Single and double-loop learning is confusing me, but as far as I understand it, single-loop learning is when we detect an error, address it, and carry on with our lives as if nothing happened. Or, in my (no doubt severely wrong) analogy, when we trip over a crack in the pavement, steady ourselves, and keep walking. Double-loop learning, on the other hand, requires a total rethink of “the learning systems” involved when we come across that error. So, if we tripped over a crack in the pavement, and then tore that pavement up and built a new street. Yeah, that’s definitely it.
This is sort of why we read, write about it, then commentate and discuss via blog post. It makes the readings richer, thicker, and also lets everybody weave more complex understandings, simply based on what you bring, not what I or others assume.
Good example, wrong way round, which is why it is such a great example. Learning to walk is deeply double loop. It’s how we learnt to do it in the first place. So to trip, then to flatten the entire road and so not have to learn how to negotiate unevennes, that is the definition of single loop. I don’t change how I walk, I flatten the world before me. (This is much the same as declaring, in week 2 of a rather difficult subject, that it is broken because it isn’t working – a tautology if ever there was!) Double loop is what our brains do, and us, by directed practice. This is where we concentrate and practice it again and again, trying different things each time. It’s why toddlers are called toddlers. It’s why a toddler will spend an hour playing on the steps, or stepping over cracks. It is trying out different things, jump, small step, big step, step where foot is at different height, slide my feet, lift so my toe doesn’t catch. A whole panoply of testing each of which changes the deep wiring of how we walk. Pure double loop.
How we walk changes, and we let the world stay bumpy
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