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Systems Language - closed loops
Posted by Bob Gorman on 2/5/2010
In Reply To:Systems Language - closed loops Posted by Niall Palfreyman on 2/5/2010
Prof. Dr. Niall Palfreyman wrote:
Eric Stiens schrieb:
I guess I'm unclear what the issue here is ...
Bob Gorman wrote:
But if he beats up Chuck, Chuck while also defeated, deflated and perhaps crying, will go home and tell his father what happened. Then Chuck's father will call Joe's father and Joe will catch Hell. A perfect close loop awareness.
Bob's story seems such a perfect, concrete example of a closed loop that I guess I'm getting less clear what the issue is as well. yet I know I have an issue with my students. In this story Joe influences Chuck, who influences his father, who influences Chuck's father, who influences Chuck. All clear: a closed balancing loop of influences between different agents.
Yet neither Joe, Chuck, Chuck's father, or Joe's father have ever heard the words 'close loop'.
I guess I see several possible 'issues':
1. As a teacher I may want my students to grasp certain principles & techniques that will, hopefully, make their lives more livable. I spend, before his untimely death, several hours with Barry Richmond discussing exactly this. We agreed that for both of us, this was our driving motive, to enable students lives to be more satisfying & fulfilling.
This has certain implications. 1st & primary is that they understand the principles and can apply them in their own lives, perhaps consciously, ideally intuitively. 2nd, and way less important, is that they can 'name' these principles with the 'accepted names' of people in this academic field.
Possible consequences:
Let's say a 3rd student Louis, comes to me as a guidance counselor and says: I want to quit school. I can't take it any more, these bullies are always picking on me.
Within the above paradigm, I might ask: Do the bullies treat everyone the same?
If he says: NO, I might probe why the bullies Don't bully certain other students.
Or I might use an open-ended question like:
What would you like to have happen?
2. OR as a teacher I may have an agenda, believing that what I consider important is actually more important than the needs & desires of my students. So I may, for example, want to teach them about rabbit populations in a world I've imagined.
3. OR there are other issues, I'd rather not discuss right now...
However when I look at exploding rabbit populations in our first approach to exponential growth, I want the students to come to grips with a rather more abstract situation: births influences the rabbit population, which dictates the birth rate. Here it is no longer a question of two separate agents influencing each other, but rather a process influences a stock, which in return dictates (not influences) the process. There is something about this SD way of viewing the loop which my students find difficult to absorb, and it seems to them a needless abstraction.
This is the situation I'd like to find new vocabulary for.
I wish I could help, but I can't.
My choice of orientation is to start from where the student is rather than where I want the student to be.
Bob
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