Relationality

(See also other keywords)

Evaluating learning before competence

• Learners map their vision aims via our Self Evaluation Learning Framework
• This is designed to make complex situations manageable by using four-fold reasoning

Beyond the industrial mindset

• One reason why we need a new education paradigm is that the current one is part of an older industrial legacy.
• Plato and Aristotle saw 'design thinking' as a predictive framework for managing productivity in industry.
• Although form and category inspired databases & 'virtual' products part of their legacy is 'thingness'.
• This chimes with what Marx saw as reification - i.e. treating social relationships like tangible products.

Thingness

• Homo sapiens is not good at multi-tasking. We are better at focusing on individual things, one at a time.
• Perhaps our 3 million years of mining and tool-crafting gave us an ability to shape, value and 'objectify' things.
• 5K years ago we invented countable currencies & alphabetical writing to help us build nations, colonies and empires.
• Today, reading and writing are still seen as the basic pre-requisites for entry to an institution of higher education.

The Logic of Exploitation

• In the 17th century, thinkers (e.g. Descartes) projected some mining principles onto economics.
• Notably, the influential ‘law of diminishing returns’ (used in economic theory) reflects this logic.
  • the more coal you dig, the more you are forced to exploit less favourable resources. (Marshall, ?)
• In this bleak scenario, returns on effort are reduced over time and the winner-loser gap increases.

The Mathematics of Dead Things

• Surprisingly, then, we still aggregate things as discrete 'assets', rather than seeking synergies.
• Indeed, money and accountancy work using a logic that is, fundamentally, additive and/or subtractive.
• Of course, it is convenient to apply this to 'dead' things (e.g. pizzas, or money) for distribution or trade.
• However, this does not work for living systems, and/or for situations that are emergent and creative.
• As Paul Romer put it, “...possibilities do not add up. They multiply.” (Romer, 1991).