What does ‘critical’ mean?

I have been reading about critical social learning systems and it has set me thinking – what is the difference between social learning and critical social learning.  Or perhaps more specifically, what did Bawden and his colleagues seek to emphasise and draw attention to when they chose to use the prefix the phrase with the word critical?

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Vickers’ key concepts

(Activity 3.10, 3.11, SAQ 3.3)

I think I mentioned elsewhere that I have come across Geoffrey Vickers work on “appreciation” a few times before but I have never had the opportunity to look at the source material and the writing of the man himself.  From reading the relevant chapter (Blackmore (Ed), 2010, Chapter 2) I have gained the following understanding of key concepts.

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Schön’s concepts

(Activity 3.7 based on Chapter 1, Blackmore (ed) (2010))

I have heard of Schön before.  Mostly in connection with his work on reflective practice and also from his work with Argyris on learning (Ramage and Shipp, 2009).  I had not really come across his work on change where he uses ideas connected with social learning.  He is included in the course as one of the ‘early’ works on social learning systems – the chapter in the book was written in 1973.

After reading the Chapter, I come away with the following understanding of Schön’s key concepts

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First impressions….

(Activity 3.1, 3.2 based on Introduction and Chapter 12 in Blackmore (2010))

So Part 3 of the course is about social learning – or to use the formal heading “Social learning, interaction and systemic change”.

From what I gather so far, this draws on some different traditions of research and practice around social learning.

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The practice of systemic inquiry

(Activity 2.4)

I want to use this post to pull together thoughts so far on Systemic Inquiry.  I am not sure whether I have thoughts of my own yet – it is all about distilling, making sense of and grasping what has been presented in TU812 course materials – Open University (2010)* and Ison (2010)**. Continue reading