Gary Boyd and Wojciech M. Jaworski
The purpose of this paper is to explain to educators and system developers the novel systemic instructional methodology and tools which the use to improve students' learning aboutā¦
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explain to educators and system developers the novel systemic instructional methodology and tools which the use to improve students' learning about and development of viable ventures and reliable software systems. This methodology is used to counteract impetuous detail ā focussed thinking. For example, it has been evident that students often compromise their learning and their design work by failing to take large enough, or systemic enough, longāterm perspectives. Rarely, do they grasp the need for finding and discussing multiple alternative and contextually wellāsituated strategies prior to their attempts at designing systems or plunging into the generation of software code.
Design/methodology/approach
Both analytic narratives of intentionality and executable prototype models have essential roles to play in learning about and designing systems, and this paper explains how these can be integrated. This is done by three parallel learningāconversations: about why we are learning this?; about what is really going on here?; and about which learning strategies (metaācognitive strategies) to use. These conversations are carried on at the same time as cybersystemic modelling which often involves the building of a canonical formal representation of entities, relationships and transformations, making possible the running of simulations. The modelling is done using Jaworski's ājāMapsā¢ā notation (from which various specialized views can be generated by the āCONTEXT+āā¢ tools as needed). This is done in order to assess the completeness, correctness and requisite control variety aspects of actual and prospective viable systems and software.
Findings
It has been found by carefully triangulated observations over two decades of using successive versions of this methodology that graduate students who work through these activities with this notational technology, develop deeper understanding, produce more reliable software and develop more viable systems.
Originality/value
The paper is of value in presenting context map as an advanced, powerful and easyātoāimplement method for information representation and transformation and systems development.
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The purpose of this paper is to encourage professional designers of many kinds, and especially those of the entertainment media, to understand themselves as actually beingā¦
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to encourage professional designers of many kinds, and especially those of the entertainment media, to understand themselves as actually being partners in a common educative enterprise, which is through artistry, predictive knowledge, nonādominative legitimative discourse and technology, helping people everywhere to learn to desire to, and to be able to, survive reasonably pleasantly on Earth for a very long time to come.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper puts forward three theses: collapse of civilisation is immanent unless people can be educated to live symbiotically with one another and Gaia; all designs have educative and misāeducative importance; designers need to learn to use higher level cybersystemic approaches to be beneficial. Then it argues for the plausibility of these theses from philosophical educational to practical perspectives. In particular, it argues for the importance of modifying cultural propagation so that all our main cultures can become āsymviableā ā that is can come to live symbiotically with one an other and with the ecosystems of Earth. And it is argued that, in order to facilitate this enterprise, a cybernetic understanding of the processes and actions of the complex historically emergent higher level cybersystems in which the authors are all embedded, and which are embedded in us, should become the basis for designers, actual practice.
Findings
By reviewing designers' functional levels historically the paper finds that many different kinds of influential designers have actually functioned at the higher cybersystemic levels the authors advocate and hence can be guiding exemplars in this newly precarious situation.
Originality/value
A deeper cybersystemic understanding of just how people are all parts of one mutually educating and mutually surviving Earthālife system changes the value of everything. Designers who manage to use such understanding should be both more successful and more satisfied with the value of their work.
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The purpose of this paper is to encourage critics and artists to make use of a cybersystemic perspective in their work to improve its potency and longāterm value to humankind andā¦
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to encourage critics and artists to make use of a cybersystemic perspective in their work to improve its potency and longāterm value to humankind and the larger living world. The arts are centrally involved in the competitive propagation of our deep cultural identities and involved also in the marketing needed to ensure our biological identity propagation. We need better ways to formatively evaluate the arts so that requisite lifeāenhancing control variety can be universally available. Unfortunately, the arts are not widely enough understood to be the crucial system steering activities that they are, for us to realize the immense visionary guiding benefits they can offer for solving the very serious global problems of the twentyāfirst century.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper that proposes a methodology to enable critics and artists to make use of a cybersystemic perspective in their work.
Findings
Transformative reāeducation of artists and critics to develop cybersystemic leveraging of their own work is now possible by deploying via the web: systemic modeling, simulations, and educative dramatic roleāplay games together with learning conversations. The essential content in education for human longāterm viability has to do with how complex system steering really works and precisely how the arts play such a central role in it all.
Originality/value
Education which specifically demonstrates how cybersystemic viability principles such as: good closings, balancing loops, requisite variety, requisite heterarchy, and multiālevel learning conversations work can be used by artists and critics to steer human activity better and so can be a big part of the solution to the severe threats that the world is now experiencing.
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The most satisfying and interesting human learning gameāofālife is probably a conversation where there is a common will among the participants to promote understanding of ourā¦
Abstract
The most satisfying and interesting human learning gameāofālife is probably a conversation where there is a common will among the participants to promote understanding of our world despite possibly large differences in knowledge and experience. Gordon Pask took conversational learning as more than a general metaphor for humanly significant learning. He identified the essential minimal characteristics of the entities and relationships involved and formalised all that into a recursive learning theory of very broad scope. Over the years, Pask and his various System Research associates validated conversation theory by embodying it in a number of (nā) personāmachine systems (SAKI, CASTE, THOUGHTSTICKER, TDS, etc.), and by doing case studies with various kinds of learners and tutorālearners learning and teaching through these interfaces. Reviews some interesting aspects of conversation theory, including both its remarkable insights and some limitations. Concludes that there are good reasons for expecting that the implications of Paskās approach to educational cybernetics will continue to be explored for many years to come.
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Ray Ison and Sandro Luis Schlindwein
The governance of the relationship between humans and the biophysical world has been based on a paradigm characterized by dualistic thinking and scientism. This has led to theā¦
Abstract
Purpose
The governance of the relationship between humans and the biophysical world has been based on a paradigm characterized by dualistic thinking and scientism. This has led to the Anthropocene. The purpose of this paper is to reframe human-biosphere governance in terms of ācyber-systemicsā, a neologism that is useful, the authors argue, not only for breaking out of this dualistic paradigm in human-environmental governance but also of the dualism associated with the use of systems and cybernetics.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper the authors draw on their own research praxis to exemplify how the intellectual lineages of cybernetics and systems have been mutually influencing their doings, and how new forms of governance practices that explore different framing choices might contribute to building innovative governance approaches attuned to the problematique of the Anthropocene, for instance through institutional designs for cyber-systemic governance.
Findings
The growing popularity of the Anthropocene as a particular framing for the circumstances, if it is to transformative and thus relevant demands informed critique if it is to help change the trajectory of human-life on earth. The authors offer arguments and a rationale for adopting a cyber-systemic perspective as a means to avoid the dangers in pursuing the current trajectory of our relationship with the biophysical world as, for example, climate change. The essay frames an invitation for a systemic inquiry into forms of governance more suited to the contemporary circumstances of humans in their relationships with the biophysical world.
Research limitations/implications
The research essay challenges many taken-for-granted epistemological assumptions within the cybernetics and systems intellectual communities. A case for radical change is mounted; the means to effect this change, other than through changes in discourse remain unclear though it is apparent that changes to praxis and institutional forms and arrangements will be central.
Practical implications
Cyber-systemic capabilities need to be developed; this requires investment and new institutions that are conducive to cyber-systemic understandings and praxis.
Originality/value
Understanding the global environmental crisis as an emergent outcome of current commitments to dualistic governance choices demands a reframing of much of what humans have done, re-investment in cyber-systemics offers a moral and practical response.