Learning Organization

Eco-Complexity Discourses is a sub-category of Coherence Discourses. It is an umbrella term that reaches across perspectives on learning that refuse separations of human from nature, material from transcendent, and part from whole. Across Eco-Complexity Discourses, learning is understood as synonymous with evolution.

Organizational Learning attends to the creation, maintenance, and movement of knowledge in an organization. These dynamics are understood to occur across four distinct levels simultaneously: individual, team, organizational, and interorganizational.

“Learning as acquisition” – the Acquisition Metaphor – is probably the most commonly invoked learning metaphor in English. It is evident in such phrases as “grasping the point,” “taking things in,” “getting it,” “picking things up,” “hard to swallow,” “remember this stuff,” and “cramming for the test.” It is not theoretically sophisticated, relying on the assumption that knowledge comprises externalized objects, and asserting that learning is a process of moving those objects from the outside to the inside.

Folk Theories exist within every realm of human engagement. They are, in effect, uncritical and often-indefensible principles of action and interpretation that are woven through everyday language and broad cultural sensibilities. In effect, most of the past 150 years of research into learning has been focused on exposing Folk Theories and exploring more conscious and scientifically robust alternatives.