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Waking Climate Transformations: Undisciplined Knowledge with Ioan Fazey.

Hilary: I’m delighted that we’re getting a chance to catch up. You’re a busy Fella. You’ve been an inspiration to me since we met a year ago in Scotland. I was inspired by the Climate Transformations conference you hosted in Dundee and appreciated the paper you brought to light after the conference.  In that paper you argue that we must break the highly compartmentalized systems of knowledge production we’ve inherited.  You use the term “action oriented transformations research,” which of course I find great. This wordcloud telescopes some of the different terms from the community of people whose work shares a similar intention. So, Ioan, what’s holding your attention these days?

Ioan: Nice to be speaking to you again too. Yeah, lots of things holding my attention. I guess one of the things that is always in the back of my mind is how do we create the kinds of knowledge systems that will enable us to get to the big changes that we need in society? So we know there are big changes coming, whether we like it or not. Take climate change as an example. We know that if we don’t undergo some pretty significant rapid changes in society than we won’t be able to reduce the carbon emissions. The levels of  CO2 won’t be sustainable if we don’t manage how to do that. We’ll get transformations through the growing impacts that come from climate change. So we have less choice. So what has really been in the back of my mind is what is it about the way we do science, the way we do research and the way we engage with different knowledge forms that either enables us to help to address some of these challenges. Or hinders us.

Ioan: Around 90 percent of scholarly papers describe our problems. 8% describe solutions. leaving about 2% to get into the how  of putting solutions into practice. We need that to change.

Hilary: It seems absurd to me to be to point our intelligence at ever more beautiful descriptions of our problems  – which are important of course – but then leave so little thought to “what’s next.”  I’d love to see those percentages equalize. Imagine even 50% of our resources went to experiments in linking action and inquiry better.  So talk to me a little bit about the creative turn that’s needed.

Ioan: We often constrain the ability of the learners, the inquirers, whoever those might be, e.g., our students, clients so on, to be part of the solution. Knowledge systems are still very much didactic. An expert stands up and talks. I know that’s not always so, but generally it seems to me that we don’t emancipate the ability of those involved to learn and help solve issues they face.

Hilary: What are some of your own solutions to this as an educator?

Ioan: One of things I do with my students is that I get them to do change projects. So I tell them the beginning, you’ve got to go and change something, go form working groups and change something. So I had one group last year working to persuade the university to divest from fossil fuels. 

Hilary: That may well be a handy skill for when they graduate.

Ioan: And another I liked in which the students turned to change themselves. From within. They decided to support themselves to go vegan. So alongside that we could do other personal and reflexive work. It’s actually all is difficult because work in that they’re engaging with systemic change, but then I also get them to think very deeply reflexively about what’s going on for them.

Ioan: They write how they’re thinking about change and how they’re thinking about sustainability, so that’s quite interesting for them. So that’s the teaching side.

Hilary: So suddenly I feel an urge to channel Sir Isaac Newton right now. And he might say, with his great big wig, Ahem, Professor Fazey, what has becoming a vegan got to do with science?  How is trying to figure out how to be a even vegan related to understanding the mechanisms of the universe? Vegan, schmeegan.

Ioan: Nice question! One of the challenges that we have is that we continue to produce the kind of knowledge that we’ve always produced in the last 300 years. We’ve been entirely focused on knowledge production. And we we’d been really good at it not least because of the scientific method. Thank you Sir Isaac Newton. What we haven’t been so good at is producing wisdom. Wisdom requires good knowledge, but it also requires engagement. with the ethical issues and the value based issues around that. Often we can only learn the solution oriented things by also developing the wisdom and the personal knowledge about ourselves as well. So it’s very much to me connected.  It involves science but also requires other forms of knowledge. You have to get in and get your hands dirty. We were taught to be standing on the outside looking in.

Hilary We are all astounded by, humbled by the power of the scientific method. Its power unforunately has also become a domineering power which won’t allow other more responsive models into the knowledge creation eco system. It seems sometimes that this one model has become a kind of fundamentalist insistence.  I suspect Sir Isaac would be horrified.

Ioan: Science has created so much, so many benefits. But what we forget is that science also created all the problems that we are facing. Climate change is the product of the advanced society that we live in, which is itself the product of scientific and technological advances. So climate change is simply a symptom of this advance. So is obesity. So are the increasing mental health issues. And we can’t just address those sorts of things by throwing the same kinds of thinking at them. We need to be thinking differently, we need to be much more able to take into account the interconnections between things. Essentially to take more of a holistic approach.

Hilary What solutions are you seeing?

Ioan I’ll give you one example. So I’m currently working with an organization near New Orleans in the Hurricane Alley of the USA. I’m working with a fantastic NGO to respond to the estimate that 26,000 structures will be severely impacted by climate change. The Schools. Houses. The land itself is sinking. Plus there is sea level rise. This NGO is doing a fantastic job of convening different groups, communities and the governor’s office. Just even raising the question of what do we do about this is a big deal.

Hilary It’s not business as usual.  Of course being in the USA we saw Hurricane Katrina and how the impact of climate change exposed a level of racism that we have since come to know even more clearly.  That type of work puts you in the thick of seeing how “technical” solutions to Climate Change naturally run into social justice and community dynamics. The physics of climate change may be the easier thing to comprehend. Though science denial is now its own hurricane.  

Ioan The whole set of structures and systems that we have, the government systems, the systems in which planning operates, the way the education system works, well, we’re just not fit for purpose anymore. These kinds of new unsustainable conditions require that we find different ways of thinking, different ways of working.

Hilary: So while we don’t know what the answer is, in this work we find processes. I hear that in your efforts in Louisiana.  What else is interesting in that effort for you?

Ioan: We’re being forward looking. Evidence based approaches are great and they often come from very strong scientific methods and they have their place. But the problem with evidence based methods  is that it’s a bit like driving forward whilst looking through the rear view mirror. Things like climate change. They’re running towards us at an ever faster rate. We have to engage more with the future.  Creativity is needed. The arts are useful in unleashing that willingness to think differently and learn differently. Our efforts, however, are constrained by the very self referential systems that we’ve created to support things like science. What even counts are evidence, as learning. I know things are shifting, but they’re not shifting very fast at the moment.

Hilary: “Fit for purpose.” I like that term you use. I hear you say, tell if I got this wrong, that the institution called education is no longer fit for purpose. And so becoming more wisdom oriented rather than just knowledge production oriented is needed.  And you’ve given us two examples of how that works in your own life. So let’s broaden our mind about what is an educational institution. Let’s include community activists in that, like you’re working with in Louisiana. Let’s do this to  reimagine what would be “fit for purpose” for this challenging future that we’re living into. Assuming we want to do more than just have rich guys build survival shelters in the desert. Yep that’s the new thing among Silicon Valley millionaires. Why prepare for hurricanes, lets go live in a windowless bomb shelter.  There’s a  compelling non-future!

Ioan: Yeah. So that’s a challenge. I mean, there’s two questions in what you’re saying. What does it look like, this new knowledge system? And, then the other question is, how do we get there? And they’re quite intertwined.

Hilary: So take universities  – as a simple starting point for education – even if we’re thinking of it as much broader an issue, OK?

Ioan: The university is very much what we’d call a supply driven institution. We teach what the staff can teach, right? They’re not demand driven. The demand that I see from my students is ‘tell us how to solve the problems’ or ‘let us work out the solution.’ They specifically are not solely wanting to understand problems. Generally working with that demand is a problem for the usual university. There are some very interesting models of education that work around that would enable students to engage much more. And one is an example from Andrew Bell, a Scot, from St Andrew’s, who was working in the late 1700s. By the time of his death in 1830s, there were 12,000 schools applying his approach. Essentially in his school system he encouraged the older kids teach the younger kids.

Hilary: Sounds like they were doing something right. Sounds Vygotsky-esque in the sense that more advanced particioants help others. In other words there is a wealth of resources among students too.

Ioan: He realized the older kids were learning a lot as well. It was something like 12,000 schools using this method including in Scotland. So he developed a whole education system based older kids teaching younger kids.  Today we also need to find experiments to emancipate learning.

Hilary: What are other models and examples that catch your attention?

Ioan I’m thinking of the work of Prof Sugata Mitra, at Newcastle. Very interesting experiments in India where they put computers into slums and into rural communities and just left them there with a video recorder. Then researchers came back three months later and saw that one of the biggest constraints to learning for these kids was actually the presence of the teacher. The teacher starts to control what’s going on.

Hilary: Sobering.  As an educator I feel it’s a bit embarrassing even. Participatory ways of thinking about education are really important, but then the practice of giving up control may not be quite so easy to get to. And to turn the corner in our conversation. Let’s  consider the global community of scholars and practitioners interested in participatory learning. We’re,  inviting those people to come together  on March 8th 2019. The simple idea is that people can see each other, connect up. So I wonder, in such a circumstance, how could it be valuable to you to meet with these other people and connect up to do something more together that helps us realize a transformed way of enacting education and learning and knowledge creation?

Ioan: Yeah, I think that’s really important. We know there are lots of good examples of how to do things differently. What we’re not very good at yet is scaling this up. So the big question in my mind is how do we scale this up? How can we do more of what we’re doing?

Hilary: There’s different approaches to this notion of scaling I’d say. Small is also beautiful. One I find attractive is deep scaling, with connections among the experiments to piggyback and leapfrog.  I guess Granovetter’s network models impacted me years ago. And he influenced my understanding of the importance of “boundary dwellers”, those people who are marginal creatives like yourself, who begin to reimagine systems and do interesting things on the margins.  Now this is quite different from the mode of  say a Laureate University which is the biggest for profit university in the world. It’s publicly traded too. But who knows which is the  better model. But the point is to see new models. So I’m curious, what is your ideal model?

Ioan: Things that are changing around us like the digital technologies are bringing a very different future to bear. Some of the universities in the US are investing a lot of money in machine learning for doing things like marking essays. Some predict there will be fewer than a 100 universities left after technologies appropriate value in this marketplace.

Hilary: The fear of Artificial Intelligence for teachers and their unions are no doubt rising.  Is there a vision for how tech helps us here?

Ioan: Back to the  Andrew Bell model. You create a platform for teaching each other. Self organized, learning using technologies. You reach a million people rather than just a small number of people. Blockchain plays a role. So if you’ve got a change maker contributing to some of the teaching or learning with one group, they would get some value back from that as well. So that’s just a one sort of image or picture of a much wider scale set of things that could be put in place in the future.

Hilary: Knowledge creation agents are your average citizen. It’s not necessarily a professor. And now we have technologies coming online that can help with that connect-up. So reimagining the use of learning platforms that connect people up becomes important. That feels like a beautiful and useful image of connected up learning communities. I certainly want action research plus to be a part of that vision. So come to Chalmers!

Ioan: I’m definitely interested in coming. I’d be very curious to see the extent to which participants are also engaging in the questions about how do we get the system change for the future of humanity on this planet literally.

Hilary: I feel my enthusiasm rise with my anxiety! Let’s take a moment of quiet time to reflect on this conversation. What’s important, what feels important for orienting into your own future?

Ioan: Yeah, that’s a good question. We were all living in very busy world with lots of lots of things. And having this conversation has been a bit of a reflective space in a period of chaos that I’m currently in at work. I don’t get the chance to think about these sorts of things. So what this has done is it’s brought back into the forefront of my mind what I think is really important. So that’s really helpful.

Hilary: Well, very good. The president of the board of AR+ just said to me yesterday – our work is helping people to have conversations about transformation that lead to intelligent action. I hope we’ll continue those. Thank you Ioan.