Second-Order Cybernetics is an elaboration of Cybernetics’ core interest in circular causal relationships (feedback) between systems. The interest is extended to include phenomena that can involve feedback to feedback – that is, that have some level of responsive awareness. Second-Order Cybernetics thus simultaneously sparks and addresses issues of autonomy, self-referentiality, knowing, mind, and ethics.
Learn More...Complex Systems Research focuses on systems comprising sets of agents that form unified wholes in their interactions, relationships, or dependencies. Their emergent, global behaviors cannot be predicted on the basis of the rules governing the individual agents. Definitions and descriptions of complex systems revolve around such terms as emergent, adaptive, nonlinear, irreducible, noncompressible, non-decomposable, multi-level, self-organizing, context-sensitive, and adaptive.
Learn More...Within Developmental Discourses, learning is understood as a recursively elaborative process rather than a linear accumulative one. Most Developmental Discourses focus on how learners’ key habits of perception and interpretation change amid predictable sequences of biological, psychological, and emotional transformation.
Learn More...Coherence Discourses regard distinctions and descriptions as useful devices to make sense of the complex dynamics of learning, but they caution that such devices are mere heuristic conveniences. Coherence Discourses suggest that truths do not exist independently or outside of a system – which is a commentary on humans’ understanding of reality, not a commentary on reality. Most Coherence Discourses employ biological and ecological metaphors, with dynamics framed in evolutionary terms.
Learn More...Change Management is an umbrella term that is used in reference to a family of strategies, models, and programs designed to support individual, collective, and organizational efforts to self-transform.
Learn More...Design Thinking is about the cognitive, strategic, and practical processes associated with designing solutions and/or products. Design Thinking is considered a process for innovation and includes problem seeking and identification, imagining solutions or products, planning, creating, prototyping, testing, and improving, as it spans solution-based strategies for solving ill-defined problems across human-made and natural contexts.
Learn More...Cybernetics is the study of control and communication among biological, mechanical, social, and/or other systems that can adapt or adjust. More specifically, Cybernetics examines “circular causal” relationships – that is, the sort of looping feedback observed when a system triggers a change in its environment which then triggers a change in the system … and so on.
Learn More...Empiricism is more commonly understood as a theory of knowledge than a theory of learning, but the line is often blurred in discussions of education. Empiricism states that knowledge comes from sensory experience, and thus emphasizes the role of experience and evidence. The “hard” version of Empiricism is associated with rigorous scientific research, and the “softer” versions emphasize inquiry, exploration, sense-making, and argumentation.
Learn More...Focus
The iterative dynamic of learning
Principal Metaphors
- Knowledge is … ever-changing, iteratively generated scope of possibilities
- Knowing is … current possibilities
- Learning is … any dynamic, adaptive system
- Learning is … iterative elaboration
- Teaching is … N/A
Originated
1930s
Synopsis
The metaphor of a Learning Cycle is an explicit alternative to the imagery implicit in linearized conceptions of learning. Rather than casting learning as an accumulative process, the metaphor of a Learning Cycle channels attention to the roles experience and reflection. That is, learning is imaged not as lines, steps, and progress, but as iterative loops, elaborations, and growth. This imagery is common across Coherence Discourses, and it is especially prominent among Developmental Discourses and those perspectives that foreground action and reflection. Associated discourses include:
- Experiential Learning Spiral (Experiential Learning Cycle; Recursive Learning Cycle) (David A. Kolb, 2000s) – an ongoing cycle of experience, reflection, thought, and action that continuously generates new possibilities (and, thus, better conceived as a spiral than a circle)
- Feedback Loop – an aspect of the self-regulating processes of a dynamic system, typically characterized as a recursive cycle by which a system triggers an action or change, which then “feeds back” information that helps to determine the system’s next action or change. Typically, a self-maintaining system uses multiple Feedback Loops to modulate itself. (See more in Cybernetics.) Associated constructs include:
- Circular Causality – a constrained type of Feedback Loop, in which a clearly discernible sequence of causes-and-effects leads back to the original trigger – thus sparking a new sequence, potentially in endless cycle
- Recursion (Recursive Elaboration) – a type of repetitive process in which each step transforms/elaborates the structure that was produced through the previous steps. (See, e.g., Second-Order Cybernetics.) Most Coherence Discourses assume that learning is a recursive (vs. accumulative) process.
The “cycle” metaphor appears in many other discourses on learning – including, prominently, the
Scientific Method (see
Empiricism),
Plan–Do–Check–Act Cycle (see
Change Management), and the
Double Diamond Model of Design Thinking (see
Design Thinking). It is also commonly invoked in models of decision-making:
- Decision Cycle – an umbrella term that collects a range of step-based processes to reach and implement decisions. Examples include:
- OODA Loop (John Boyd, 1970s) – Observe–Orient–Decide–Act
- Transtheoretical Decision Model (J.O. Prochaska, 1990s) – Precontemplation–Contemplation–Preparation–Action–Maintenance
Commentary
The notion of a Learning Cycle does not offer not much to critique – as might be interpreted from its ubiquity across Coherence Discourses.
Authors and/or Prominent Influences
Diffuse. As noted, the notion is invoked in virtually all Coherence Discourses.
Status as a Theory of Learning
A Learning Cycle is a principle of learning that is invoked by almost all Coherence Discourses. It is a metaphor/image used to describe a specific learning dynamic, but it falls short of a being a full-blown theory of learning.
Status as a Theory of Teaching
A Learning Cycle is not a theory of teaching.
Status as a Scientific Theory
There is a substantial body of evidence supporting the utility of the metaphor of a Learning Cycle. Perhaps the strongest and most explicit support has been provided in empirical research associated with Complex Systems Research.
Subdiscourses:
-
Circular Causality
-
Decision Cycle
-
Double Diamond Model of Design Thinking
-
Experiential Learning Spiral (Experiential Learning Cycle; Recursive Learning Cycle)
-
Feedback Loop
-
OODA Loop
-
Plan–Do–Check–Act Cycle (Deming Cycle; PDCA Model)
-
Recursion (Recursive Elaboration)
-
Scientific Method
-
Transtheoretical Decision Model
Map Location
Please cite this article as:
Davis, B., & Francis, K. (2023). “Learning Cycle Metaphor” in Discourses on Learning in Education. https://learningdiscourses.com.
⇦ Back to Map
⇦ Back to List
