The Death Of Expertise I am (or at least think I am) an expert. Not on everything, but in a particular area of human knowledge, specifically social science and public policy. When I say something on those subjects, I expect that my opinion holds more weight than that of most other people. I never thought those were particularly controversial statements. As it turns out, they’re plenty controversial. Today, any assertion of expertise produces an explosion of anger from certain quarters of the American public, who immediately complain that such claims are nothing more than fallacious “appeals to authority,” sure signs of dreadful “elitism,” and an obvious effort to use credentials to stifle the dialogue required by a “real” democracy. But democracy, as I wrote in an essay about C.S. What’s going on here? What has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live. This is a very bad thing. Worse, it’s dangerous. How conversation became exhausting
Magic and Mystery, Chaos and Complexity Paradox My dictionary says a paradox is a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement even if it is well founded. In life there are many things that appear absurd and contradictory that are in fact real and true. These paradoxes mean we live in a world of mystery where there is always something new to learn and experience. Tonight I will talk about some of those paradoxes and how they might help us understand the world we live in. The first paradox is that we have two competing needs in life beyond our needs for mere survival. The second need we have is to be accepted by other people. So, one dancing partner is our need to belong; to feel accepted and connected. There is no unity without sacrifice. The other dancing partner is our need to be a unique individual. Just as dancers need to be balanced with one another. The extremes of only co-operating or only competing do not work. When we are out of balance we cause harm to ourselves and the people around us. . Zen Buddhism teaches us.
Lessons Learned -- Why the Failure of Systems Thinking Should Inform the Future of Design Thinking "You never learn by doing something right ‘cause you already know how to do it. You only learn from making mistakes and correcting them." Russell Ackoff Design and "design thinking" is gaining recognition as an important integrative concept in management practice and education. But it will fail to have a lasting impact, unless we learn from the mistakes of earlier, related ideas. For instance, "system thinking", which shares many of the conceptual foundations of "design thinking", promised to be a powerful guide to management practice, but it has never achieved the success its proponents hoped for. Systems thinking, as written about and practiced by Russell Ackoff, C. I have been an enthusiastic student and teacher of systems thinking for almost three decades. Systems thinking started with an impulse that insights from Gestalt psychology and biology might be useful in understanding and affecting complex organizational and social problems. What is the alternative?
Why Are American Colleges Obsessed With 'Leadership'? - Tara Isabella Burton Earlier this month, more than 700,000 students submitted the Common Application for college admissions. They sent along academic transcripts and SAT scores, along with attestations of athletic or artistic success and—largely uniform—bodies of evidence speaking to more nebulously-defined characteristics: qualities like—to quote the Harvard admissions website—“maturity, character, leadership, self-confidence, warmth of personality, sense of humor, energy, concern for others and grace under pressure.” Why are American colleges so interested in leadership? On the Harvard admissions website quoted above, leadership is listed third: just after two more self-evident qualities. So too the Yale website, which quotes former Yale president Kingman Brewster's assessment that “We have to make the hunchy judgment as to whether or not with Yale’s help the candidate is likely to be a leader in whatever he [or she] ends up doing.” But such an assumption is hardly universal.
Metacognition: The Gift That Keeps Giving Editor's note: This post is co-authored by Marcus Conyers who, with Donna Wilson, is co-developer of the M.S. and Ed.S. Brain-Based Teaching degree programs at Nova Southeastern University. They have written several books, including Five Big Ideas for Effective Teaching: Connecting Mind, Brain, and Education Research to Classroom Practice. Students who succeed academically often rely on being able to think effectively and independently in order to take charge of their learning. These students have mastered fundamental but crucial skills such as keeping their workspace organized, completing tasks on schedule, making a plan for learning, monitoring their learning path, and recognizing when it might be useful to change course. Many teachers we know enjoy teaching students how to wield one of the most powerful thinking tools: metacognition, or the ability to think about your thoughts with the aim of improving learning. Metacognition in the Brain How to Teach Students to Be More Metacognitive
5 ways 'systems thinking' can jumpstart action From climate change and deforestation to collapsing fisheries, species extinction, and poisons in food and water, our society is unsustainable and getting worse fast. Many advocate that overcoming these problems requires the development of systems thinking. We've long known that we live on a finite "spaceship Earth" in which "there is no away" and "everything is connected to everything else." The challenge lies in moving from slogans about systems to meaningful methods to understand complexity, facilitate individual and organizational learning, and catalyze the changes needed to create a sustainable society in which all can thrive. Here's how the world operates as a system -- and how businesses can respond effectively to the challenges we face. The world as a system Systems thinking helps us understand the structure and dynamics of the complex ways in which we live, from organizational change to climate change, from physiology to financial markets. System characteristics 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Drawings by Mathew Borrett: Room Series Mathew Borrett's "Room Series" is very reminiscent of M. C. Escher's drawings of impossible, mind-bending architectural spaces. Borrett's drawings creating outlandish, strangely displaced structures forming a dream-driven world of nightmares and fantasies that have an array of details to draw you in and out of the various rooms, exploring their relationships and potential narratives. The Problem with the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom Hierarchy - David Weinberger by David Weinberger | 9:00 AM February 2, 2010 The data-information-knowledge-wisdom hierarchy seemed like a really great idea when it was first proposed. But its rapid acceptance was in fact a sign of how worried we were about the real value of the information systems we had built at such great expense. What looks like a logical progression is actually a desperate cry for help. The DIKW hierarchy (as it came to be known) was brought to prominence by Russell Ackoff in his address accepting the presidency of the International Society for General Systems Research in 1989. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Those lines come from the poem “The Rock” by T.S. The DIKW sequence made immediate sense because it extends what every Computer Science 101 class learns: information is a refinement of mere data. But, the info-to-knowledge move is far more problematic than the data-to-info one. So, what is “knowledge” in the DIKW pyramid? And humbug.
Systems Thinking by HainesCentre.com Approaching Business with Systems Thinking Businesses promote and sell products and services, which includes solutions to a problem or benefit of a product. In a lot of businesses, expertise is an key capability that leads to the ability to provide optimum service. That is why some companies create functional teams within their corporate structure to ensure that expert service is provided. The team of workers should be strategically placed so that their expertise can be appropriately utilized. Why You Should Embrace Systems Thinking When a business uses a systems thinking approach to doing business, it makes the system more efficient and cost-effective. Systems thinking combined with human interaction with customers is exemplary of a wide range of things working efficiently for the same goal. Working together for a common goal is pretty much what systems thinking is about.
Colleges Guide Low-Income Students From Getting In To Graduating hide captionPresident Obama wants to see more low-income students enroll in college, but actually graduating is becoming a priority. iStockphoto President Obama wants to see more low-income students enroll in college, but actually graduating is becoming a priority. Bryn Mawr College is located just outside Philadelphia, but every year the school goes looking for students in Boston. Bryn Mawr typically admits 10 low-income students from the Boston area each year, providing them with financial assistance and introducing them to one another in hopes that they will form a network and support each other as they navigate their college years. Bryn Mawr doesn't stop in Boston. "We're particularly interested in reaching women who might not otherwise attend a place like Bryn Mawr," says Kim Cassidy, the college's president. Cassidy is among roughly 150 college presidents and officials from states, industry and nonprofits who will be attending a daylong meeting at the White House on Thursday.
DIKW Pyramid The DIKW Pyramid, also known variously as the "DIKW Hierarchy", "Wisdom Hierarchy", the "Knowledge Hierarchy", the "Information Hierarchy", and the "Knowledge Pyramid",[1] refers loosely to a class of models[2] for representing purported structural and/or functional relationships between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. "Typically information is defined in terms of data, knowledge in terms of information, and wisdom in terms of knowledge".[1] History[edit] "The presentation of the relationships among data, information, knowledge, and sometimes wisdom in a hierarchical arrangement has been part of the language of information science for many years. Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom[edit] In the same year as Ackoff presented his address, information scientist Anthony Debons and colleagues introduced an extended hierarchy, with "events", "symbols", and "rules and formulations" tiers ahead of data.[7][16] Data, Information, Knowledge[edit] Description[edit] Data[edit] Structural vs.
5 Principles of Systems Thinking for a Changing Healthcare Ecosystem | MDDI Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry News Products and Suppliers Posted in Medical Device Assembly by Chris Wiltz on November 8, 2013 Adopting a systems thinking approach to product development can help medical device manufacturers embrace new opportunities in a rapidly changing marketplace. Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Prescription, has shown that failure results from being slow to react and embrace new opportunities in the market in a way that addresses the disruptive impact of rapid changes in technology. The healthcare industry ecosystem is changing –with potentially radical implications for your products. The distinctions between medical devices and information systems are blurring, with devices increasingly managing more data and information systems increasingly connecting directly with medical devices. Value is shifting from standalone devices and information systems to integrated, interoperable information exchange capable solutions that directly contribute to better care outcomes. 1.) 2.) 3.) 4.)
Why positive encouragement works better than criticism, according to science 6.2K Flares Filament.io 6.2K Flares × I’ve written about positivity before, in terms of cultivating a positive outlook for yourself. What I want to write about today is cultivating positivity in your workplace, particularly if you’re a leader. By focusing on positive interactions with your employees and encouraging an upbeat emotional state as often as possible, you’ll be more likely to have a happy, productive and efficient team. How positivity affects our brains To start with, let’s look at how positive and negative emotions work in our brains, and what we can learn from that. Positive emotions generally work in an opposite way to negative emotions. That is why exercising often makes us happier, especially if we choose to go for a demanding work-out. In the face of negative events, our brains struggle to perform at their highest—or even normal—capacity. This shift in control to the low road favors automatic habits, as the amygdala draws on knee-jerk responses to save us. 1 1. 2. 3.