The Learning History method is a useful tool for describing processes of change. If selected AgriSpin narratives were to be upgraded to Learning Histories, they could be used for training as well as teaching purposes.
Innovation processes do not fit into common project reports with objectives, deliverables and tick boxes for checking whether the project has produced what it promised to do. When you know the outcome beforehand, the results are not new.
As a consequence, innovation processes should be monitored and evaluated in a different way than production type projects. Reporting should feed the confidence of the enabling community that the resources are well spent, but also allow for describing the surprises, deviations and lessons learned. To that end, the learning history method is a useful tool as it excels in describing processes of change.
The Learning History Method
The method was developed by George Roth and Art Kleiner from MIT Boston, USA, to help large companies in their learning processes. Instead of the more common expert-recipe approach in which the expert observes, makes an analysis and tells the management what to do, they wanted the managers to go through a learning process themselves.
First, the managers should acknowledge what actually happened. The interviewers describe as accurately as possible the views of the major actors in the process in a narrative story, so that all those involved agree that this story reflects the most important facts of what has happened. If there are different views on the same events, this will be part of the story as well.
The second step is the analysis. Here the consultant uses his/her expertise to add explanations to the story. Why did it happen as it did? And what lessons can be learned? For doing so, (s)he uses theory, which should be made explicit.
There cannot be any disagreement about the narrative. Deviating views are facts that should be part of the narrative as well. The effect of such a narrative is that all actors involved feel taken seriously. This is a key condition for a joint learning process.
However, disagreement can be expected about the analysis, since actors usually use different theories. It is precisely the dialogue about the analysis that stimulates mutual learning, and improves the capacity of managers to respond to challenges.
In the Dutch experiment “Networks in Animal Husbandry (2004-2007)”, the Learning Histories became attractive reading material. It was so successful that the Ministry of Agriculture decided to upgrade the experiment into a subsidy regulation for innovation networks around bottom-up initiatives.
AgriSpin Proposes a New Project
The analyses that should be added to convert selected AgriSpin narratives into Learning Histories have only partly been made. The Science Group has made an analysis on aggregated data. However, the AgriSpin partners ran out of time for making the last effort needed to make attractive learning histories out of all the materials that have been collected and produced.
Therefore, the AgriSpin partners propose that a new project is started up. The goal of this project is to create an interactive website to generate and share stories that deepen the understanding of what matters in innovation processes at farm level.
Well written stories stimulate the reflection of readers on what is happening, in the story as well as in comparable situations in their own reality. Since observations and theory for analysis is clearly separated in a Learning History, readers are challenged to explore their own theory-in-use.
This makes Learning Histories especially valuable for educational purposes. Trainees and students can be asked to make their own analysis first on a given narrative, after which they read the analysis of the Learning History and search for similarities and differences. These differences fertilise the ground for dialogue and further study.
The interface starts by making a selection of Learning Histories from the AgriSpin project accessible to a larger public. Next, the public can add its own stories and enrich the dialogue.
Read More
Read the report and learn more about the Learning Histories of AgriSpin and the project proposal by the AgriSpin partners.
Leave A Comment