From the NY Times

!

NY Times, July 31, 2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/science/31prof.html?ex=1343620800&en=b63e24b50a3a687f&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink\\

Title: In Games, an Insight Into the Rules of Evolution

... When biologists speak of cooperation, they speak more broadly than the rest of us. Cooperation is what happens when someone or something gets a benefit because someone or something else pays a cost. The benefit can take many forms, like money or reproductive success. A friend takes off work to pick you up from the hospital. A sterile worker bee tends to eggs in a hive. Even the cells in the human body cooperate. Rather than reproducing as fast as it can, each cell respects the needs of the body, helping to form the heart, the lungs or other vital organs. Even the genes in a genome cooperate, to bring an organism to life.

In recent papers, Dr. Nowak has argued that cooperation is one of the three basic principles of evolution. The other two are mutation and selection. On their own, mutation and selection can transform a species, giving rise to new traits like limbs and eyes. But cooperation is essential for life to evolve to a new level of organization. Single-celled protozoa had to cooperate to give rise to the first multicellular animals. Humans had to cooperate for complex societies to emerge.

“We see this principle everywhere in evolution where interesting things are happening,” Dr. Nowak said ...

... As Dr. Nowak developed this neighborhood model, he realized it would help him study human cooperation. “The reality is that I’m much more likely to interact with my friends, and they’re much more likely to interact with their friends,” Dr. Nowak said. “So it’s more like a network.”

Dr. Nowak and his colleagues found that when they put players into a network, the Prisoner’s Dilemma played out differently. Tight clusters of cooperators emerge, and defectors elsewhere in the network are not able to undermine their altruism. “Even if outside our network there are cheaters, we still help each other a lot,” Dr. Nowak said. That is not to say that cooperation always emerges. Dr. Nowak identified the conditions when it can arise with a simple equation: B/C>K. That is, cooperation will emerge if the benefit-to-cost (B/C) ratio of cooperation is greater than the average number of neighbors (K).

“It’s the simplest possible thing you could have expected, and it’s completely amazing,” he said.

Working at different levels

The current obsession (seemingly greater in the US than the UK - but this is based on a very small sample) with testing, standards and scores severely limits the work that can be done as part of the AIE programme. As well as instability, there is the pressure for conformity - to justify the funding, people want safe processes and outcomes - good quality art work, inspiration, a performance that moves people, young people becoming so good they can turn professional, every child in the school taking part (not left behind), experience of a range of art forms - but it seems to me that this is missing the essential point.

The arts in education provide a huge range of possibilities - in the UK there is great talk about personalising the curriculum -building the curriculum around the individual, - a bespoke service, rather than the individual fitting it to an existing structure - off the peg. The pragmatic truth and possibilities probably lie somewhere in the middle, at best. The arts offer great possibilities for matching provision to pupils' wants, needs and interests. however, for this to be made a reality, the status quo, the paradigm in which we work, needs to be changed - and this will not happen entirely revolutionary but it may do evolutionary with a bit of revolution. This may be the time for it.

There is a movement d0eveloping and gaining ground, which is to bring in a greater pupil centred curriculum, served by subjects / standards but not driven by them. This a central part of the UK educational landscape and is increasingly being discussed across the world. This overcomes the entrenched discussions about arts for arts' sake / arts as an instrument for improvement elsewhere - the arts are not the point, the learner is! Mixing and matching curriculum provision is the point - to meet the needs and aspirations of the learner, to open up possibilities and uncover new horizons. And what kind of practice is needed for this to happen?

Firstly it needs to be wider than the arts - the one thing that young people need is to be ready for the uncertain future that is changing at a pace that is unpredictable - literally. Ken Robinson and Eric Booth say it - the versatile / flexible / creative mind set is what is needed. The arts have a huge role to play in this - creativity is the centre to this - not training in skills - the skills serve the creativity, not the other way around.

Secondly, teacher artists have to share their thinking as well as their practice.

Thirdly, external partners and internal school partners have to go into the partnerships as genuine partners - equal, learners, exploring, coaching and sharing throughout the programme - planning / practice and reflection. A programme that simply brings in expertise, however good, is likely to be a limited programme.

Fourthly, the work is not for primarily the pupils - it is for the adults - to make a sustained difference to practice in schools, it has to be centred around professional development. If the end of a programme results in good work for the children with no integrated change to the thinking of the adults (teachers and external partners) then we have missed the most important trick.

Fifthly, this new profession that is emerging needs organising or the fantastic resource that is being developed in the US and UK will dissipate. Over the past 5 years, the UK government has directly spent £100 million on artists going into schools (through the Creative Partnerships programme) - this has stimulated demand and supply and yet, there is no central organizing of this brilliant network of people from across the arts - either on pay rates, terms and conditions, insurance, professional development, accreditation or recognition, etc. - not to mention the education departments of the hundreds of supported arts organisations, museums, galleries and archives. Please see http://www.culture.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/CFF917D1-D11F-4352-9B77-C1728BF24744/0/Nurture_sections.pdf p.51 (the full report is worth reading, the UK Government has responded to it and there is currently a Government sponsored committee looking at how it can make it a reality) for some more thoughts about partnership.

If we can work with our own boundaries - at individual, local, regional and national levels to influence, explain, promote and advocate to a broad range of people, - including parents, public an press we will make a difference. If we can work together - within and across local, regional, state and national boundaries we will make a bigger difference.

We want the public to want this kind of work, either because it is essential - THE key ingredient for young people to become the adults of tomorrow - or because it it sexy - if AIE were to be perceived as the educational equivalent of a BMW or an Ipod, the upward pressure would have a huge impact.

And if that didn't do it for you ...

From an email I received yesterday from Amy Chase Gulden, quoting someone else's reference to "issues people have with Backward Planning ... to what degree can/should we determine where we will end up?"

Thoughts?

The Questions We Posed

The final segment of our Next Practice workshop revolved around the following questions, inspired by Peter Kruse's work. We gathered tons of answers, and I'll try to compile and share some of them as soon as I can. Maybe the questions would also be a good starting point for our Blog discussion?

1. How empowered do you feel to influence change in your practice (your area of arts and/or education activity)? Why?

2. What's the likelihood of success of changes you would pursue? If there's not much likelihood, what obstacles stand in your way?

3. What areas of your practice (your arts and/or education activity) would you most like to change?

Next Practice Graphics Page

& Furthermore

& Furthermore (From MH, N-S, TSL at ESP Summer Seminar 2007)

We take part in daily, civilized cultural rituals which, though they are primarily unconscious, provide stability.
Peter Kruse: “Culture is the sum of the self-evident.” (The “It’s just how we do things around here” phenomenon.)
A first step: Make transparent the hidden rules, irritate them, and replace them. (This is where a neutral, facilitating consultant comes in handy.) (Or a culturally insensitive fictional character, such as Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat.)


Only in instability do systems become innovative and begin to seek new patterns of order.
Do try this at home: 1) Increase tolerance of instability in collaborators, 2) Destabilize patterns and habits through targeted interventions (Break the established rules! Think Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc.!),
3) Create structures and principles to support general, autodynamic pattern change.



An example: . . .
The 9-Dot Puzzle . . . Task: To connect these 9 dots with 4 lines – without
. . . lifting the pencil. You have to literally think “outside the box.”

Some people are more able to do this than others. They have more cognitive flexibility, more imagination, are easier to influence – but they’re not so good with routine, optimizing, quality-control, etc.
Kruse: In any business you need the optimizers but also the crazies.


How to Use Network Intelligence in Steering Instability & Change: Kruse suggests something along the lines of the stock market principle: Autodynamic, circular causality (activity creates potential & potential attracts activity; inactivity decreases potential …) in the “uncontrolled interaction of a network.”
1) Gather data from participants (your experts) using a few “seed questions,” 2) Develop input in a structure which, like the stock market, allows participants to follow the impact of their own activity, as well as the group dynamic, and to respond in real time.
What you want to do is: Start up a process whereby participants can find their own solutions in self-determined development paths.

ESP 2007 Workshop Background: The Overview

START HERE: The Overview (From MH, N-S, TSL Workshop at ESP Summer Seminar 2007)

Today’s world of cell phones, Blogs and interactive TV offers a constantly increasing variety of instant connections
– and can lead to disorienting complexity. The best tool for responding to this complex environment, according to researcher Peter Kruse, is right inside our heads. The human brain is a self-organizing network, always creating new internal states of order, constructing its own reality out of what could be a disabling amount of input . . .

Scientists used to describe the brain as a kind of computer, rationally processing input in the cerebral cortex to produce intended results. Recent research shows, however, that we really make the decisions that control our actions elsewhere, in the limbic system, based on intuitive, suggestible, emotional criteria.

In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy counters the idea of history as the result of the intentional acts of great men with
the concept of a “sum of human wills.” Another way to express this might be the total of intuitive, limbic-system decisions we think we choose and control, and which we try to rationalize after the fact.

Product catalogs are studied much more often after purchases than before. We rationalize our intuitive decisions. Advertisers and marketing firms exploit this reality, using provocation, emotional involvement and repetition to change consumer behavior.

In the brain it is the interaction between cells which creates intelligence. Every cell contributes, but the result is
more than the sum of its parts. Such interaction networks are the best answer to complex dynamics because they themselves have such dynamics. Considering the immense – and increasing – complexity of the input, it’s a wonder our brains can cope at all. But we don’t become psychotic precisely because we are irrational . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In this workshop, we will explore the possibility of using network intelligence to create
a culture of change in arts education collaborations, modeled after the functions of the brain.

According to Kruse, there are two kinds of learning: 1) optimizing existing patterns (& avoiding mistakes), aka the Best Practice model, and 2) learning new patterns (& accepting mistakes), or what Kruse calls “Next Practice.” PLEASE SEE IMAGE 1: From the Orthodox Scissor-Kick to the Fosbury Flop
. . . . . . . . Consider the bee and the fly. Trapped in an upended bottle, the bee will keep on
banging against the glass, trying to head for light. The fly will try every option and quickly escape.

There’s a process of letting go – of reminding myself that instability is the rule, and the best response
is not to fight for stability, for “risk management,” but to maximize – through network intelligence – our collective ability to steer change. PLEASE SEE IMAGES 2 & 3: Star Systems & Omelets

Pattern change requires a phase of instability, which is something for which we are genetically predisposed to have varying degrees of tolerance. PLEASE SEE IMAGES 4 & 5: Multi-Stable Images . . . . . . Okay, now go ahead and SEE IMAGE 6: Ball in Hill & Valley Landscape, too. . . . . . . . Kruse describes the “conscious creation of instability” – a culture of change – as prerequisite to development, growth, and learning.

In applying these concepts to business, Kruse suggests a very straightforward procedure: 1) Find agreement on basic standards,
2) Provide for an unobstructed flow of information with maximum transparency, 3) Establish binding values and rules: a company identity, 4) Create room to maneuver, for open-minded thinking, 5) Trust in the creativity of your staff, 6) Find a strategic balance of network stability and instability, and 7) Unleash the right people and the right ideas in a free exchange.

It’s a process, passing through many stabilizing and destabilizing phases, increasing in complexity and dynamics . . . PLEASE SEE IMAGE 7: The Upward Spiral Thing . . . from Individual Intelligence (highly decentralized) to the Transparent Organization (centralized), to Team Intelligence, to the Learning Organization, to Network Intelligence.

Timothy Wilson, Steven Pinker, and Malcolm Gladwell have described the powerful unconscious workings of the brain, and the
immense potential effects of even minimal input. Kruse refers to fractal geometry, in which iterations (minimal movements which, by repetition, create large-scale change) lead to complex, self-ordered, “autodynamic” patterns.

When these unconscious patterns are made visible and conscious (through disturbance of existing patterns or habits, provocations, rule-breaking, etc.), they set the stage for the creation of new, adapted – and adapting – modes.
PLEASE SEE IMAGES 8 & 9 . . . Each individual choice may be unpredictable, but taken together they add up to alternative modes which influence subsequent choices. Like in a stream: water creates a path, and the path directs the water . . . . .

ESP Workshop Invitation

INVITATION (From Mike Halverson, Nysheva-Starr & T. Scott Lilly's ESP Summer Seminar 2007 Workshop)

In this workshop, we draw together ideas from many sources and do everything we can to let the ideas speak for themselves. We will be asking you -- and ourselves -- as participants to make something like Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith,” leaving behind the known, the predictable, and the simple and diving into a cloud of complexity. It is our hope that, by making this leap, we can all become better prepared to respond to instability, complexity and change.
In planning, we put it this way for ourselves:


Going over a cliff is going to happen in life, every now and then.

So let’s try going off a cliff on purpose.

Then: What did we get out of it, and how can we make use of the experience?

Welcome!

This week's ESP Summer Seminar 2007 brought many of us together around themes of compexity, change, and instability. This Blog is intended as a forum for tossing some of these ideas around and seeing what sticks. I would like to propose, then, that we agree on at least one fundamental concept: Change as a constant factor in our AIE work. If we keep in mind that "A + B might equal C, but could also end up equalling D or E or Q, depending on complex and unpredictable forces over which we may or may not have any control," we'll not only maintain our humility, collaborative dynamics, and relevance to an unstable environment, we'll also have a lot of fun.