A Collective Social Learning Pattern

Human-caused changes to the planet have led to worldwide social and environmental disruption. Many of the changes so produced are wicked problems: that is, problems which lie outside the current capacity of the society to resolve them. Resolving such problems requires comprehensive social change. This in turn calls for collaboration among the multiple knowledges into which Western thinking has become divided: individual, community, specialised, organisational and holistic ways of thinking. The global dominance of Western specialised knowledge acts as a barrier to the collective social learning involving multiple knowledges needed for significant change. It also blocks non-Western countries from accessing their own local knowledge. The collective social learning pattern seeks to re-align the multiple knowledges in a way that allows for collective thinking and collaborative practice. A meta-pattern takes the form of a spiral of active intervention that brings the knowledges together on equal terms at each of the four stages of the social learning cycle. Each of the knowledges is a pattern in itself. Each of the learning stage requires an integrative process linking the patterns. As a coordinating framework, the collective social learning pattern combines the multiple knowledges in answering each of the questions in turn: What should be? (sharing ideals); What is? (establishing facts); What could be? (creative ideas); and What can be? (collaborative action). The proposed pattern has been trialled in over 200 projects for whole-of-community change. Examples provided here are programs for transformational change in a future-oriented coastal city, an agricultural region, integrated research policy, and a change management workshop.