Look at it this way. The participant/observer toggle switch is a rudimentary form of double-loop learning. At least, it is an epistemological tool that is fairly easy to describe and helps one access second order processing.
I admit that in the breezy early days of reading Bateson and thinking about “deutero-learning” and recognizing “contexts of learning”, not just “learning”, it was fairly easy, and dismissive, to say that Argyris’ double-loop learning was another way to say the same thing.
Of course it is another cognitive tool of a similar sort to second-order learning or even Goffman’s Frame Analysis. The dismissive part comes in when you fail to USE THE TOOLS, because you think you understand them.
I have been going around today saying “this is a context for double-loop learning”. It seems to me that “mindful walking” could be a similar sort of tool. But the point is, if I am working with “double-loop learning” and I have Chris’ books and am reading the cases with the double column style of recording, well, I am letting him teach me, not Bateson, not Goffman. And his technique sheds a lot of light on my present.
His contexts are organizational and his “learners” are managers and teachers. I am a teacher too. I admit to having been stumped for years by problems that I now see are conflicts (cognitive dissonance) between my dreams of Model II environments and the realities of Model I theories in use.
I just want to say, however, that there are a lot of trade-offs and relational difficulties to be encountered in situations that are not institutionally defined as Model II and the participants would not be there unless they felt on safe ground of Model I organization. In other words, I do not find many people at all who want to initiate, to try something new, to take responsibility. If the moist space for Model II development is opened and let dry up, the effect on a whole situation is devastating. Only a determined policy of creating appropriate Model II choice situations and graceful ways of slipping back into Model I if required seems to work.
That is, if the success of the project matters. If it doesn’t matter if the project is carried out, then try Model II with beginners and see what happens. But if it is important that schedules be kept, persons contacted, arrangements be made, and if individuals entrusted with those jobs only want to do what they are told, not develop their position, then Model I it is. This is a depressing note to end this note on.
So I will end with Bootstraps. Bootstraps are cognitive acts of supreme self-reinforcement. Using the force and dynamism of a personal initiative, and gathering even a small amount of will to learn and try something different, the obstacle can be overcome. It is just a matter of some small switch somewhere, an interaction, an agreement, a success.
So don’t give up, even if it really seems hard going. Unless all of the sense of obstruction seems to be a kind of proof that change cannot be orchestrated and it is not our business to work with change. Hmmm. Why does that not seem to be a viable choice to me? But on the otherhand, a good case can be made for inner work being the most fruitful source of change. Hmmm. But then, that should lead to acts of understanding and consciousness in real presents that might bring positive (wholesome) change. VAW