Learning history in an open system: Creating histories for sustainable futures

Convening learning in the face of unprecedented problems

Churchman (1967) drew attention to a special class of complex problems that combine economic, environmental and political issues – he called them ‘wicked problems’. Rittel (1972) popularised the term in the context of problems of social policy, an arena in which a purely scientific–rational approach cannot be applied because of the lack of a clear problem definition and differing perspectives of stakeholders. Roth and Senge (1996), building on Ackoff (1974), unpack the complexity of such problems for management scholars to bring attention to the types of learning challenges that combine high levels of socio-behavioural and technical–dynamic complexity. Sociotechnical transition theorists (Rip and Kemp, 1998) explain maladaptive yet dynamic stability with the language of the ‘regime’, suggesting that the routines of technical, consumer, scientific, political and industrial systems interlock to create stasis, or ‘lock-in’ (Unruh, 2000).

Stasis is accompanied by challenges of conceptual framing. The framing of climate change, for example, has largely been seen as a technical problem that needs to be addressed politically (Giddens, 2011). Even the economic impacts (Stern, 2006) have only belatedly been articulated. The link between human behaviour and climate change responses remain largely under-explored. Recent publications are only just beginning to signify an appreciation of the psychological and sociological dimensions to suggest that beyond economics, an understanding of human behaviour is essential to any meaningful climate change response (Urry, 2011; Wijkman and Rockström, 2011). Current framings of climate change are psychologically hard to grasp, however. Finding a way to communicate meaningfully about the issue and to convey the moral imperative it presents require further understanding of these behavioural and psychosocial factors (Pidgeon and Fischhoff, 2011; Seabright, 2010).

Rather than presuming that a more complete understanding of the issues must be built and shared before some form of coordinated action can take place across broad groupings, our work follows a more pragmatic and experimental approach. We acknowledge that across all levels of society, people are taking actions towards sustainability in parallel with and more often overtaking elite level political debates on what these actions might be. Different groups become committed and identified with different approaches. Experimental pluralism emerges. Debates become polarised and lay opinion joins with expert evidence as equally valid bases for decision-making, as legitimacy is eclipsed (Habermas, 1984).

Our work presents a systematic process for gathering and connecting the social learning that is already underway, so that it may be further leveraged. The learning we describe extends beyond organisations and communities to what we refer to as the ‘open system’ and yet places importance on the individual and small group level of agency. The ‘open system’ we propose is akin to the organisational field (Lewin, 1951; Scott, 1991), that is, a field of action that is structured by the network of relationships between multiple constituent organisations, agencies and individuals to arrive at an inter-organisational unit of analysis. These constituents interact on issues or activities of concern, although not necessarily with congruent or common technologies or interests (Wooten and Hoffman, 2008). However, unlike the organisational field that is shaped by institutional forces (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991), the open system is unbounded and recursively extending. It crosses institutional and sectoral boundaries with inter-organisational pathways that are not so much shaped by the concept of a sector or institution as by the relationships between communities of actors, wherever and whenever these might form. Our work develops and builds on the view that to address deep systems change, an accelerated, experience-based, ad hoc yet systematic learning needs to occur in such an open system. This work takes the form of a learning history.

Learning history refers to a practice of action research that brings the history of a project or initiative to life by charting the experiences of those involved in it (Bradbury and Mainemelis, 2001; Roth, 1996a, 1996b; Roth and Bradbury, 2008, 2010; Roth and Kleiner, 1998). By inviting participants to reflect on their experiences, and by then documenting that as a text, learning is purposely stimulated not only for those originally involved but also for third parties who can carry the work to a new context. To date, those third parties have been drawn largely from what we call the ‘bounded system’ – by which we imply the organisation bounded by the network of relationships from which the original project arose. We see this as problematic when we realise the challenge of scale implied by the complexity of sustainability challenges such as climate change.

Here, we propose a methodological development, the open system learning history, that has been developed in the context of a large-scale action research project, Lowcarbonworks.

Difficulties of scale with action research

Action research is an orientation of research that is well adapted to the complex issues we have described. The integrative ‘action turn’ of contemporary action research (Reason and Bradbury, 2008) builds on the linguistic turn (Rorty, 1967 [1992]). Where the latter insisted on bringing multiple perspectives to define problems, the ‘action turn’ works not just to redefine problems but also to redesign systems for social change. To do this, action researchers place primacy on the creation of practical knowledge that responds to issues of pressing concern with direct relevance to people in the conduct of their everyday lives. Action research engages participants and stakeholders as ‘co-researchers’, often through cycles of action and reflection, so that all involved can contribute both to the questions that will be addressed and to the actions that inform the research.

With its practical and participative emphasis, action research responds well to questions of relevance that are debated in more mainstream management research. Indeed, it ties in well with MacIntosh et al.’s (2012) recent argument there for a dialogic perspective in which knowledge and practice are co-constitutive between researcher and practitioner. In turn, questions of validity are opened up as the action researchers’ subjectivity and participants’ motivations are actively attended to as part of the research process. Validity becomes a matter of bringing awareness to assumptions and choices being made and is tantamount to being mindful of a range of choice points for quality (Bradbury-Huang, 2013; Bradbury and Reason, 2001; Reason, 2006). These include the concerns highlighted by conventional, qualitative researchers (e.g. Lather, 1993) and goes beyond them to consider the primacy of the practical, a sine qua non of the actionability of good action research (Bradbury-Huang, 2010).

Contemporary action research efforts, in an era of unsustainability, must increasingly confront scale (Gustavsen, 2003a). Since the early work of Kurt Lewin (1951), action research projects have typically been local and often intensely focused on small groups of actors who articulate responses to the convening problem. When seeking to grapple with issues of high complexity, action researchers are challenged to bring local responses to a much broader context and, related, to engender meaningful connectivity by which we mean joining up local responses (Gustavsen et al., 2008).

Gustavsen (2003b) calls action researchers to consider how to ‘transcend the single case without losing the action element along the road’ (p. 95) and suggests that scaled-up action research needs to be understood not so much in terms of individual projects, but as a series of distributed events that are in the service of creating and supporting social movements (Gustavsen, 2003a). There has been some willing debate within the action research community in response (Dick, 2003; Eikeland, 2003; Greenwood, 2002). Increasingly, examples ground this debate (Martin, 2006; Waddell, 2012) and mark the beginnings of practice-oriented theory building for large-scale action research. Here, we locate our adaptation of learning history as a route to scale that works by enrolling increasing numbers of actors in an amplifying and engaged process of conversation and, crucially, storytelling.

Scale is not a problem unique to action research, it is inherent in any qualitative ‘single case problem’ where non-generalisability results from the bounded set of actors involved in a local configuration (Numagami, 1998). What is unique is that action researchers think differently about what constitutes valid work, and thus, scale cannot simply be conceived in terms of ‘roll-out’ replication and generalizability, which are the validity measures of conventional (not action-oriented) research. For action researchers the uniqueness of human endeavour cannot be easily mechanized. Whilst best practices and principles can and are profitably shared within the action research community through peer review, conferences and professional networks, generalized conclusions are less readily claimed. We are suggesting that storytelling via the learning history is a way of preserving that uniqueness of local experiences while enabling these to be considered in a wider, scaled-up context.

Introducing Lowcarbonworks

The public funded Lowcarbonworks program ran from 2006 to 2009 and brought an action research team together with over a dozen UK industry, academic and public sector organisations. An assumption underlying the research was that achieving UK government targets of an 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 necessitated radical change. In turn, a much deeper understanding of the relationships between low-carbon technologies and the human systems in which they are embedded as they move together towards sociotechnical change was needed. Thus, the project set out to explore the psychological, social, economic and political factors that inhibit or enable the adoption of low-carbon technologies and practices. The project was ambitious. With scale at its heart, it was in tune with the spirit of creating knowledge in action by setting out to not only understand but also overcome the barriers to change. Several concurrent action inquiries were set in motion with industry, public sector and academic partners to explore the issues first hand.

One strand of Lowcarbonworks, which we will refer to as LocalGovPilot, was part of the doctoral work of the first author (Gearty 2008, 2009) whose context was the field of UK local government where a range of low-carbon initiatives involving different technologies and approaches were noted to have occurred over the previous decade. Upon entering the context, M.R.G. noticed that no mechanisms appeared to be in place to consider how learning from such initiatives might be joined up in the service of the common good they seemed to serve. This was limited by the fact that these initiatives were largely viewed in technical or economic terms. The social aspects involved in helping create such projects, the specific experiences of those involved and the relationships and alliances that helped them flourish (or not) had not been well formulated. This well of experiential knowledge lying beneath the well-honed technical and business case studies appeared untapped. Without a way to represent such knowledge, it seemed the potential for scale-up and learning was significantly limited. There was no narrative available to those who – interested or sceptical – wanted to engage with how local authorities were actually innovating to reduce carbon and were doing so in the absence, at that time, of binding targets. It was by exploring how learning from across these disparate initiatives might be joined that led to a consideration of learning history as a potential approach that might be developed at the inter-organisational level within LocalGovPilot.

The organisational learning history – a local process

Learning history was originally developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers in the early 1990s and was first deployed at a large US automobile manufacturer (Roth, 1996a; Roth and Kleiner, 1998; 2000). The intention was to find a way to chart the learning of a highly successful team in a way that could be communicated more widely within that organisation. Inspired by oral history, researchers set out to capture experiential knowledge by staying close to the stories of those involved (Roth and Kleiner, 1998). The process was, however, also conducted with research rigour and devised to meet the pragmatic aims of making that learning ultimately actionable. Roth and Bradbury (2008, 2010) suggest an action research process with a series of stages from planning through to interviewing, distillation, writing, validation and dissemination. Figure 1 shows these stages and the principle that this is conceived as a collaborative process. The resulting written text is a richly textured, ‘jointly told tale’ (Van Maanen, 1998) between insider protagonists and outsider researcher(s) (Bartunek and Louise, 1996). Generally, this is presented in two-column format (in homage to Chris Argyris et al. (1985) and Orlando Fals Borda (2001), both significant ‘fathers’ of the field of action research), whereby insider protagonists’ interview quotes on one side converse with research reflections and narration on the other (Bradbury and Mainemelis 2001; Roth 1996b; Roth and Bradbury 2008, 2010).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

Original approach to creating a learning history (where dotted lines indicate multiple insider/outsider researchers).

In this way, a learning history gets beyond the typical listing of best practice found in project reports and more into the ‘thinking, experimentation and arguments of those who have encountered the situation’ (Roth and Kleiner, 1998: 43). The written text highlights tacit, experiential knowledge (Nonaka, 1991) along with the more explicit facts of a project and opens up both for discussion. Knowledge is not intended to remain static but re-created in situ, and in new contexts, via a structured collective learning process.

Unlike a case study, although sometimes misleadingly dubbed as one, a learning history is ultimately a story, from Latin, storia meaning an ‘account, tale’, a term originally inseparable from ‘historia’ and always suggestive of a façade or fabrication. Whereas most formal reports prune away the lived experience of a project in order to get at generalisable, repeatable fact, learning history hones in on key events and foregrounds the protagonists’ experience. Roth and Kleiner (1998) already recognised the challenges of working with a ‘mythic imperative’ to create this history. The text is co-created between practitioner and historian, although it is the latter who often makes the choices in the telling and emphasis of that story. In asking ‘what keeps us honest?’ (p. 56), Roth and Kleiner suggest it is the cycling back to the original data and following what they call the ‘research imperative’ that checks out the ‘mythic assumptions’ of the story being told. The role of the learning historian is a demanding one, therefore, requiring a mix of storytelling, research and facilitation skills.

Learning history is conceived of primarily as a reflective and active learning process. The written history can best be understood as a learning vehicle rather than solely or primarily as an output. It is through the reflective processes involved in its creation and the subsequent working with it that the learning among stakeholders occurs.

Over the past two decades, learning histories have been created for different industry, public and third-sector settings. It has been particularly through the application of learning history to the specifics of sustainable development (Bradbury, 1998) and the relational practices within that (Shah, 2001) that learning history practice has been anchored in scholarly precedent (Bradbury and Mainemelis, 2000). In this way, learning history as an approach has come to be considered worthy of ‘serious consideration in the field’ of organisational writing and research (Amidon, 2007) and a fundamental of organisational development (Roth and Bradbury, 2008, 2010). The context for learning histories has predominantly been in organisations, and this has shaped its methodological development thus far. A number of impediments to scaling up that learning were the creative tension behind the innovations in the method that the next section outlines.

Learning history in an open system

Learning history in an open system refers in essence to connecting up collective learning and learning histories from multiple organisations, within a more spacious inter-organisational field and beyond to the open system. Figure 2 shows that whereas the original learning history focussed on producing one document, with rigour and often comprehensive research, the open system learning history is a process that incorporates the production of several lighter, less rigorous learning histories.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Learning history between multiple organisations in an open system.

For example, within LocalGovPilot, five such learning histories were created within the field of local government, and a further seven were subsequently created at the inter-sectoral level of Lowcarbonworks. These sets of related, yet hitherto unconnected, stories of low-carbon initiatives formed the basis for still wider learning to occur in the open system.

As shown in Figure 2, in an open system, the emphasis is as much on ‘working with’ as it is on creating ‘histories’. The characteristics of the open system learning history and how these compare to those of the bounded learning history are presented in Table 1.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Table contrasting the bounded with the open system learning history.

	Bounded learning history	Open system learning history
Learning history ‘process’
Steps	Linear, six-stage process	Iterative series of six-stage processes
Production phase	One – lengthy, rigorous and central	Several – shortened, provisional and intermediate
Validation and diffusion phase	De-emphasisedValidation can become passiveDiffusion often limited to a one-off event	Emphasised and iterative. Validation part of learning
		Diffusion is a series of participative, proactive ‘learning events’
Learning	Bounded: takes place within original project and related organisation(s)	Open: extends dynamically outwards across organizations as process develops
Knowledge transfer	Under-explored. Challenges at end stage can make this become dissemination	New knowledge cumulatively generated in new contexts via participative action research
Learning history ‘artefact’
Form of representation	Two-column formatted written document	Flexible, multi-vocal representation
		Oral and multimedia forms also possible
Content	Towards a complete history	Towards a provisional history
Place in process	Produced towards end of process	Produced mid-way
Role	Legacy	Catalytic
	Artefact supports continued learning after process completes	Along with other histories, supports cycles of further learning within process
Number produced	One written document	Many, taking varying forms
Learning history ‘practice’
Role of researcher	Outsider researcher mediating organisational learning	In-system researcher mediating and orchestrating learning within and between organisations
Research practices	Interviewing, analysing writing, planning, engaging and communicating	Interviewing, analysing storytelling, systems design, partnership development, opportunism, engaging and communicating
Validity	By cycling back to the research data and validatingThrough reflexivity	By cycling back to the data and cycling out to the system for feedback
		Practicing reflexivity with others

Table 1 highlights that in all aspects of process, form and practice, we are suggesting points of departure from the bounded learning history as illustrated by Lowcarbonworks and LocalGovPilot.

Points of departure from the ‘bounded’ to the ‘open system’ learning history

Form: from single text to multiple, flexible forms

The form of open system learning history ‘artefacts’ includes but now goes beyond text to embrace other oral, dramatic and digital forms. There is now a dual learning focus: the inward – where the history is reflected back to the context from where it came – and the outward – where the history is taken out to other organisations to stimulate discussion and learning elsewhere. Note how in Figure 2 the learning history straddles between the organisational and inter-organisational levels.

The inward and outward learning focuses are held in tension and affect research choices. While the inward focus might demand the complete story to be told and thus drives towards inclusivity of all involved, the outward focus demands instead that an engaging story is told, one that is not necessarily replete with every detail or each person’s perspective. This raises ethical questions, as we shall later discuss. It also changes the demand on the artefact’s form accordingly. If others who are unfamiliar with a project are to engage with a learning history of it, then a form that compels and invites in the distant outsider is required. While the scholarly rigour of the original two-column learning history format is not in question, its length, emphasis and presentation need to be rethought when considering its use outside of the originating organisational context from which it was created.

The result is that we have unleashed the learning history from the constraint of the two-column form to more of a Talmudic style commentary as popularised by post-structuralists (Derrida, 1967 [1997]) – one that is polyvocal and more engaging. Rather than prescribing a fixed presentational format, we suggest the open system learning history form follow a set of five key principles. These we articulate after the innovations that emerged in the context of action. Some reinforce key aspects of the original, and some are entirely new:

Present the authentic insider voice in written or oral form;

Present multiple perspectives in an open history, allowing and inviting contradiction;

Present using mixed lenses (e.g. analytic, factual, pictorial, theoretical etc.);

Present tailored to the audience of the system;

Present with consideration to the endurance/sustainability of the text/artefact.

How these principles are expressed is the researcher’s choice in the context of the aims and resources of the project at hand and following the view that quality action research is being aware of and transparent about the choices the researcher makes (Reason and Bradbury, 2001).

Principles 1 and 2 are re-statements and extensions of key principles of learning history as it was originally conceived. For example, where the authentic ‘insider voice’ is an essential facet of the original learning history (Roth and Kleiner, 1998), it has hitherto been represented only in written form. Here we suggest that oral performance or recorded or filmed voice are equally valid modes of presentation that open the form up to the oral traditions which originally inspired it. Similarly, for Principle 2, the original learning history researchers identified the presentation of multiple perspectives as a central tenet noting that it is often at the edges where different stories and perspectives meet that the most interesting learning opportunities arise (Bradbury and Mainemelis, 2001; Roth and Kleiner, 1998). With the lighter, open systems learning history, however, the provisionality of perspectives becomes more accentuated. Fewer insiders contribute to the history creation, and in general, more stakeholders are invited to discuss it. Provisionality proclaims its incompleteness while inviting in new perspectives.

Whereas the first two principles look at the representations of different insider voices, Principle 3 suggests that the researcher choose a range of different lenses through which he or she will present the history. For example, with two-column learning histories, researchers used a narrative, and a reflective lens through which to view the story. An analytical lens is also sometimes used where the research draws themes from across the history. Here, we propose greater flexibility for the researcher to choose other lenses that will result in a multilayered, engaging presentation. For example, a factual lens could intersperse technical or press information with the insider story, a pictorial lens could run visual images, a theoretical lens could create links from the presentation to theory and so on. These new principles liberate the learning historian to make choices of presentation that fit the context.

Principle 4 suggests choosing a form of presentation that is culturally appropriate for the intended audiences of the learning events. A form must be chosen that is engaging, yet realistic in terms of balancing energy in the research appropriately between production of the history and the learning it might stimulate more widely. Beyond the written form, researchers are called to explore forms of presentation such as drama and digital video depending on what best ‘speaks to’ those who are listening as well as what is possible for the research team in the time they have. Finally, Principle 5 suggests pragmatic consideration, as well, of the endurance and longevity of the history that is desired. Whether written, performed or presented orally or via digital media, an artefact will be captured to enable subsequent learning and work to occur. The form of that artefact needs to reflect the scope and reach intended for the history over time. The written document still remains important where the intention is to have an account that can easily be accessed in the future. Orally performed or more ad-hoc forms are equally valid when considered in relation to what organisational and inter-organisational learning the researcher is seeking to stimulate. The last two principles suggest the artistry and craft of learning that is enhanced in the open systems version. This is both a response to the digital age and a refinement that comes as the micro-processes of learning come to be better understood in the field of practice.

The form of learning histories on LocalGovPilot illustrates one way these principles can be applied. These written documents were relatively short and featured the perspectives of at most two or three people close to the project. The two-column format was replaced with a livelier layout. A core narrative drew on the voices of participants that ran in quotes alongside (Principle 1). Particular attention was paid to telling a story so as to engage wider audiences (Principle 4). Laid out around the core narrative were different perspectives on the story being presented: reflections from the researcher, photographs, press extracts as well as key themes and links to theory ran alongside. Thus, reflective, analytical, pictorial, factual and theoretical lenses were playing around the story (Principle 3). On Lowcarbonworks conventional research analysis played an important role. A thematic analysis was conducted across the five learning histories of the LocalGovPilot and across the further seven Lowcarbonworks histories identified as common themes – we termed them ingredients – that enable low-carbon initiatives to succeed (or to fail when absent). These are elaborated in (Gearty, 2009) and (Reason, Coleman et al, 2009). In learning events these ingredients were collaboratively explored alongside the stories. The resultant learning history product was an A5 booklet (see Figure 3), the aesthetic of which was found to be particularly engaging to almost all participants who received it.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 3.

The booklet form of learning history on LocalGovPilot.

The booklet style appealed, while the homemade style of how it was formatted seemed to communicate the provisional nature of what was in it and fitted well with the invitation to develop one’s own perspective (Principle 2). Within the culture of local government, it looked sufficiently like a report to be legitimate, while its layout and presentation were inviting in their difference (Principle 4). The reasons for having written histories featuring just a few of the stakeholders involved in the project were largely pragmatic (Principle 5) on this pilot. The histories needed to be written so they could travel and be used in new settings. However, to allow time to move on in the project to the crucial later stages, this writing could not be exhaustive. The histories were always pronounced to be drafts, and the implications of this in terms of validity and ethics will be discussed in the next section.

On the broader Lowcarbonworks, a different set of choices of form were made illustrating the points above are principles that open up choices rather than close them down. The final report of Lowcarbonworks in which a series of cross-sectoral learning histories were presented adopted a more professional-looking, designed presentational form. Figure 4 shows how the presentation of the LocalGovPilot history evolved.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 4.

The Lowcarbonworks presentational form of the same LocalGovPilot history.

The report was not the only output of Lowcarbonworks. The research team also produced a short film where they voiced their reflections on the project experience overall. And at the final project conference, the researchers presented a multi-voiced dramatisation of one of the learning histories. These developments of form, and the use of flexible multiple lenses that we propose, resonate with an emerging strand of scholarship in action research that looks to integrate the arts in conducting and communicating action research worldwide (Brydon-Miller et al., 2011). Recognising that standard forms of representation cannot surface the rich, oft-times suppressed aspects of experience it is towards arts-based experimentation that action researchers challenge themselves to go. Several researchers have experimented with drama, poetry and art knitted into imaginative forms of multimedia presentation to complement more standard approaches to communication. Seeley (2011), for example, has explored Romano’s (2000) ‘multigenre’ approach to presenting a personal history of an event in her life by juxtaposing journal writings, pictures and official reports. Our suggestion of layering multiple lenses are similar in wishing to do ‘justice to the non-linear, fragmented and multifaceted understandings of the ways we make sense of experience’ (p. 93).

Experiments in representation can be explored at learning events too. In a conference setting, Tulinius and Hølge-Hazelton (2011) cast aside tradition and used poetry, image and archetypal stories told from different points of view to evoke a difficult project process and inquire into it with co-researchers. They were keen to ‘open the can’ and ‘to facilitate a dialogic environment where we could unfold the complexity of our experiences and invite research peers to contribute to the analysis through their own lived research experiences’ (p. 43). The aims of these researchers are at one with our view that the learning historian’s first aim is to evoke in the audience a sense of ‘what it was like’, so that they can engage more readily with the complexity of it through their own experiences and to then work into learning together from there.

Learning and representation in the open system

Addressing wider systemic issues poses a challenge of scale and with that a challenge of human connectivity. What we are proposing is that stories of real-life experience can open up the possibility of engaging ever broader social networks. Through the telling and re-telling of these stories, disparate sites of learning express a level of learning at scale that involves individual, group and larger systems processes. This learning, we propose, is multiple and is neither homogenous nor confined to a distinct unit of analysis. However, some of the key ideas at play here can be situated within the decades and more discourse on learning which we link with emerging developments in representation to form our theoretical base.

First and foremost, the learning at the individual level we are suggesting is mediated by the narration of experience. We build on Kolb’s (1984; Kolb and Kolb, 2005) view of experiential learning as the iterative movement from concrete experience of the world, to reflective observation and conceptualisation that leads to new informed action and experimentation in the world. This is not a new idea. However, our suggestion is that ‘concrete experience’ is now at a step removed, being conveyed via the learning history narrative, and so how it is represented merits close attention. In the past decade, neuroscientists have shown that Kolb’s cycle has a biological basis where each part of the cycle maps to regions of the cerebral cortex that changes with learning (Zull, 2004). The implications are that humans are not only theoretically but also biologically wired to learn more completely when all brain regions are activated. Representations of knowledge that activate the sensory and pre-sensory region of concrete experience are vital; hence, the proposal is that imagery, narrative and any means of ‘evocation’ are the place to start the learning process. These biological insights recall the ideas of the American cognitive psychologist Bruner (1966) who, as far back as the 1960s, proposed integrating three modes of representation when presenting material to a learner: action-based (enactive), image-based (iconic) and language-based (symbolic). Some 40 years ahead of today’s neuroscience, he noted that when dealing with new material, starting with enactive and iconic representations should come first.

Questions of representation and how best to ‘evoke’ concrete experience in the service of learning have led us, in this article, to establish stronger links between learning history research and the emerging field of arts-based action research. Links to the field of organisational aesthetics might also fruitfully be explored. Here too, scholars are recognising the need to find more ‘sensorially complete’ (Warren, 2002) languages to represent what is beyond the analytic–rational ways that have predominantly shaped learning in the west. With the advent of new media, the possibilities to develop and work with imagery and representations of experience have significantly increased and correspond to our ‘visual culture’ (Pink, 2001). These, we suggest, are timely developments as they open up a realm of experiential learning rooted in indirect rather than direct encounter.

Moving from the individual level where learning is experientially based and personal to consider group processes, we set our definition of learning in the organisational realm as the transformation of experience through reflection that yields better more adaptive action (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Baker et al.’s (2005) more recent articulation suggests that the generative quality of a conversational space relates to the participants continually traversing a set of dialectics (e.g. apprehension–comprehension, individuality–relationality etc.) through which learning – organisational learning – emerges. The learning history process we suggest could be described as an orchestrated series of conversational spaces – that start with the telling of an individuals’ story in interview and culminates in a series of conversations about that story in learning events.

Our suggestion is that new forms of representation can deepen the potential for learning occurring in such spaces. With Reason (1999), we suggest that dialogue or conversation be seen also as permitting, indeed requiring, considerably more aesthetic components than is readily apparent in the conventional, analytic understanding of dialogue. Reason advises that grace and artistry are also necessary, and our reflections on emerging arts-based representational work suggest that this is becoming ever more possible. Here, we stress that all artistry serves only and ever as vehicles to enhance dialogue, itself the basis of learning.

More recently, inspired by the Lacanian insight into just how rich the individual’s capacity for learning is, Driver (2010) suggests that organisational learning, when fostered by authentic dialogue, reaches its most actionable outcome – far beyond ‘mere’ talk, dialogue – when it has plumbed the very being of participants’ aspirations and present sense of desperation. We have proposed that the learning history process works to engender such a dialogue by gathering people into the space of complex, real stories and allowing honest exchanges on the level of experience as well as of unknowing. We understand this, with Mazutis and Slawinski (2008), as the source of leadership which helps connects worlds (Swart et al., 2011) as communities of practice or enclaves (Friedman, 2011), large enough to act as ‘oases’ for change in an otherwise change-resistant field. Where we differ from these is the attention we pay to the connective properties of the ‘learning history’ itself and its catalytic potential as it moves from space to space.

Open systems’ learning: Learning towards scale

Our specific contribution here has been to conceptualise open systems’ learning as learning that integrates dialogue, narrative and artistry in a way appropriate to increasingly complex systems and issues. The learning we suggest is neither coordinated nor scalable in the sense of being replicable. Neither is it contained. One project alone cannot undertake to achieve system’s learning on any issue. Lowcarbonworks example shows that working up from project, to sector, to system takes a long time to develop. However, in addition to its thematic findings that built systemic understanding of low-carbon innovation in a conventional way, this project has now populated the field with over 12 human stories on that subject.

Thus, open systems learning history, we suggest, sets a direction of travel towards scaled learning. It does this by orchestrating sites and documents of learning and by creating potential connections between them. Our best example of this was the Lowcarbonworks final project conference. At this interactive learning event, over 80 participants active in the field of climate change research and policy in the United Kingdom came together and engaged with the Lowcarbonworks learning histories, working actively to draw learning relevant for their work. Thus, a connectivity of effort at the systems’ level was being achieved and diffusion had become participative. However, at the inter-sectoral level, there had only been time for one full cycle of learning and, mirroring challenges with learning history at the single-project level, energy and funding dissipated before the full benefit of this systemic learning history could be realised. In terms of scale, then, it was clear we had only arrived at the start. If anything, Lowcarbonworks served to demonstrate that for sustained learning to occur, an ongoing set of learning events and history gathering would be required.

Ultimately, scale relies on the stories – these are the carriers of experiential knowledge within the system, and the process we propose here relies on their ability to travel virally and, as it were, to speak for themselves. A good learning history will have a life of its own long after the project reports are written.

Lasting impacts of Lowcarbonworks?

We can, with stakeholder support, claim that the approach described demonstrated the potential to build systemic understanding of an issue and to do so in a fresh way. Narrative, analytical and participative approaches were combined to create a robust, valid basis for learning. Has Lowcarbonworks shown the potential to develop systemic learning about climate change in a lasting way? No single project, however well funded, could make such a direct claim. We turn instead to criteria for quality action research that consider longer term questions alongside the more immediate questions of impact and practical value. Two of Bradbury’s (2007) criteria for quality action research that assess (a) how well the work has been anchored in partnership and (b) how well the work has built infrastructure for the future are particularly relevant.

On Lowcarbonworks, there have been some reported systemic repercussions over time that indicate capabilities or partnerships built by the work. For example, one local authority stakeholder reported that a number of key decisions made within the authority regarding low-carbon developments were a direct result of alliances built among decision-makers when they participated in a series of learning history seminars as part of LocalGovPilot 2 years before (Gearty, 2009). Further repercussions suggest the project built methodological infrastructure for the gathering and telling of stories. A number of other learning history type research projects have appeared that acknowledge they have been inspired or informed by the Lowcarbonworks approach and presentation. One such example is Sussex Policy and Research Unit use of ‘innovation histories’ in a recent project to chart grass roots community sustainability initiatives in the United Kingdom. And there have been others.

Systemic repercussions can perhaps never be fully known – however, the ongoing interest in the Lowcarbonworks approach and its histories suggest at least an ongoing relevance and can be taken as a partial indicator that some enduring consequences from the work are possible.

Reflections on methodological avenues

The open system’s approach also gives rise to a new layer of methodological questions that have previously not applied in the original, ‘bounded’ learning history.

There is now a system’s design aspect to the work where the nesting and work at different levels of the system need to be carefully considered. How many learning events are possible and effective? How are they linked? What scope are we aiming for? While recognising that the system is now ‘open’, questions of boundary still persist. For instance, when or where might a history lose its resonance? How far can it travel?

Addressing wider systemic issues poses the challenge of scale and therefore a challenge of human connectivity and the limits and possibility of engaging ever broader social networks. To consider the big issues, further lines of action (and possibly other forms of) research need to explore more deeply connectivity of learning at the systems level. The open system learning history approach presented here only begins to look at the question of how to connect and embed practical learning in the field in a way that complements the traditional routes that support knowledge accumulation in the academy. Further exemplars of learning history research will not only help illustrate the many options for enacting the methodological principles we have outlined here but will also create instances that might help support this connectivity of learning.

Rethinking learning for sustainability: Creating ‘histories’ of sustainable futures

Learning to address issues like climate change is, to use a well-worn phrase, an ongoing process. The learning histories of this research charted the haphazard human experience of low-carbon innovation: the moments of doubt and revelation; the actions that were practical, experimental and subject to happenstance; the struggles and the friendships that are the texture of real life. The learning history in an open system approach offers the potential to open up these experiences and make them more widely accessible and to make possible connection and learning between previously disparate sites of effort. While we can argue theoretically how our method might allow learning to occur more widely, the hope is that the content of a growing portfolio of sustainability-related learning histories will chart, in human terms, the actions and experiences of those who are working in the field, addressing the sustainability crisis in different ways and learning as they go. Each new history that is created represents a further site of practical learning and collaborative action with the potential to illuminate the evolving storyline of how humanity is (or is not) learning to become more sustainable. The associated learning is not confined to the individual or organisational context, but results from reflecting individually and collectively on the lived experiences of those experiments. In this way, ‘histories’ become ever more current and relevant to the present. And it is through this accumulation that we ultimately see quality results at scale. The underlying proposition is that it is through dialogic reflection on past action that we learn to improvise our way into a desired but unknowable future. The histories we choose to create today help formulate a future that is more sustainable, and crucially, one that might seem possible in our shared imaginations of the present.