32. Organizational Education
Symposium
The Power of Uncertainty - Condition, Practice or Potential for Organizational Democracy? Analyzing Intended Openings in European Institutional Settings
Chair: Susanne Maria Weber (Philipps-Universität Marburg)
Discussant: Pauliina Jääskeläinen (University of Lapland)
Uncertainty can be understood as an organizational practice of control, dealing with uncertainy in “high reliability organizations”, as Weick & Sutcliffe (2001) put it – and to learn how to manage the unexpected. Moreover, uncertainty can be understood not only as a condition or a mode of organizing, but as an epistemological and ontological foundation of our times. As Dewey’s notion of uncertainty (1929) is explicitly linked to a call for democratizing societies as well as (self-)organizing and democratizing organizations in society (1927/2012), it is a relevant foundation for organizational democratization understood as democracy as becoming.
Starting with experience is core for Dewey – which involves the experience of existential uncertainty (Dewey 1964; 1969) the symposium is interested in the question, how to organize aesthetic experience, embodied transformation and democracy as becoming. Creative democracy in organizing can still be seen as a “task before us”, as Dewey (1991) puts it.
So how does a positive relation to uncertainty contribute to conceptualizing alternative strategies of organizing democracy-as-becoming? How can integrative and democratic creative (Follett 1923; 1924) education support organizational democratization? What is the role of listening, relationality, embodiment and aesthetic transformation?
The European Horizon 2020 project “AECED” – Transforming Education for Democracy through Aesthetic and Embodied Learning, Responsive Pedagogies and Democracy-as-becoming” is exploring the relation between aesthetic and embodied learning, responsive pedagogies and democracy as becoming. It connects to different institutional contexts in educational fields and different European countries.
Based on its Participatory Action Research (PAR) strategy (Bryman 2012), the project with six national partners works with a democracy-as-becoming approach to support individual and collective learning, organizational democratization and epistemic transformation.
Based on an innovative aesthetic and embodied pedagogical framework, project has established associated frameworks and guides to pedagogical practice, that support responsive pedagogies for education for democracy and democracy as becoming. How do the different projects relate to partners in collaboration, how does collaboration happen in the diagnosis of a problem and in the development of a solution?
The case studies operate within complex institutional settings and different stakeholders of different layers of institutionalized power. How does contexts like the municipality in Lisbon, Portugal, the GOOD network of NGOs in Croatia, the ministry of education in Latvia, the Multi-Academy Trust in England, or a commoning social movement relate to the vision of organizational democracy and democracy as becoming? What are the uncertainties in reaching out and relating to them, what are the challenges of democratizing and what are the strategies of uncertainty to be found here? Will partners try to frame democratization as a need of qualification in times of a VUCA world? Will they argue for controlling uncertainty by specific perspectives on mindful education as a functional claim? Will they transform and open up in and “into the open” themselves? And in which way will such institutionalized settings allow for de-institutionalization, for de-hierarchization, for de-alienation – and democratization- as-becoming?
The symposium is interested in the dynamics established (Basit 2010) in this participatory research settings and the (power-)dynamics in cocreating change in practice (Kemmis & McTaggart 2014).
From this exploratory journey, we will relate and reflect the potentials of theorizing organizational, institutional, embodied and discursive dynamics of “democracy-as-(de)-institutionalizing-becoming”, in the sense, that normalized, societally and instititutionally established regimes of power and knowledge become experienced, reflected upon and questioned – and in this sense “enlightened” – maybe into a Foucauldian “not to be governed like this” (Weber & Maurer 2006).
ReferencesBennett, Nathan; Lemoine, G. James (2014): What VUCA Really Means for You. Harvard Business Review. Nr. 92, 1/2
Dewey, J. (1927). The Public and Its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry. Edited and with an Introduction by Melvin L. Rogers. (2012). Published by: Penn State University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/j.ctt7v1gh.
Dewey, J. (1929): The Quest for Certainty. A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action (Gifford Lectures 1929) New York. Putnam.
Dewey, J. (1964). Demokratie und Erziehung: Eine Einleitung in die philosophische Pädagogik. Münster: Westermann.
Dewey, J. (1969). The ethics of democracy. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The early works, 1882-1898. Volume 1. 1882-1888 (pp. 227-249). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Original work published 1888).
Dewey, J. (1991). Creative democracy- the task before us. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The later works, 1925-1953. Volume 14: 1939-1941 (pp. 224-230). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Original work published 1939).
Follett, M. P. (1924/2013). Creative experience. Longmans, Green and company.
Follett, M. P. (1925/2013). The Giving of Orders, in Metcalf, H. C., & Urwick, L. (2004). Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett. Routledge, pp. 50-70.
Göhlich, M. et al (2016): Research Memorandum Organizational Education. Studia Paedagogica, 23(2), 205–215. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330957539_Research_Memorandum_Organizational_Education
Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2001). Managing the unexpected: Assuring high performance in an age of complexity. Jossey-Bass.
Presentations of the Symposium
Uncertainty in Nurturing and Researching Democracy-as-becoming: Challenges Impacting the Dimensions of Holistic Democracy and Implications for Understanding Uncertainties and PAR
Philip Woods (University of Hertfordshire, UK), Karen Mpamhanga (University of Hertfordshire, UK), Suzanne Culshaw (University of Hertfordshire, UK), Helen Payne (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
The purpose of this paper is to explore uncertainty as a feature of democracy-as-becoming and the implications for nurturing and researching democracy-as-becoming, based on our work as partners in AECED – a 3-year research project funded by Horizon Europe/UKRI with the purpose of enhancing and transforming aesthetic and embodied learning for democracy, conducted through 19 cases in six countries using participatory action research (PAR). We (the UK partner) are conducting cases in professional learning and secondary education.
For the project, the principles of democracy-as-becoming are defined as the dimensions of holistic democracy: power sharing, transforming dialogue, holistic learning and relational well-being (Woods 2021). Democracy-as-becoming is, as Montesquieu described democratic equality, “a possibility in need of nurturing care” (Dallmayr 2017: 6). Such nurturing care can lead to democratic relations that activate discovery and freshness of seeing, possibilities for change and creativity, and an experiencing of the passion of the possible (Docherty 2006; see also Woods et al 2023). Yet democracy can also bring great disappointments and uncertainties that pervade the aesthetic and embodied experience of democratic relations.
The paper explores the ways in which democracy-as-becoming is subject to uncertainties. It examines challenges that affect the dimensions of democracy-as-becoming and shape uncertainties – challenges such as the ‘complexity conundrum’ in which volatility and complexity create perpetual uncertainty and ambiguity (Varney 2024: 41); dissonances between, on the one hand, democracy and, on the other hand, conflicting organisational rationalities and endemic power inequalities (Woods 2011, Woods 2019); the need for “unlearning certain mindsets, dispositions and behaviours” that are barriers to democratic relations and discourses (Nanwani 2024: 95); and the limitation of viewing social practices, such as leadership, solely in terms of actions rather than as embodied, relational phenomena (Payne and Jääskeläinen 2024).
The purpose is not to discover how to eliminate uncertainties, as this is impossible. Rather, it is to understand better the nature of uncertainties distinctive to democracy-as-becoming, what we can learn about democracy-as-becoming by embracing (being with) uncertainty and how we might explore the ways in which participants and researchers in PAR experience uncertainty. The paper will pay particular attention to the value of arts-based and embodied methods of research and reflection in helping to embrace uncertainty through surfacing complexities and fostering flexibility, shared curiosity, transparency and openness to the knowledge and experience of all (Culshaw 2023). We will draw on our experiences of participatory data generation and reflection in the UK cases.
References:
Culshaw, S. (2023) Using arts-based and embodied methods to research leadership in education, in Woods et al (2023a).
Dallmayr, F. (2017) Democracy to Come, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nanwani,S. K. (2024) Teacher Discourses, in O’Hair et al (2024)
O’Hair, M. J., Woods, P. A. & O’Hair, D. (Eds.) (2024) Communication and Education: Promoting Peace and Democracy in Times of Crisis and Conflict, Wiley-Blackwell.
Payne, H. & Jääskeläinen, P. (2023) Embodied leadership: a perspective on reciprocal body movement, in Woods et al (2023a).
Varney, S. (2024) The Dynamic Patterning of Peace and Democracy, in O’Hair et al (2024)
Woods, P. A. (2011) Transforming Education Policy, Sage.
Woods, P. A. (2019) School organisation: Authority, status and love as an integrative pow¬er. In M. Connolly, et al (Eds.), International Handbook on school organization. Sage.
Woods, P. A. (2021) Democratic Leadership, in R. Papa (ed), [Oxford] Encyclopaedia of Educational Administration, Oxford University Press.
Woods, P. A., Roberts, A., Tian, M. & Youngs, H. (Eds.) (2023a) Handbook on leadership in education, Elgar.
Woods, P. A., Culshaw, S., Smith, K., Jarvis, J., Payne, H. & Roberts, A. (2023b) Nurturing Change, Professional Development in Education, 49:4, 600-619.
Arts-based and Embodied Learning for Experiencing Democracy-as-Becoming and Navigating through Uncertainty
Karine Oganisjana (Riga Technical University), Natalja Lace (Riga Technical University), Rolands Ozols (Riga Technical University)
This paper analyses some of the findings of the participatory action research (PAR) conducted within the Horizon Europe project AECED “Transforming Education for Democracy through Aesthetic and Embodied Learning, Responsive Pedagogies and Democracy-as-becoming” in three secondary schools of Latvia. The PAR is designed to enable experiencing democracy-as-becoming by embedding the drama sketch learning method into pedagogical practice and to study the individual and collective growth of all its participants. Addressing schools as learning organisations, we initiate multi-level collaboration among the school headmasters, teachers, students, external experts, researchers and schools (OECD, 2016) to achieve sustainable improvements in the democratization of schools. This is a complex task in today’s unstable world including educational systems where uncertainty has become an inescapable feature of it.
Hasinoff and Mandzuk suggest that traditional scientific principles can no longer be relied on to manage complex problems. Instead, they offer sensemaking as an approach best to navigate the dilemmas that arise in complex adaptive systems like education institutions in uncertainty (Hasinoff & Mandzuk, 2018). Some scholars consider sensemaking a cognitive process (Starbuck & Milliken, 1988). However, it is also argued that sensemaking is a social process (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014) or a social psychological process (Hasinoff & Mandzuk, 2018) because of individuals’ being embedded in a socio-material context.
From the perspective of the Horizon Europe project AECED, we could interpret sensemaking in uncertainty as a more complex process that is based not only on cognitive and affective but also on the embodied side of human living, learning and interaction. Studies on body-mind connection reveal the inevitable role embodiment plays as a source and means for knowing, thinking, understanding, experiencing emotions, feeling, learning, and wellbeing (Payne, 2019). Our previous research showed that arts-based and embodied learning promotes democratic leadership (Woods, 2021) facilitating power sharing, holistic learning, relational wellbeing and transformative dialogue among the participants of the collaborative processes of collage-creation (Woods et al., 2021) and drama (Oganisjana et al., 2021). This phenomenon is explained by the opening of the participants of creative processes to each other, to the situation they find themselves in and to the problems to be solved with enhanced levels of mutual trust, self-confidence and willingness to co-think, co-understand, co-work and co-create. Thus, arts-based and embodied learning not only creates a ground for experiencing democracy as a process of becoming but also assists learners and pedagogues in collective sensemaking and navigating through uncertain and challenging situations.
References:
1. Hasinoff, S. & Mandzuk, D. (2018). Navigating Uncertainty: Sensemaking for Educational Leaders. Boston: Brill.
2. Maitlis, S., & Christianson, M. (2014). Sensemaking in organisations: Taking stock and moving forward. The Academy of Management Annals, 8(1), 57-125.
3. OECD. (2016). What makes a school a learning organisation? A guide for policy makers, school leaders and teachers. OECD Better Policies for Better Lives. https://www.oecd.org/education/school/school-learning-organisation.pdf
4. Oganisjana, K., Steina, A., & Ozols, R. (2021). Action Research Trials (Arts) – Evaluation Report. Latvia. ENABLES. University of Hertfordshire. https://www.herts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/340437/4.B.2_Drama-and-improvisation_ARTs-report.pdf
5. Starbuck, W.H., & Milliken, F. J. (1988). Executives; perceptual filters: Whay they notice and how they make sense. In D. C. Hambrick (Ed.), The Executive Effect: Concepts and Methods for Studying Top Managers (pp. 35–65). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
6. Payne, H. (2019). Thought Piece: Embodiment, learning and wellbeing. LINK, 4(1), University of Hertfordshire. https://www.herts.ac.uk/link/volume-4,-issue-1/embodiment,-learning-and-wellbeing
7. Woods, P. A. (2021) Democratic Leadership, in R. Papa (ed), [Oxford] Encyclopaedia of Educational Administration, Oxford University Press.
8. Woods, P. A., Culshaw, S., Smith, K., Jarvis, J., Payne, H. and Roberts, A. (2021) Nurturing Change: Processes and outcomes of workshops using collage and gesture to foster aesthetic qualities and capabilities for distributed leadership, Professional Development in Education.
Decision-Making In Virtual Classrooms: A Case For Organizational Democracy In Teacher Education For Democracy?
Claudia Neves (Universidade Aberta, Portugal), Juliana Gazzinelli de Oliveira (Universidade Aberta, Portugal), Marta Abelha (Universidade Aberta, Portugal), Ana Patrícia Almeida (Universidade Aberta, Portugal)
Organizational democracy in education emphasizes participatory decision-making processes, involving teachers, students, and other stakeholders in shaping educational policies and practices. In teacher education, organizational democracy involves decision-making that empower them to contribute to the design and improvement of educational programs. This concept underscores the importance of co creating with teachers and educators to foster democratic values and equip them with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to promote democratic principles within students and learning community. This approach fits into the ongoing discussion about education and the common good, questioning how education itself can be understood as “common” and as a promoter of common goods (Bollier, 2018; Velicu & Garcia -Lopez, 2020). Analyzing organizational democracy involves examining various dimensions to understand how democratic principles are embedded within the organizational structure and culture. The AECED project aims to develop a prototype of a pedagogical framework and guides to practice that encourages the development of activities based on arts-based embodied methods to provide experiences of democracy-as-becoming. The Portuguese case will carry out 4 of the case studies of the project based on the development of an online training course for teachers and educators who, using a Participatory Action-Research (PAR) methodology (Cornish, et al. 2023), will test the framework and guide in early years, primary and vocational education. In this paper we will present a set of data relating to the initial findings on the perceptions of teachers and educators that participated in the online course about the organizational transformation before the implementation and development of the activities, based on the pedagogical framework and guides of AECED project. Our aim was to identify perceptions about the organizational transformation on the following dimensions: transformative dialogue, power sharing, holistic learning, relational well-being, collaborative decision-making, shared leadership, innovation, and Creativity; Conflict Resolution and Inclusivity and Diversity. By examining these dimensions, researchers and organizations can gain insights into organizational democracy and identify areas for improvement or refinement.
References:
Bollier, D. (2018). The Social Artist - on The commons - Patenting - Enclosure - Power. (J. Clark, Entrevistador) Obtido de https://ccmj.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/The-Commons-David-Bollier-2018.pdf
Cornish, F., Breton, N., Moreno-Tabarez, U. et al. (2023). Participatory action research. Nat Rev Methods Primers 3, 34 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-023-00214-1 Etherington, K. (2004). Becoming a Reflexive Researcher.
Cornish, F., Breton, N., Moreno-Tabarez, U. et al. (2023). Participatory action research. Nat Rev Methods Primers 3, 34 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43586-023-00214-1 Etherington, K. (2004). Becoming a Reflexive Researcher.
Fleetwood-Smith, R., Tischler, V. & Robson, D. (2022) Using creative, sensory and embodied research methods when working with people with dementia: a method story, Arts & Health, 14:3, 263-279, DOI: 10.1080/17533015.2021.1974064
Katzman, E. (2015). Embodied Reflexivity: Knowledge and the Body in Professional Practice. 10.1007/978-3-319-00140-1_10.
Kelly, M. & de Vries-Erich, J. & Helmich, E. & Dornan, T.& King, N. (2017). Embodied Reflexivity in Qualitative Analysis: A Role for Selfies. 10.17169/fqs-18.2.2701.
Velicu, I., & Garcia-Lopez, G. (2018). Thinking the Commons through Ostrom and Butler: Boundness and Vulnerability. Theory, Culture and Society, 35 (6), 55-73. doi:10.1177/0263276418757315
Social Togetherness, Peer-Governance & Care -Economy: The Pattern Language of Commoning – contributing to a three fold notion of organizational democratization
Susanne Maria Weber (Philipps-Universität Marburg)
Within a world of multiple crisis and uncertainties, present critiques of modern institutions like the school and the university question inherent epistemes of education, still belonging to an ‘industrial age’. Claiming to move ‘beyond’ such dysfunctional rationalities (Ball & Collet-Sabé 2021), Commoning is regarded as a potential toward organizational democratization (Collet-Sabé & Ball 2022:12). Commoning refers to a threefold notion of (organizational) democracy. Adressing social togetherness, peer governance and care-economy, it refers to an onto-epistemological potential, which may support transforming our given institutions (like schools, universities and others) towards the Common Good.
With it´s alternative imaginary of alternative patterns of organizing, Commoning and Commoning Education suspends, neutralizes and inverts the given onto-epistemology. Suggested by the commoning activists Helfrich and Bollier (2020), this potentials of “co-producing and commoning a different episteme” (Collet-Sabé & Ball 2022) for organizational education materializes and methodizes in the Pattern Language of Commoning (PLC), developed by Silke Helfrich.
Based on the experiences of more than 400 interviewees from social movement organizations, the PLC card deck condenses into 33 patterns, which each include illustrations, problem questions, short descriptions, examples, and connection patterns. Patterns in general can be understood as a tool that promote life and a free, fair, and sustainable world. Containing proven experiential knowledge, patterns describe the essence of successful solutions to problems that may occur in comparable contexts. The complex interplay between context, problem, and solution is critical; thus, these three elements are never isolated from each other (Helfrich & Bollier 2020).
Offering a new frame of reference “among people and between people and the world” (Helfrich & Bollier, 2020, 78), the PLC has been created in order to facilitate patterns of problem solving (cf. Leitner 2015, 33) to promote ethical and process- and relationship-oriented attitudes and stances (cf. Helfrich & Petzold 2021). Suggesting a “best practice” to use, the patterns have a hypothetical character (cf. Alexander & Ishikawa et al 1995).
From an organizational education perspective, the PLC may contribute to the learning in, of, and between organizations (cf. Göhlich et al 2018; Weber 2020). In which ways does PLC in the practice of PLC card deck users contribute to ‘re-inventing’ existing organizations (Laloux 2015)? In order to learn more about the empirical use of this new praxis of organizing, the paper will present the empirical findings of an online survey realized with card deck users of the PLC in the german speaking world.
References:
Alexander, C.; Ishikawa, S., Silverstein, M., Jacobson, M., Fiksfahl-King, I.; Angel, S. (1995): Eine Muster-Sprache. A Pattern Language. Städte, Gebäude, Konstruktion. Wien: Löcker Verlag.
Ball, S. J. & Collet-Sabé, J. (2021): Against School. an epistemological critique Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. 1 July 2021. DOI:10.1080/01596306.2021.1947780 Corpus ID: 237777989
Castoriadis, Cornelius (1975). Gesellschaft als imaginäre Institution. Entwurf einer politischen Philosophie, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Collet-Sabé, J. & Ball, S. J. (2022): Beyond School. The challenge of co-producing and commoning a different episteme for education. In: Journal of Education Policy. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02680939.2022.2157890
Foucault, M. (1981): Archäologie des Wissens. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Göhlich, M.; Novotný, P.: Revsbæk, L.; Schröer, A.; Weber, S. M.; Yi, B. J. (2018): Research Memorandum Organizational Education. In: Studia Paedagogica. 23 (2), pp. 205–215.
Helfrich, S. &. Bollier, D. (2020): Frei, Fair & Lebendig. Bielefeld: transcript.
Helfrich, S. &. Petzold, J. (2021): Commoning oder wie Transformation gelingt. Auftakt einer Mustersprache. Neudenau/Eberswalde.
Leitner, H. (2015): Mit Mustern arbeiten. In: S. Helfrich, D. Bollier & Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung (Eds.): Die Welt der Commons. Bielefeld: transcript, 27-35.
Laloux, F. (2015): Reinventing Organizations. München: Vahlen Verlag.
