Making meaning:Knowledge creation, learning and

documentation

Julia Ekong

Humidtropics capacity development workshop,Nairobi, 29 April – 2 May 2014 http://humidtropics.cgiar.org/

Case Study Questions• Which dimensions of a complex agricultural problem (biophysical,

technological, socio-cultural, economic, institutional, political) do they address?

• Who are the key actors/stakeholders, what are their roles in the platform and how did they interact?

• Are there multiple levels of interaction, (local, district, national, international) did this contributed to the success of the platform?

• What are key factors/interventions that have promoted innovation?

• What have been the key changes over time (dynamics of change)?

• What challenges faced by stakeholders, and how these were (or were not) overcome?

• How were knowledge flows and learning enabled?

Networks and Organisations

Advantage of working through networks/platforms

• Networks evolve in response to the complex realities in which they operate in

• Free flowing exchange of information, experience and knowledge among participants with a shared commitment

Innovation

• Meaningful Innovation is fundamentally about changing institutional/social relationships and developing more effective ways of learning (Innovation Africa)

• Innovation is not about diffusion of knowledge, but about co-creation of knowledge at the point of action” (Rukuni, 2013)

Facilitating Innovation

“The art of facilitating the transfer of knowledge, skills and/or attitude to people who will use what they learn to change/improve their behavior/ performance.”

Knowledge Pyramid

WISDOM

KNOWLEDGE

INFORMATION

DATA CONTEXT

MEANING/LEARNING

INSIGHT

Knowledge is…

responsive capacity

* Note knowledge is rarely uncontested

Positivism

• ‘‘hard’’ science, sets up hypotheses and tests them with repeatable and quantifiable experiments.

• ‘Hard’ scientists trained to believe that the world they experience has an independent reality which they are discovering in their experiments.

• knowledge is independent of context and separate from the knower, hence technologies built on scientific principles will work independent from the people who use them.

• Technology that works under a certain set of agro-ecological and economic conditions can be transferred to a similar area, so long as the technology hardware (its physical manifestation) and software (instructions on how to replicate and use it) are faithfully reproduced.

• The social characteristics of the people adopting, and the way the technology is introduced, do not really matter.

• Knowledge is independent of context and therefore can be passively received ‘as is’ and ‘mapped on’ to a learner’s brain

Constructivism• Learning process is an active one where the

learner ‘constructs’ knowledge by fitting new information into his or her existing ways of seeing the world.

• This construction process is social, part of understanding new phenomena is undertaken as a group through negotiation.

• Technical innovation is a learning process and hence is also a social process .

• The role of a platform facilitator is to foster a ‘social construction’ process.

• The legitimisation of new knowledge is tied to its use, how well it serves peoples’ purposes in the real world.

Making Meaning of the

Change process

The Reflection Process

Act

Reflect

Genaralise

Plan

Single Loop Learning

• Single-loop learning takes place when thinking and action are modified in accordance with the differences between expected outcomes and obtained outcomes.

• It assumes that problems and their remedies are close to each other.

• In single-loop learning small changes are made to improve existing practices, procedures or rules.

• How can we do things better? without necessarily challenging their underlying beliefs and assumptions.

Double Loop Learning

• Double-loop learning takes place when assumptions or policies behind initial expectations are questioned and modified.

• Central question: ‘Are we doing the right things?’, and in so doing, they gain insights into why a solution works or does not work.

• This shift requires an understanding of context or of points of view.

• In this way, platforms learn how to learn.

FAN Approach Four Frameworks

Spiral of Initiatives

initial idea

inspiration

planning

development

realisation

dissemination

embedding

ConnectionBarriersKnowledgeInterventions

Stakeholder Analysis

Questions on Stakeholders• Who needs to be there at this stage of

the process?• Who is there?• What is their motivation• What knowledge and expertise do they

bring to the platform?• Who is not there, who we would like to

have on board? • Why are they not there?• What steps need to be undertaken to

get them on board?

Circle of Coherence

Co-creation of

Knowledge

Similarities

Differences

WE ME

exchangedialogue

challengestructure

fleeing

fightingfreezing

conforming

The Circle of Coherence

Focus on Healthy interaction and providing space for knowledge creation and learning

•Does the network generate energy or not?

•What pattern requires most attention?

•What was done to restore connection, or raise the level of coherence?

•What interventions are appropriate?

Triangle of Change

Group Work the role of platform facilitators in Co-Creation of Knowledge

• As platform facilitators how have you or would you enable the co-creation of knowledge?

• How do you/who capture(s) the knowledge?

• How do you or will you use this knowledge?

Report back on how you will implement this at action site level