Socially Distributed Cognition as Narratives of Knowledge Acquisition

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Sean Park
TPS/Education Administration
OISE/UT
990957648

Paper submitted Monday, April 24, 2006
Dr. Paul Thompson
IHPST
Complexity in Contemporary Biology Course


Socially Distributed Cognition as Narratives of Knowledge Acquisition

I am fascinated with the insight honeybee expert Tom Seeley (1995) has into how honeybees make collective decisions. Consider the following:

When a hive of honeybees grows beyond its ability to be contained within its current nest site, the hive splits off and a swarm forms on a nearby tree branch. Unprotected from the elements and without a nest in which to make honey to sustain themselves, the bees will perish within a few days. The decision-making process for where to set up a permanent new nest is dependant on a strong set of diverse options because options are weighed relative to each other. Without a good range of options to choose from, the bees will potentially make a mistake and choose poor sites over good ones. Scouts are assigned to survey the environment and make yardstick measurements about the sites they come across and return to the swarm indicating to bees in their local proximity, the distance from, access to, and protection afforded by a potential nest site. Swarm bees may decide to either accept or reject a site communicated by a scout, but once they accept, they commit to the decision and begin ‘dancing’ at a higher frequency.

Relatively desirable options gain momentum in the swarm, and once enough critical support for a site has been reached (when enough bees are ‘dancing’ to push the swarm past a critical temperature threshold), the swarm moves en masse. Although each swarm bee has the autonomy and capacity to make a decision about whether or not they are willing to commit to an option, there is no one bee tallying up all the individual decisions. It can be thus be said that the selection of a particular nest site is a function of ‘collective intelligence’, emergent from the process of local communications between scouts and swarm bees. Once a subcritical to supracritical temperature shift has taken place, the global dance signals to each local bee that take-off is imminent.

Knowledge as Emergence

I introduce the honeybee swarm as a trigger and I will refer back to it on occasion as a metaphor to human interaction in the context of knowledge. Knowledge, in the context of the honeybees, can be thought of as the emergent nest site choice arising out of the collective decision making process. Metaphors have their limitations for they are not the thing or process itself. My purpose, however, will be an attempt to elucidate what I interpreted Gregory Bateson (1979) to call the “pattern which connects” (p. 8). His assertion, shared by many others, is that throughout nature, there are profound similarities in all aspects of life that speak to a universal process of self-organization and the ‘building’ of complexity through evolutionary processes. This elucidation, perhaps, is best framed as the sub-text to the more immediate questions I will address in this paper.

I spend time thinking about education and learning, from at least one perspective, as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). Notions of self-organization, adaptability at the ‘edge of chaos’, feedback, emergence, co-operation and competition intrigue me as lenses for understanding how people learn. A complexity-informed perspective of the classroom helps to understand the learning process in a way that is quite different from traditional teaching and evaluation models that focus predominantly on learning at the individual level. Test, assignments, and evaluations aim to capture the knowledge and skills of the individual student, with the underlying assumption that the learning of most value is that which takes place ‘within’ the student’s mind.

I ground my thinking about complexity with some of the educators I work with at McMaster University, who use a Problem-Based Learning/Inquiry-Based Learning (PBL/IBL) approach to learning the health sciences (epidemiology, biochemistry, virology, etc.). PBL/IBL typically takes place in context of a small groups of students with a facilitator/expert who presents a series of complex problems that require an understanding and piecing together of concepts to arrive at solutions or further questions. Questions that arise out of trying to untangle the problem can be turned into learning objectives, which the students set as guides to knowledge acquisition. What students end up learning seems to have much more to do with group dynamics and communication skills than what they are individually able to commit to memory. In having to critically evaluate medical literature, acquiring knowledge about a certain biochemical process, for example, is about how the literature is interpreted and applied to the problem at hand. It is in the interpretation and application by different people where the ability to negotiate different meanings becomes critical to acquiring ‘good’ knowledge.

Given this, understanding how knowledge is acquired must also account for what goes on at the group level. It is towards an accounting of learning at the group or social level, within and beyond PBL/IBL, that I now ask my questions.

1. How might we begin to develop a theoretical framework for understanding knowledge acquisition as a function of groups?

2. How might this framework be grounded towards a practical end for students and educators?

I wish to argue in the remainder of this paper, first, that the concept of Socially Distributed Cognition (SDC), new on the cognitive sciences and educational psychology scene, is useful for thinking about how we might venture forward on the first question. SDC gives us a way of looking at cognitive processes, like memory, as processes not located in individual brains, but spread across people and cognitive artefacts. I will make an attempt to address what I see as some of the limitations of SDC and propose an additional vantage point from which one can conceptualize SDC. Relevant literature will be introduced to support my claims and I will use the narrative and conceptual mapping of this paper’s construction as the empirical force connecting the first and second question. Narrative, I contend, is a very effective way of communicating and seeing how complexity and SDC is embodied in practice.

A brief overview of Socially Distributed Cognition (SDC)

Hutchins, the first prominent scholar to publish widely on SDC, believes that cognition is dependent on social organization and context (Hutchins, 1995). The goal of distributed cognition is to “rebuild cognitive science from the outside in, beginning with the social and material setting of cognitive activity, so that culture, context and history can be linked with core concepts of cognition” (Hutchins, 1995, p. 10). He makes linkages to the work of Roberts (1964), who claimed that cultural groups could be thought in terms of having a ‘distributed memory’, which may include the histories and values that weave together to form how a group of people conceive of themselves. This cultural memory is different than individual memory and requires different conceptualization of how cultural memories are stored and retrieved.

Cognitive science deals with processes that involve memory, decision-making, learning and the like. Hutchins (2000) argued that mainstream cognition is not suited for understanding these processes as they occur at a cultural or social level. The unit of analysis, he argued, shifts from the individual to group where we can now study the mechanisms of cognition as happening between people to understand the role of social organization and context.

Karasavvidis (2002) and Cole and Engestrom (1993) pointed out that the notion of distributed cognition is not new – a lineage of scholars including Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Marx, Vygotsky, Dewey, Shutz and Hegel is testament to the deep history of thought on cognition as a social process (Stahl, 2004). Karasavvidis, in at least one context, sees “revived interest” (p.3) in these ideas because of the prominent role that computers as artefacts now have in handling cognitive tasks.

One of the most popular examples of SDC in action is navigation on a naval ship, the central focus of Hutchin’s Cognition in the Wild. No one person, not even the captain or navigator, has an all encompassing awareness about all sorts of parameters necessary to navigate the ship – engine status, bearing, speed, knowledge of other ships etc. The process of navigation is a complex set of interactions between different people in different roles; mechanics are in the boiler room, someone on deck is scanning the horizon, navigators are pulling together information over the many maps and charts before them. A commonly agreed upon set of instructions about navigation strategy and a ship hierarchy influence the flow of information amongst crew members and cognitive artefacts (i.e. maps, computers) to globally ‘produce’ successful, or unsuccessful, navigation.

This sort of system is synchronous and defined by somewhat clear boundaries. We could, like Hutchins, go on a ship and study in situ interactions on a ship with a defined crew. This makes it easy to control for some variables and it appears that many studies on SDC are approached this way. Seeley’s work on collective decision-making in honeybees, could qualify as a defined system through which one could study SDC. In an educational context, researchers are studying student collaboration in meetings of small groups working on problems and look at the group as the unit of analysis for understanding how groups construct knowledge (Salomon, 1993; Stahl, 2004).

What some of these researchers look for is captured quite well by Bereiter (2002):

The mark of a really successful design or problem-solving meeting is that something brilliant comes out of it that cannot be attributed to an individual or to a combination of individual contributions. It is an emergent, which means that if you look at a transcript of the meeting you can see the conceptual object taking shape but you cannot find it in the bits and pieces making up the discourse. (p.183)

Within studies on student collaboration researchers attempt to understand, for example, how public utterances reveal tacit pre-understanding, processes of negotiation, establishment of shared understanding, and the role cultural and cognitive artefacts in mediating the construction of knowledge.

Rotating the lens on SDC

While the work on SDC may raise educator’s eyebrows as to the insight we can gain into how knowledge is collaboratively constructed (a real buzz with the education community at the moment), I have some uneasiness with how SDC does not account for some very salient features of cognition which include emotions, the subconscious, meta-cognition, and reflection in addition to the more ‘mechanical’ information processing functions. My concerns also extend to how the researchers’ and educators’ roles are accounted for in the process. More generally, how does the observer relate to the observed? Being a student is a role one can be said to enact in educational institutions, and is not entirely representative of the person in other roles. Students are traditionally governed by an academic superior and within the power dynamic between the two roles is a complex relationship. Understanding this relationship, I believe, cannot fail to account for the expectations that each person in the role has for the relationship? Does the teacher always expect compliance from students? Does the student always expect guidance and validation from the teacher? With these questions comes an enormous task to make the sub-text explicit, or at the very least, recognize our limitations to knowing and articulating those sub-texts. Perhaps we should also speak of some sort of ‘socially distributed sub-consciousness’, a shadow system that lies beneath what can be observed.

Some other issues I have relate to scope and perspective. In attempting to study people in groups through the lens of SDC, we necessarily impose limits on the scope of the study. Stahl (2004) spoke of the ‘collaborative moment’, a short interval in time of interaction that embodies the essence of knowledge as emergence. Stahl recognizes, however, that

There are many ways in which “learning” can take place: over short and long time periods, in solitude and socially, formally and informally, tacitly and explicitly, in practice and in theory. There are many ways in which people collaborate and learn; by teaching each other, viewing from different perspectives, dividing tasks, pooling results, brainstorming, critiquing, negotiating, compromising, agreeing. (p. 3)

Seeing learning from all of these perspectives is an ambitious, if not all together impossible task, however I wish to devote the rest of this paper to demonstrating how we can think more peripherally about what SDC should account for and how it can be grounded in practical terms. Peripheral thinking of this sort demands that we be cognizant of the paradox of our agency (Bateson, 1994; Stacey, 2001); we are constrained but also enabled by our history, local conditions and knowledge. If we consider ourselves as agents in CASs, we are faced with trying to sort through a multitude of interactions within and beyond a system constantly undergoing change.

In an attempt to globally compensate for our local perspective, we end up in a situation in which “too many variables are cast into the melting pot of a system on the assumption that they should be in there and often regardless of whether they are relevant or not” (Pryor & Bright, 2003, p. 125). Pryor & Bright (2003) suggest that this is a consequence of attempting to deal with complexity:
Of course we would like to be able to restrict the range of relevant variables to a small number that could be intensively investigated. But this is to wish for convenience not reality…As for practical relevance, our view is that it is better to start off being over-inclusive and then attempt to rule out some influences on the basis of empirical data (p. 125)

To address these concerns in a way that bridges a theoretical perspective of knowledge in a group context with an educational application, I contend that we can study learning from a narrative vantage point with the aid of maps. The aim of what follows is to show that what I originally though of as my own personal acquisition of knowledge is something that is best told as a story of my learning as a socially distributed web of interactions between people and texts across different places.

Narratives and Maps

I created a concept map (as attached) using Cmap 4.02 to help capture how I perceive the construction of this paper as a socially distributed process . One place to start in navigating this map could be with my first course in my Master’s program at OISE last term, TPS 1040 Education Administration 1, taught by Malcolm Richmon. I have come to OISE after a year of working on Complex Adaptive Systems in the context of undergraduate education in the Bachelor of Health Sciences program at McMaster University. Malcolm is a die-hard philosopher and we had many discussions about epistemology. He was always first and foremost concerned about how knowledge is constructed before we can use and create knowledge wisely. He introduced me to Socially Distributed Cognition (SDC), which has since become the animus for this paper.

The rest of the map shows various people in different places and a brief note indicating the role they have played in my learning. Del Harnish and Itay Keshet have been profound influences on the development of a paper I have just sent off for publication in an academic journal, my first major work . I came to know Del and Itay as a student in the BHSc. Program at McMaster University, where I now teach (4GG3: Complex Adaptive Systems) and, over the next few years, will attempt to write a book (Inquiry) and my Master’s thesis (Learning as CAS). Del has helped me make connections with other people such as Brenda Zimmerman and Liz Rykert, who play multiple roles in my work. I even found a place for my life partner, Laura, who through love, brought me out to Halifax. It was there that I picked up a copy of Thomas Homer-Dixon’s (2000) Ingenuity Gap perusing through the bookstore. His work touched many of the ideas that have come to guide my thinking and perhaps it is a stretch for me to include Laura, but in thinking about the sub-text to my map, she has played a key role at the periphery of my work. Only just recently did Thomas Homer-Dixon agree to be my thesis supervisor after I spent the past seven months going through nine different people before I could find someone who was interested in my work. This time was challenging for me because I often doubted my ideas and Laura encouraged me to not give up. It is important, Dooley et. al. (to be published) argued, to not gloss over seemingly small or unimportant events because “one cannot determine a priori which conversations or events are likely to be important”(p. 7) in understanding a system’s behaviour.

Accounting for the relationships that animate my own knowledge acquisition in context of this paper and my other activities requires a narrative. In her dissertation on organizational narratives as CASs, Armentrout-Brazee (2002) presented a compelling framework for using narrative to understand learning and organizations. “As complex adaptive systems, stories convey connections and relationships between variables through the organizing process used by the storyteller and the audience” (p. 43) because they:

1. Demonstrate interdependence and embeddedness. Stories are connected to other stories in their substance and processes of construction and telling.
2. Are dynamic with the possibility for multiple interpretations. Depending on who the storyteller and audience is, as well as the context in which the story is told, stories can have multiple meanings.
3. Capture complexity via their nonlinearity. Stories can capture context and dynamics through a variety of literary devices such as dialogue, plot, character, and setting over periods of time.
4. Possess the ability to adapt. Stories can be adapted to the context in which they are told and can adapt over time as new meanings are made or as a consequence of interaction with other stories.
5. Are self-organizing systems. Order and meaning come about as a story is constructed and as a result of the interaction between storyteller and audience.
6. Require simple rules. These simple rules, which Fisher (1984) discussed as part of ‘narrative rationality’, require that stories be capable of “capturing the experience of the world, simultaneously appealing to the various senses, to reason and emotion, to intellect and imagination, and to fact and value” (Fisher, 1984, p. 15).
These ‘simple rules’, which might be thought of as the minimum specifications for a story that captures the complexity of consciousness and experience, have what Fisher outlined as ‘Narrative Rationality’:

The logic that I am proposing, narrative rationality, presupposes a narrative world, a world constituted by the nature of human beings as homo narrans and the stories they tell in all sorts of discourse…all discourse is presented by a fallible human being and is an interpretation of some aspect of the world occurring in time and shaped by history, culture, and character. Discourse rarely, if ever, presents an uncontested or uncontestable truth. It is to such discourse that the narrative paradigm and narrative rationality are directed, to provide means by which reasons can be assessed. (Fisher, 1984, p. 22)

The simple rules, which are part of narrative rationalization, require that each storyteller make sense of his or her experience in a plausible, coherent manner. Storytellers must make decisions based on ‘good reasons’, which can be highly subjective and may vary across individuals and situations. Armentrout-Brazee highlighted probability and fidelity, which are determined by the listener and concern how free of contradictions the story is and the degree to which it rings true with experience of listener. According to Czarniawska (1997), this leads to “a redefinition of what research produces” (p. 202) because she saw issues like probability and fidelity in terms of fact and fiction. Her organizational stories were partly fact and partly fiction and the two could not be separated (Connelly and Clandinin, 2000, p. 11). To the extent that I could borrow from literary theory and use narrative structures such as plot, character, theme, setting, rising action, and the like to produce a ‘smooth’ story is beyond the scope of this paper. However, at some future point in my own learning I will want to consider these things insofar as understanding how the interplay between factual/fictional qualities of narrative influence probability and fidelity.

Narrative Inquiry encompasses narrative as both the phenomenon and the method and is frequently used to study educational experiences (Connelly & Clandinin, 2000). Connelly and Clandinin advanced the work of a number of authors and offered a number of concepts to consider in narrative as part of their metaphorical three-dimensional inquiry space (Connelly & Clandinin, p. 50). They first considered Dewey (1938), who proposed that the two criterions of experiences are continuity and interaction. Continuity refers to the idea that experiences arise from previous experiences and lead to further experiences. This idea can also be reframed as temporality (past, present, and future). Interaction can be described in terms of personal, or inward, interactions and social, or outward interactions. The third dimension is Place, which are the situations, contexts or physical spaces that inform the other two dimensions. My concept map is a visual expression of this inquiry space to show social interactions with people and more inward interactions with texts and self-reflection. The inter-related webs helps to show the meaningful continuity between these interactions. Although colour adds dimension place is difficult to represent. Photos could prove useful in future maps to show the environments in which interactions take place.

The Questions

In response to my first question, which asked how might we begin to develop a theoretical framework for understanding knowledge acquisition as a function of groups, I introduced SDC as a starting point. Studying group interactions can help to account for how knowledge is socially constructed, but can often fail to account for the variables and systems at the periphery of the defined groups being studied. I attempted on my own account to show that narrative and concept mapping enable us to include those variables depending on the context. Narratives in particular allow for an authentic capturing of the complexities of human interaction.

The second question compels me to think about how individuals and groups I interact with (or may read a version of this paper) can make sense and utility of my work. I shared the map with a few of the people identified on the map and one of them (Itay) was particularly intrigued as to why I placed him as an island. Itay has a past history with Del, Laura, and the course I taught this term (4GG3) and he was interested in why I did not show these relationships. To him, the fidelity of my map was weak, but when I told him that I was constructing the map to account for SDC in context of writing this paper, he was more understanding of how he was represented. Our discussion caused me to think about how audience plays a role in understanding cognition. The relationship between storyteller and listener is paramount to the communicative and meaning-making processes. Perhaps I opened with a biological example of SDC because I know that you, a biologist with an interest in complexity, will be reading this paper. If I began with an anthropological or business example to make a metaphorical extension, I may not have had the same impact. Knowing how our stories might interact with each other is probably the best place to start in terms of using this work to inform how students and educators can communicate effectively in group settings.

The fidelity of my account of SDC as a way of connecting my ideas must be questioned in context of, not only what and how I represented parts and relationships, but what I failed to show. Are there dimensions to the relationships that I’m not showing either because I’m not aware of them or cannot capture them in a map? What is the nature of the interactions beyond the crude lines and arrows Perhaps I have not represented certain people and texts because they seemed to be insignificant in the moments that I constructed the map. There also exists the possibility that I do not want to recognize people or texts because of negative emotions associated with them. Some time in the future, I may look back at this map and see that people and texts that seemed insignificant were to become the roots of non-linearities that resonate through my future narrative.

Humans have the capacity to self-reflect, and I think that it is in this process that we can begin to see how narratives are unfolding, changing and intersecting over time. Self-reflection helps us to see ourselves as both the characters and co-authors in these stories, and as such, never have an omniscient perspective on what has happened, what is occurring in the moment, and what will come. Self-reflection is often charged with not being effective because of the chance that the gulfs between people’s perception of themselves and the reality are chasm-sized. To this end, rarely does one see educational institutions give students the legitimate capacity (ie. grades/evaluation) to self-reflect on their learning. However, in light of conceiving of all aspects of cognition as being socially distributed, self-reflection is not a strictly individualized and isolated process and must be placed in context. I sent this paper off to a number of people who have varying relationships with me and are familiar enough with the development of my work to offer me feedback. My reflection is no longer private and includes perspectives from those written about in my narrative. Again, you the reader are left to question the fidelity of this narrative and the extents to which I engaged others in the process. As the storyteller, I can show you the explicit (the map, the events, connection between ideas, etc.), but in reflecting yourself on your own experience as a writer and academic, to what extent do you see an unseen background and history leading up to this paper in its present form? How does such reflection influence the evaluation you are about to give?












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