The Role of Boundaries in the Creation of Radically New Knowledge

I can't leave our discussions of Wenger and social learning processes without continuing to reflect on power, difference, and the role of boundaries. While boundaries can be locations of conflict and problems, they can also be places of deep learning and transformation. If as educators we see the learning environment as socially constructed within relationships of power, how do we recognize, support, and encourage our awareness of boundaries, difference, and power? I agree with Wenger that, “[Boundaries] are likely the locus of production of radically new knowledge. They are where the unexpected can be expected, where innovative or unorthodox solutions are found, where serendipity is likely, and where old ideas find new life and new ideas propagate” (p.254). I believe we need to create and nurture radically new knowledge in order to think about and create a world beyond the status quo. In this blog, I will highlight one activity that I use to try to create awareness of difference in my work as a process facilitator, and how it relates to Wenger’s modes of belonging.

Boundaries between communities of practice highlight difference, and in this way can cause conflict and problems, supporting marginalization and exclusion. At the same time, boundaries are important locations of negotiation of meaning, and can be productive and even transformative. Wenger states that “Boundaries are like fault lines: they are the locus of volcanic activity. They allow movement, they release tension; they create new mountains; they shake existing structures (p.254). How can we encourage boundary encounters in practice that are respectful and even appreciative of difference and diversity, so that the “crash” of boundaries can be shifted from being less destructive and more productive, toward the creation of new and innovative knowledge?

In both adult education practice and academy diversity and identity are central to the work of inclusive approaches to knowledge creation. As a result, organizations, businesses, and governments pour millions of dollars each year into diversity workshops and training to enhance understanding, productivity and harmony. But how do people learn to value difference and diversity? How do we work in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-faith and pluralist society? Too much emphasis in our practice on commonality can lead us down the road to ignoring the differences between individuals and the diversity of cultures that abound in our communities and in our workplaces. Yet, too much emphasis on difference can lead us down the road to separation, segregation and exclusion. Wenger states that, “Organiations
I believe Wenger’s modes of belonging framework of engagement, imagination, and alignment, as well as my suggested addition of critical reflection (see my last blog), offers one way to find the balance between difference and commonality. I will use a practical diversity activity to demonstrate this. As a facilitator, I am asked from time to time to offer workshops on diversity. I recently facilitated a diversity and inclusion workshop for daycare workers in North and East Preston. One of the activities my co-facilitator and I used to create awareness of difference is an activity called “Ambassadors”.

Ambassador activity is a role play simulation of different people coming to Canada for the first time from a variety of made-up countries and cultures from around the world. They are ambassadors from their countries meeting a Canadian delegation. Participants are given a role to play- either as a Canadian or someone from a made-up country and culture. For example, in one culture people are very friendly, and touch a lot- holding hands for a few minutes to express their pleasure in meeting each other. In another, it is considered respectful to being speaking before the other person has finished their sentence or to wait a short time before answering, so as not to be rude. In another, it is considered extremely impolite to look someone you do not know directly in the eyes when talking to them. It is customary to look at the ceiling or your feet - never directly at the person’s face. Many of the “differences” focus on communication, personal space, and body language. Participants play their roles for 10-15 minutes, and then the facilitator leads a discussion to debrief the activity- how people felt in the role play, what surprised them, and what stood out. Participants get to feel and act out difference in a non-threatening, fun way. I often use this activity as a starting point in recognizing all of the ways that we are different. To read more about this activity see: http://www.nsms.ca/Downloads/People_Power_booklet.pdf

I believe the ambassador activity creates engagement, imagination, and alignment. Participants are mutually engaged, and develop interpersonal relationships while they manage boundaries in the role play. Imagination is stimulated through the activity and debrief as participants experience difference in very tangible ways through communication and body language. Through role play, participants are able to walk in someone else’s shoes, explore, and take risks by being an outsider to their own culture. Alignment is facilitated through a debrief discussion as participants share their perspectives and stories from the role play, but also relate these back to their real lives and identities. Critical reflection can be added to this activity through an examination of the way systemic power (legislation, institutions, bureaucracy, etc.) is used to marginalize and perpetuate difference. When participants begin to see the common ground between their identities, after also seeing and experiencing their differences, it is possible to align diverging perspectives without compromising individual identities. It is this place of balance where the seeds of new and radical knowledge can germinate.



IF WE COULD...
shrink the earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people with all existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this:

THERE WOULD BE:
57 ASIANS, 21 EUROPEANS, 1 FROM THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE (NORTH AND SOUTH) AND 8 AFRICANS.

51 WOULD BE FEMALE, 49 WOULD BE MALE.

70 WOULD BE NON-WHITE, 30 WOULD BE WHITE.

70 WOULD BE NON-CHRISTIAN; 30 CHRISTIAN.

50 PERCENT OF THE ENTIRE WORLD’S WEALTH WOULD BE IN THE HANDS OF ONLY 6 PEOPLE - AND ALL 6 WOULD BE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES.

80 WOULD LIVE IN SUBSTANDARD HOUSING.

70 WOULD BE UNABLE TO READ.

50 WOULD SUFFER FROM MALNUTRITION.

1 WOULD BE NEAR DEATH, 1 WOULD BE NEAR BIRTH.

ONLY 1 WOULD HAVE A COLLEGE EDUCATION.

NO ONE WOULD OWN A COMPUTER.

Source: http://www.nsms.ca/Downloads/People_Power_booklet.pdf

Being Sensitive to Power Increases Collaboration and Learning

In this blog, I aim to thread together the contents of my previous blogs on collaborative learning and sensitivity to power using Wenger’s theory. In this way, my goal is to find the practical in Wenger’s theory as well as to extend the discussion on the limitations of his work.

As was exemplified in the movie Crash, we use our personal force and power to influence people within our communities of practice as well as to objectify people outside of our communities of practice. Thus, power has a dual nature: it can be both productive and destructive. As a destructive force, power can create barriers leading to exclusion and discrimination. As a productive force, power can lead to significant and transformational learning. For example, the conflicts around power on the edge of the boundaries of communities of practice are where we begin to question our learned assumptions, challenge our perceived notions of fairness and examine how that impacts our practice and how we make sense of the world. I believe that these “crashes” of boundaries can be transformational without being so destructive if we employ more collaborative approaches to learning and interacting with one another.

Wenger agrees that communities of practice can be counterproductive by reinforcing unequal power relations. He states, “Communities of practice should not be romanticized: they can reproduce counterproductive patterns, injustices, prejudices, racism, sexism, and abuses of all kinds. In fact, I would argue that they are the very locus of such reproduction” (p.132). After a statement like this, I though Wenger would go on to devote more space and time to the influence of personal and systemic power. But this is where Wenger falls short. He fails to explicitly acknowledge the systemic nature of power in communities of practice, instead he chooses to focus on the ways power impacts our belonging and identity. He states, “I will treat issues of power not so much in terms of political institutions or economic systems which are the traditional focus of theories of power, but in terms of negotiation of meaning and the formation of identities- that is, the property of social communities” (p.189).

While I will continue to critique his lack of systemic power analysis, I was surprised to find how much I could relate to his discussion of modes of belonging. In particular, I found his theoretical triad of engagement, imagination, and alignment quite useful to help unpack the way social power plays itself out in learning and meaning making. Indeed Wenger agrees that when power is more equally shared, so is participation and ownership of knowledge. He states, “[B]ecause meanings are socially negotiated, shared ownership can widen participation in their production and thus increase ownership for all participants (p.200).

Wenger defines engagement as “the work of forming communities of practice and the ability to take part in meaningful activities and interactions toward the negotiation of meaning” (184). Imagination, he says, is the “ability to take a step back and look at our engagement through the eye of an outsider” (p.185), which I understand as the ability to empathize and suspend judgement. And, the work of alignment “requires the ability to coordinate perspectives and actions in order to direct energies to a common purpose” (p.186). Alignment work focuses on the need for collaboration, in order to take our individual experiences and create a discourse around them. Wenger suggests that this triad of elements need to be combined, as they rely on one another so that a community of practice becomes a learning community.

Wenger’s framework of engagement, imagination, and alignment helps me to identify and more clearly communicate why the collaborative approaches I use in my facilitation work are so important. In order to engage people and support learning, we need to create space for relationship building and authentic sharing. I use group agreements and think-pair-share (described in my last blog) to help create this democratic space. The work of imagination is the only way we can begin to understand what it might be like to walk in someone else’s shoes. I usually incorporate elements of one-to-one story sharing in my facilitation to achieve this, to allow participants to expose themselves to one another to increase understanding and empathy. The work of alignment and finding common ground can only happen when people feel their voices have been heard and valued. Then, people can step outside of their individual identities and communities of practice, and begin to straddle the boundaries of their multimemberships and multiidentities.

Beyond just creating modes of belonging, I believe Wenger’s three-fold process and framework of sharing, understanding, and finding common ground is central to building the capacity of people to see the connections and the distinctions between personal and systemic power. If I could add a fourth constituent to Wenger’s framework, I would add critical reflection, based on the work of Freire, Brookfield and many others. Critical reflection adds the necessity and builds the capacity for communities of practice to examine their identities and belonging in relation to political, institutional, and systemic forces of power. This would extend Wenger’s theory beyond personal learning to transformational social change.

Studying Wenger has reinforced for me the need to be explicit about power in all of the learning contexts that I engage in. I try to bring my own understanding of personal and systemic power to all the work that I do. However, I often fail to be more explicit about why I think discussions of power are so important, and how the practices that I employ are built on creating democratic space for engagement, imagination, alignment, and critical reflection in the pursuit of meaning making that challenges the status quo.

Power-full Communities of Practice

Wenger (1998) defines communities of practice as “places where we develop, negotiate, and share theories and ways of understanding the world (p. 48). We negotiate meaning within and between overlapping as well as distinct and separate communities of practice. I find his theory both compelling and problematic.

On one hand, the theory gives me an understanding of the formal and informal spaces of learning and meaning making that I encounter in my personal and professional lives. On the other hand, I find his lack of an analysis of power makes the theory irrelevant in a world where wealth is concentrating in the hands of the one percent while the 99 percent experience increased poverty and oppression.

I am compelled by the theory as I find it hard to read Wenger without beginning to examine my own participation in communities of practice. I now question how and when I participate in these spaces of negotiation of meaning, both formal and informal. It is easy to think about all of the ways that I interact with colleagues, friends, and even strangers that influence or change the way I think about myself and the world around me. I now see communities of practice everywhere, as processes of chance encounter, spheres of influence, and sacred spaces of deep dialogue and transformation. Indeed, I think communities of practice can be any or all of these, based on Wenger’s definition and elaborated through our class discussions.

I have also questioned how privilege and power fit in the theory and praxis of communities of practice. We live in a society that is profoundly shaped by privilege and oppression, which looms large in our personal, community, learning, organizational, and institutional spaces. Communities of practice are also shaped by power, operating as privileged spaces where some are welcome and spaces of exclusion when others are left out. I believe that unless we apply an analysis of power to communities of practice, Wenger’s theory remains apolitical and decontextualized from the real world.

Since I believe that all education and meaning making is political, the lack of analysis of power leaves me wondering how relevant his theory really is to a world in which power influences, defines, and underlies all meaning making. All of our personal experiences of learning and meaning making occur within a context of socio-political forces that extend well beyond our individual selves. This echoes the feminist claim that the ‘personal is political’, that we can’t separate our personal experiences from the socio-political world around us. Indeed, socio-political forces extend into the places, families, communities, and nations into which we are born, and through which we come to make sense of the world and our place in it.

In our class discussions, Donovan challenged us to think about the role of power in negotiation of meaning given that Wenger doesn’t bring an explicit discussion of power, and he focuses on capitalist business contexts in describing and defining communities of practice. While Wenger talks about the role of influence in how participation and reification take place, he fails to apply an analysis of power that would make his theoretical approaches much more relevant beyond the narrow scope of capitalist education. For example, I’m interested in discussing how race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, gender, education, and class impact negotiations of meaning. I know that I encounter the communities of practice I participate in as a result of my identity, and both the privilege and oppression I live.

But what does adding an analysis of power really mean? The literature on power is complex and marked by deep, widespread disagreements over how the term power should be understood. There are multiple, contrasting definitions. To me, in the context of communities of practice, an analysis of power means looking at who benefits from meaning negotiation. It means asking the questions: Who is present? Who is missing? And, who has something to gain from the process?

Power can be used to explain and justify the status quo or to raise awareness to make social and political change imaginable and urgent. By leaving power out of the equation, Wenger’s theory offers a nice framework for thinking about meaning making, but fails to acknowledge the complexities and contexts in which meaning is negotiated in an unjust world.

Do you have any power-full reflections to add?

The collaborative learning toolbox

In my first blog, I wrote about how Tomasello (1999) sparked my thinking about collaborative learning and how it creates possibilities to revolutionize lifelong learning, particularly in formal settings. I am often perplexed at how many educational spaces and contexts still conform to a learning model that places an expert at the front of the room with mostly passive learners seated in rows facing said “expert”. While theories and practices abound that promote social and collaborative learning, most of our public school classrooms, continuing education lectures, and higher education curricula still follow the student/ expert learning model.

Even in a masters program focused on engaging with theories of how learning occurs and enhancing teaching, facilitation, and program development skills, I have been disappointed by the lack of collaborative and innovative learning opportunities in my classes. Besides Donovan, few professors use creative teaching, discussion, and evaluation processes. I commend Donovan for his use of blogs, video feedback, and evaluation methods focused on learning instead of grading. Why aren’t more of our professors using these approaches?

In this blog, I aim to share some of the learning tools I am aware of and use in my facilitation practice to enhance collaboration and participation. I work as a process facilitator, which means that I help groups of people work through process, including problem solving, planning, visioning, decision-making and dealing with conflict. My mantra as a facilitator is to never work harder than the people I am working with. So, as much as possible, they direct and create their own goals and actions, while I lead the process in getting there.

I try to encourage creative thought and active engagement through the use of a variety of approaches and activities in my facilitation toolbox. I choose the tools and customize the process based on the specific learning needs of each client. I have only been doing this work as a consultant for a few years, though have been using facilitation techniques as part of my work for over a decade. Whenever I work with a new colleague I learn new collaborative techniques, so the examples I offer below really only begin to scratch the surface of possibilities.

And, I’d love to hear from you- what collaborative learning approaches have you used?

Some of the collaborative approaches I use include:

Check-in-

A check-in is a way to assess participants at the beginning of a process. Usually, this is a quick process, whereby participants answer a short question, sharing it in small groups or the large group.

Check-in questions can focus on participants’ expectations of the day, what they are excited about, what they are leaving at the door in order to be present, gifts or skills they bring.

Check-out-

Similarly a check-out asks a reflection question at the end of a process. Check-out questions can focus on what stood out, specific learning, feelings, next steps, or new knowledge or skills.

Group agreements-

Group agreements help to create safe and supportive learning environments. I often just ask the group I’m working with a question such as, “What are the necessary ingredients that would allow you to feel safe and comfortable and trusting of the group and enable you to participate fully to the best of your ability?” Typical responses are things like respect, active listening, confidentiality, etc. I capture the responses, and post them for the duration of the event. I can then refer to the agreements if any issues arise, such as disrespectful language, or an overbearing participant.

Think-pair-share-

Participants are asked a question, and have a short time to think through their response. This could involve writing, thinking, or moving. They then turn to a partner and share their response. Participant responses can they be shared with another learning pair or within the larger group. Participants are given the opportunity to learn by reflection and verbalization.

World Cafe-

The World Cafe is an innovative methodology for hosting important conversations. Open-ended question(s) asked in small groups engage participants in active, meaningful conversation leading to consensus and understanding. These conversations are then shared back to the larger group..

Open Space-

Open space is an approach to learning events, focused on a specific and important purpose or task—but beginning without any formal agenda, beyond the overall purpose or theme. The initial lack of an agenda sets the stage for the event’s participants to create the agenda for themselves, generating the issues they want to discuss and setting up informal break-out groups to do so. This approach acknowledges the power of participants to self-organize and hold the solutions to their own issues or problems.

Graphic Facilitation and Recording-

Graphic facilitation is a unique facilitation technique that uses large scale visuals to help groups of people see what they mean resulting in effective, creative, and productive meetings and workshops. A graphic facilitator helps groups talk and think together, and get clear and focused to move toward problem solving and strategic planning.

Appreciative Inquiry-

Appreciative Inquiry is about the search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential.

These are a few of the approaches I use in my facilitation work, to increase participation, enhance collaboration, and value participant input. I wonder what our GSLL classes would look and feel like if professors used more approaches like these? Would we be more engaged in the material? Would we learn more?

Source:

Cooperrider, David L and Kaplin Whitney, Diana. (1999). Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.