Praxis

It surprised me when I looked back that I have not written a blog on praxis before.  I was first introduced to it when I studied TU812 – the module that also led me to start blogging – so it is interesting that I haven’t ever used the blog to articulate my understanding of it.

I’ve arrived at that point now because I am currently doing a lot of reading on practice – or more precisely theories of practice.  You don’t go very far in that literature without starting to come across the word praxis.  Sometimes practice and praxis are used a little interchangeably, sometimes they are referred to as ‘practice/praxis’, but there are places where praxis and its distinctive meaning are explored in more detail.

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Situations

When I studied the OU systems thinking modules, TU811 and TU812 (in that order), I remember getting a little agitated that TU811 used the term ‘situation of interest’ and then TU812 used the term ‘situation of concern’.  I did try at the time to understand the difference.  Looking back now, I did write a blog about this at the time but mostly I just decided that of all the new language I was coming to terms with it wasn’t worth trying to work that one out.

But recently, I have found myself coming back to this. I think I am mulling it over because I can’t decide which of the two terms to use in my thesis.  This is where my thinking is currently taking me.

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Design turn – ok yet again!

I am not inclined to do a search of the number of times I have written about the idea of the ‘design turn’.  It is now over 7 years since I first encountered the term in Ray Ison’s book ‘Systems Practice’.  The book is even in a second edition now and still I ‘re-learn’ about my understanding of design turn when I am prompted to reflect on it.

The latest insight has come not from considering the phrase ‘design turn’ as a whole but making a connection with another context where the word ‘turn’ is used.

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Change again…

I have been thinking a lot about change recently.  I have got this muddled mess in my head about it.  But as I sat down to write this blog, I realised I have been here before…

30/10/10 – one of my first ever blogs – The nature of change

12/11/10 – not long after Changing practice

27/12/10 – Worldviews and theories of change

14/3/11 – Managing systemic change

I think my latest quest perhaps has more to do with ‘managing’ change, rather than change per se.  I think it was in B822 Creativity, innovation and change that the following approaches to change were laid out: Continue reading

My Research as an ‘event’ in a longer stream of inquiry

My last post set me off on a stream of thought in relation to what I am doing in my research – is it inductive? is it deductive? is it emic? is it etic?  I’ve started to realise that it is best to think of these pairs in terms of dualities, rather than dualisms. Through the research, there is an interplay.  But also I realised that my Research Project (with a big R and big P) does not stand alone – it is located in a wider stream of inquiry and it’s location in time impacts on what it is and how I relate to it. Continue reading

If systems thinking is the answer, what is the question?

May seem a little odd asking this question now, but it strikes me that this is part of that ongoing quest to ‘market’ systems thinking – as per previous posts on the Elevator pitch issue.

But it struck me recently that it is possible – and helpful – to apply the thinking that Ison (2010, 187) uses in relation to the idea of managing….. what is the system to which doing X is the answer (the how)? Continue reading

Ethics and my research

(T847, Block 1, Activity 9)

The first thing that crops up in my mind when I think about ethics is the material I covered as part of juggling the B-ball in Tu812.  This drew on von Foerster to describe ethical action as acting in a way that opens up – rather than closes down – possibilities for others. Continue reading

Ideas for my research project

(T847, Block One, Activity 1)

The quest for this activity is to identify particular ideas, concepts, theories, arguments, propositions, techniques, tools, case studies – in fact any material – that I have found particularly interesting in my studies to date.  An odd question because if I did not find all of it interesting I would not have got here.  Nonetheless, what is particularly engaging my interest right now?

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Design

In my last post, I touched on my emerging interest in the concept of design and touched back on the notion of the design turn that I covered in TU812 Managing systemic change.  Since then I’ve been mulling this over and still have a number of browser tabs open in relation to the short diversionary inquiry I took into ‘design’. Continue reading