approach toolkit.
According to Harry Heft, the theoretical root of Gibson’s ecological psychology is William James’ Radical Empiricism. Inspired by Heft, I adopted the concept of Selectivity from Radical Empiricism for the Ecological Practice approach toolkit.
Heft (2012) pointed out, “…in radical empiricism, knowing refers most fundamentally to a functional relation in experience between a knower and an object known. The defining characteristic of knowing is selectivity. Through knowing processes, structure is selected out of, or differentiated from, immediate experience. It is now time to consider the products of selective processes. To use James’s terminology, two products of the selectivity of knowing processes are percepts and concepts.”(p.37)
I refer to this notion as Double Selectivity: The Selectivity of Perceiving and The Selectivity of Thinking.
According to Heft, “Perceiving is an action that entails selection of a flow of immediate experience out of the potential ground that is pure experience. Thinking or conceiving entails, in turn, selecting and fixing particular parts of this perceptual flow. Through this process, concepts are carved out of immediate perceptual experience at a remove from action and are abstracted from it. Abstracting from the immediate flow of experience makes it possible for the knower to isolate, and then to classify or otherwise manipulate, these extracted ‘moments.’ This cognitive capability enlarges the knower’s epistemic potential in incalculable ways.” (pp.39–40)
For the present discussion, I roughly apply Double Selectivity to connect three layers.
- Experience > The Selectivity of Perceiving > Story
- Story > The Selectivity of Thinking > Model
From the Experience layer to the Story layer, the key is Similarity/Difference. It means we are very sensitive to new things in our immediate experience. Many people can generate insights by perceiving Differences, but a few people can perceive Similarities and find new insights.
If we can find Differences from Similarities, then we can find some new structures of stories. It could lead to innovation.
From the Story layer to the Model layer, the key is Variant/Invariant. Since a model is an abstraction of an insightful story, the Model maker has to separate invariants and variants from Story 1 and Story 2. While invariants refer to the Architecture aspect of the Story layer, variants refer to the Relevance aspect of the Story layer.
9. Epistemic Development
The “Flow — Story — Model” metaphor doesn’t consider Theory and Theory-based Knowledge.
In order to highlight the value of Theory and theory-based knowledge, I used the term Epistemic Development for the WIDENESS canvas. It refers to intellectual development and life reflection. See the diagram below.
As a serial creator and a lifelong thinker, I am passionate about intellectual development and life reflection. Initially, I was influenced by Chris Argyris’ Action Science and Donald Schön’s Theory in Practice and The Reflective Practitioner. In 2014, I started learning Ecological Psychology, Activity Theory, and other theoretical approaches.
I wrote my first learning autobiography in 2015 and was attracted to biographical studies. In 2016, I developed a framework called Career Landscape which is inspired by Activity Theory, Communities of Practice, and other ideas. I also developed a series of tools such as the Learning Autobiography Guide, Learning & Reflective Cards, Learning & Reflective Canvas, Learning & Reflective Monthly Report Template, etc.
In June 2018, I did a rough literature review about personal knowing and found there is an established discipline called Personal Epistemology or Epistemic Cognition.
I realized there is a Hamburger of personal knowing! Thus, I designed the above diagram.
At the top of the Hamburger, there is a branch of philosophy: epistemology. Also, a related discipline is the Philosophy of Science.
At the bottom of the Hamburger, there is a real daily life world. I pointed out two keywords: Narrative and Action. These two keywords refer to two approaches: the narrative approach is about biographical studies while the action science approach refers to Chris Argyris’ Action Science and Donald Schön’s Theory in Practice and The Reflective Practitioner.
In the middle of the Hamburger, there are several areas. One layer is about academic professional research themes such as Metacognition, Epistemic Cognition, and Conceptual Change. These themes belong to different disciplines and different theoretical research traditions. For example, Metacognition is part of cognitive psychology. Epistemic Cognition belongs to educational studies. The term Conceptual Change is only used by North American scholars.
In order to connect academic research and the daily life world, I coined the term Epistemic Development and used it to replace my old terms such as intellectual development and life reflection.
10. Summary
Multiple-theory Curation adopts more than one theoretical approach as knowledge resources for developing a new theory, applying theories to practical situations, and making a new integrated knowledge framework to connect theory and practice.
We have at least three ways to conduct a Multiple-theory Curation project.
- The Bottom-up approach: developing a new theory.
- The Top-down approach: applying theories to practical situations.
- The Dialogue approach: making a new integrated knowledge framework
There are six types of knowledge curation activities:
- The Flow — Story Curation
- The Story — Model Curation
- The Model — Theory Curation
- The Objective — Subjective Curation
- The Approach — Application Curation
- The Explanation — Operation Curation
I also introduced two models behind these approaches and knowledge curation activities:
- The context of Epistemic Development
- The context of Developing Tacit Knowledge
To be honest, this is a complicated system. Actually, this is the unique value of the WINDNESS canvas.
Why?
I used the Cynefin framework to evaluate the value of WINDNESS canvas and the Knowledge Curation framework in general. See the diagram below.
According to Wikipedia, The Cynefin framework is a conceptual framework used to aid decision-making. Created in 1999 by Dave Snowden when he worked for IBM Global Services, it has been described as a “sense-making device”. Cynefin is a Welsh word for habitat. ”
The Cynefin framework defines five types of situations:
- Clear
- Complicated
- Complex
- Chaotic
- Confusion
If we see the “person—knowledge” interaction as the situation for sensemaking, then we can use the typology of Cynefin. See the diagram below.
- Nothing happened: Clear
- The THEORY — PRACTICE Gap: Complex
- Developing Tacit Knowledge: Chaotic
- The Knowledge Curation Toolkit: Complicated
If you don’t think about the “person—knowledge” interaction issue, then nothing happened. The situation is very Clear.
If you think about the THEORY — PRACTICE Gap, then you meet a Complex situation.
If you think about Developing Tacit Knowledge, then you face the challenge of a Chaotic situation.
Knowing, mind, experience, and knowledge, all these things are highly abstract.
How can you grasp these abstract things?
My solution is to combine Spatial Thinking and Conceptual Thinking to develop a series of Thematic Spaces. My models and canvases are designed with Graphic Space Affordance and Concept Dynamics.
The outcome is a complicated system for knowledge curation activities. However, it is not complex and chaotic.
11. CALL for NEXT: The Life as Activity Framework
On Nov 29, 2020, I wrote a long article and developed the Life as Activity (version 0.3) framework.
The Life as Activity framework proposes an activity-theoretical approach to biography-based study. There are four activity-theoretical aspects of this approach:
- Activity System model (Yrjö Engeström, 1987)
- Temporal Activity Chains (Paul Richard Kelly, 2018)
- Project orientation analysis (Andy Blunden, 2014)
- Zone of Proximal Development (Lev Vygotsky, 1933)
I also adopt several concepts from other theoretical resources about motivation, mental complexity, creative work, cultural life, organizational development, and self-knowledge. For example:
- Self-Determination Theory (Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, 1971, 2017)
- The constructive—developmental approach (Robert Kegan, 1982, 2009)
- The evolving systems approach to the study of creative work (Howard E. Gruber, 1974,1989)
- Culture Themes (Morris Opler, 1945)
- Near Histories (James March, 1991)
- Possible Selves (Hazel Rose Markus, 1986)
Thus, the Life as Activity approach is not a pure application of Activity Theory, but an open toolkit that has two groups of theoretical concepts. The first group comes from Activity Theorists and sets the foundation for the approach. Without this foundation, we can’t call this approach an activity-theoretical approach. The second group comes from non-activity theorists and provides more tools for explaining individual life. Since there are many theories for the development of individual life, the second group is an open room for appropriating theories.
The Life as Activity approach requires strong analytical skills such as paying attention to detail, evaluating problems, critical thinking, decision-making, and creativity. In other words, it is a cognitive approach. However, I consider the process of adopting this approach is also a process of developing cognitive skills too.
I’d like to invite you to use the WINDNESS canvas to re-produce the Life-as-Activity framework and make your own version because you can select new approaches for the second group.
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