loops, loops and more loops

this week’s reading discussed Chris Argyris (and some other guy called Shön who was only mentioned half the time but seemed important) theory on different modes of learning.

there were single loops, double loops, modes 1 and 2, something called a “theory in use” and various learning agents. right now my brain is feeling pretty loopy. even after leaving till the next day, printing it out and attacking it with my highlighter, i got about three quarters of the way through this article when my brain just said “NO!”. those were some pretty heavy concepts and theories in there and i just kept thinking to myself “i am soooo single loop learning right now”, and i don’t even know if that’s right!

what i did gather from the article was that single loop learning was simple “error detected – error corrected” by just seeing what is wrong and fixing it. double loop learning (assumedly the better and more in depth way to learn) involved rethinking about the parameters of the problem itself, and changing not just the error but the way we see and do things in the system as a whole. but i’m not sure. it was pretty complex. to be honest, i used dani’s summary of this reading to help me understand it because i respond far better to the familiar vernacular of a fellow peer than that of some fancy academic article. so thank you dani, you were of great help.

in a way i kind of  see these looped learning as how this course has been aiming to get us to learn. single loop learning is that of school or other university courses where you are given information and any errors are easily corrected (generally for you by a teacher) – thats the simple learning. that’s the “know-what”. but then we have double loop learning which is like this unit (and our course in general) which is where we have to do the learning for ourselves, work out what is wrong and why and reshape how we act before we can proceed. thats how you get the “know-how”.

i’m probs way off the mark right now but i feel like i’ve learnt something and that’s all that really matters…right?