ITEMS OF LEARNING

This week 9th semester Information Architecture students and I have been working on the relationship between 'presentation', 'practice' and 'perception'. I introduced Bateson's thesis that '...if we inflict a series of similar learning experiments on the same subject, we shall find that in each successive experiment the subject has a somewhat steeper proto-learning gradient, that he learns somewhat more rapidly. This progressive change in rate of proto-learning, we will call 'deutero-learning'. (Steps to an ecology of mind, 1972/2000, p. 167). I added that this explains Bateson's other thesis that '...Break the pattern which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality' (MInd and Nature, 1979/2002, p. 7) - Why? Because the pattern which connects the items of learning (= protolearning - thanks to Majken Kjærulff for clarifying that) is the deutorolearning, it is the habit of learning, which makes it possible to connect one instance to another, and create a rule. Hence the pattern of people, places, the things we do, the way we do them, should be kept stable for a certain case of learning. Scrum is an example: the morning meeting: standing in the same place, answering the same questions, provide a framework for understanding the differences, which makes a difference between last meeting and next meeting. So: Here's to rituals in teaching!