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LEARNING ECOLOGIES BOOK INTRODUCTION DRAFT 1 08/08/18

Introductory essay

The very idea of a learning ecologyNorman Jackson and Ronald Barnett

IntroductionThe contemporary world obliges human beings to learn. To keep on learning across and throughout their lives in order to survive and flourish. It crowds in on one, bombarding individuals with new and even bewildering experiences. In this relentless onslaught, individuals react differently. Some relish the unforeseen, the unpredictable, with the uncertainty and instability that it heralds in life, while others rather put up personal resistance to this never ending challenge, and look for ways of marshaling their defences so as to retain their existing composure (or, more accurately, pretend to a composure that was already fragile if, indeed, it existed at all).

In such a context, the idea of learning ecologies has particular attractions. The idea of ecology, after all, breathes a sense of life and living, of interconnectivity, of sustainability, of dynamic, of different elements being configured and working together to achieve something that the individual parts cannot achieve.

And the general setting is precisely of this nature. Individuals are interconnected with a buzzing welter of phenomena – of media, educational institutions, work places and social spaces, personal endeavours and relationships, and fast-flowing swirls of information. This configuration brings new experiences at least daily. The very essence of life itself constitutes an unfolding personal ecology – more accurately a multiplicity of overlapping and interfering ecologies, that prompt challenge, disjunction, creativity, development and even transformation. The act of learning is an ecological phenomenon that brings forth new meanings and understandings of the world and of one’s own being and identity in and with the world. It is a learning ecology.


The connotations of ‘ecology’ are, however, by no means exhausted by this resumé. In their natural state, ecologies have self-sustaining properties. However, as is well-enough known, ecologies may be impaired, and often as a result of the interventions of humanity. So too with a learning ecology: we may inquire into its health. Is it balanced? Is it distorted? Is it oriented in sound and worthwhile directions? Are its dominant values legitimate? Are its purposes relevant, useful and significant?

Such questions open many planes in these opening considerations; and these planes are themselves interconnected. Firstly, the very idea of ecology links people and their ways of thinking, being and doing, in a fundamental way to the environment in which they are learning. By environment we are not only talking only about the physical environment we can sense and perceive; we are talking also about the rich, fertile environments we can create in our minds. Fundamentally, a learning ecology tells us that learning and the environment in which learning emerges are indivisible. Secondly, learning ecologies are necessarily value-laden. The entities - the flows of information, the objects, the relationships, the purposes and the activities - that constitute learning ecologies is each a carrier of values and is often an explicit site of values in itself. The value-laden environment in which ecologies for learning and achievement are grown is the sight where new meanings are sought and grown: learning ecologies are the primary sites for the creation of meaning in learning lives. Furthermore, they are the sights for maintenance of identity, that relate to the values of individuals, and to the making of new identities as individuals’ circumstances change.

Thirdly, learning ecologies are present whether or not individuals are aware of them. They emerge from the milieu that is the circumstances and substance of a person’s life, their hopes and ambitions, the challenges, disruptions and opportunities they are encountering. They happen naturally and organically, but they also form intentionally as


individuals orchestrate learning ecologies for themselves to achieve the things they value. Fashionably, we may say that there are differential elements of structure and agency at work here. Learning ecologies comprise a structure that exerts its own powers upon human beings and their environment, human beings, in turn, have a measure of agency in relation to those ecologies. They can, and do, in significant and meaningful ways, construct and adapt their own learning ecologies for themselves.The unfolding and shaping of those learning ecologies - not least in the interplay between persons’ juxtapositions of their learning ecology in relation to the exigencies and ambitions of life - can become a never-ending life project. And this unfolding and shaping, however limited or however grand, takes place as it must within larger learning ecologies in which individuals find or place themselves.

Fourthly, it is evident that learning ecologies are not just personal matters, whether understood as collections of forces at work acting upon individuals or as learning biographies being assembled by individuals over time. Rather, learning ecologies are present at the societal (and even the global) level deeply embedded in infinitely complex eco-social systems. It follows too, given our previous observations, that learning ecologies at the societal level are value-laden and can be interrogated to see to what extent they are sound or may be impaired.

We see all this in the contemporary world and very vividly. The rise of populism, the use and manipulation of social media, the distortion of channels of news and communication, the mis-presentation of significant elements in the political sphere and concerns over the diminution of the public sphere of debate and open reasoned discussion: all these phenomena suggest that we are in the presence of ecologies that are seeking to manipulate and subvert learning at the societal, if not at the global, level. Instead of society learning about itself in a set of rational open discourses, now it exhibits – as implied – grotesquely distorted and manipulated flows of communication causing confusion and disruption to traditional order.


As a result, individuals are bombarded with data and information and they commonly lack the resources to decipher the distortions and mis-information coming their way. In turn, the level of public understanding of complex issues falls and societal learning falls away, to be placed much more under the direction of the powerful battalions. In all of this, too, what counts as knowledge is characteristically skewed. The humanities become almost invisible in the wake of the stridency of the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines. At the same time, personal, informal, experiential learning - which might open the way to more authentic ways of comprehending the world - is downvalued in favour of data manipulation, governed by mathematical algorithms and cybernetic processes. It emerges, then, that the concept of learning ecologies poses large issues as to the character of the world and persons’ situations in it. To what degree do individuals have freedom to shape their own learning journeys through their lifespan? To what extent, perhaps unbeknown to themselves, are those pathways influenced, shaped and even directed by others. To what degree, too, is society about collectively to form ever-developing and well-grounded understandings of itself?

There lies here, therefore, the profound matter as the possibility of the individual’s learning ecology being a vehicle for self-transcendence and self-emancipation. Through his or her own learning ecology, the individual can more and more become a better version of themselves. The old adage from Hamlet - ‘To thine own self, be true’ – can, in principle, be realized through an individual taking responsibility for continuing vigilance towards their own learning ecology. In this way, they may be able just to eke out a personal space in their own life-world that enables us to confer upon them such epithets as ‘integrity’, ‘own person’, ‘independence’, ‘autonomy’ and even ‘courageous’, ‘steadfast’, ‘steady under fire’ and ‘inspirational’. After all, the person who has a well-marshalled learning ecology of his or her own has managed to find a set of life projects that somehow hang together, that possess legitimate values, that provide purpose to that person’s life and support the continually evolving identities they inhabit. To put it grandly, through their learning


ecology(ies), such a person has emancipated and sustained themselves in all the hurly-burly and distortions of the contemporary world.

OrientationsThe contributors to this volume are sharing not just their scholarship but, implicitly at least, their own learning journeys in exploring and utilizing the idea of learning ecologies. As such, this book constitutes - we hope - a collaborative set of resources that might aid the imagination and practices of others. In this way, thinking drawn from past experiences and reflections, and in our unfolding present, may connect with the thinking of those who will interpret and act on these ideas in the future. This, indeed, is one way that an ecology of learning works, enabling links to be developed between the past, the present and the future.

Key questions driving this volume include: What might be meant by ‘learning ecologies’? What is the value of seeing learning, development and practice as ecological phenomena? What are the implications and possibilities of learning ecologies for education? How might individuals make practical use of any insights gained from exploring the idea of learning ecologies to help them in their personal learning projects? And would an ecological perspective on learning help people understand their own immersion and sustainability in a complex but fragile world?

Throughout this book, the idea of ecology is drawn upon to frame a way of perceiving, inquiring into and making sense of phenomena such as learning, education, creativity, practice and achievement. However, the origins of the ecological idea are founded in the branch of biological sciences dealing with the relationships and interactions of organisms with each other and with their wider natural environment. This interactive relationship and its attendant conditions necessary to sustain life is known as an ecosystem. It is worth, therefore, to dwell a little on this biological and systems background.

In nature, as stated, an ecosystem comprises the complex set of relationships and interactions among the residents, resources and habitats of an area for the purpose of living (Tansley 1935, Ostroumov 2001). The


interactions and what emerges from these interactions, involving organism and organism, and organism and environment, are fundamental to the ecological paradigm.

“Every organism has an environment: the organism shapes its environment and environment shapes the organism. So it helps to think of an indivisible totality of ‘organism plus environment' - best seen as an ongoing process of growth and development” (Ingold 2000:20).

Within its ecosystem, an organism creates an ecology for living through which it fulfils essential daily needs like feeding, sheltering, resting and procreating. The ecosystem contains a myriad of organism-created ecologies for living, which interact as organisms compete for, consume, recycle and produce resources in order to sustain themselves and their offspring. In this way organisms individually and collectively help maintain and sustain an ecosystem as a whole.

The proposition underlying this book is that a parallel conceptualisation can be applied to human ecological systems - the set of relationships and interactions among people, resources and environments for the purpose of living. But, when people are the primary organism in an ecosystem, living involves much more than sustaining life. While all organisms learn to live with, and when necessary adapt to, their environment, ‘learning’ understood as the making and sharing of new meanings, becomes a force for significant activity and change in human eco-social systems (Lemke 2000). Learning and what we do with it enables human society to advance, by utilizing resources, reconstructing existing environments and creating entirely new environments from our imagination. Unfortunately, some of the ways we are changing the environment also pose the greatest threat to sustaining not only our own ecosystem, but the ecosystems of every other living thing.

Individuals learn in many ways, in many different social, personal and virtual ‘spaces’, and often contemporaneously; and there are few physical boundaries to their learning. How is this lifetime of lifewide learning (Jackson 2011, Barnett 2011), spaces of which simultaneously present quite different forms and ethical challenges, to be handled? How do


individuals integrate the multitude of narratives, and myriad of spatial, contextual and temporal doings, into who they are and who they are becoming when they are having to juggle contrasting roles, relationships, expectations, and experiences, all of which exhibit continuing change? Our belief is that surviving and flourishing is more likely if we can think and act with ecological awareness.

The matter of ecological learning can be construed as a response to wicked problems posed by the turbulent, liquid world of today and tomorrow. Rittel and Weber (1973) defined such problems as, “a class of social system problems which are ill-formulated, where the information is confusing, where there are many clients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications of the whole system are thoroughly confusing” (Buchanan 1995:14). In tackling wicked problems, Buchanan (ibid) argues for an ecological way of thinking – ‘design thinking’ - that draws on the natural, social and humanistic sciences in addressing wicked problems, the greatest of which is that of sustaining the planet so as to enable all ecosystems to flourish. Ecological thinking that leads to actions that are ecologically considerate are necessary in order to build a sustainable society, and fostering an ecological worldview should be an important goal of education systems. In their ‘Systems View of Life’, Capra and Luisi (2014) provide an indication of the sort of thinking required to engage with this super wicked problem.

‘In the coming decades, the survival of humanity will depend on our ecological literacy, on our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology and to live accordingly’ (Capra 2013).

This book contributes to the development of such an ecological literacy by raising awareness of the nature of learning itself as an ecological. It is not enough to concern ourselves with the environment we are presently inhabiting: we also need to be concerned about environments in the future that we will never directly experience ourselves. A key question for education therefore is, ‘how do we prepare people not just to sustain themselves through a long and complex lifetime of learning, but also to play a conscious and active role in sustaining the future world?’


The ecological paradigmThe idea that we are immersed in an ecological world that requires us to think and behave ecologically, is not new. This was the central tenet of Gregory Bateson’s ‘Steps to an Ecology of Mind’ (Bateson 1972).

‘[Bateson] put it this way: “Break the pattern which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality”.’ (Borden, 2017: 89).

In the idea of ‘breaking the patterns’ Bateson had in mind the way formalized education compartmentalizes learning into different subjects. Such bounded forms of thinking are frequently carried over into pedagogies in which learning is understood as mastering a pre-determined curriculum, and exclude conceptions of informal or non-formal learning where people serendipitously open themselves to problems and opportunities and have to work out matters for themselves.

Bateson was fond of saying, “that the mind is an ecological system and that … ideas, like introduced seeds, can only take root and flourish according to the nature of the system receiving them” (Levy and Rappaport 1982). His vision for an educated mind that thinks and approaches life ecologically has surely become more urgent as the plethora of wicked problems around sustainability become more apparent. Nearly forty years after his death, education is still faced with the same wicked problem, namely, ‘how do we prepare people for an ever more complex, uncertain, turbulent and disruptive world, not just for the world as we know it but the world in even beyond this century?’

A challenge for universities and other educational institutions, is to encourage and enable individuals to develop the will to learn (Barnett 2007) with ecological awareness and so provide the wherewithal to go on learning through life. (Many who are leaving school in 2018 will be alive in the twenty-second century.) This is no simple human attribute for it involves a capacity to think with sufficient complexity to grasp, however feebly, the web of relationships that connect phenomena and experiences on the one hand, and their causes and effects on the other hand and, in the process, the capabilities to create and orchestrate persons’ own


ecologies for learning when confronted with such complexity. In other words, to think and behave ecologically.

Such ways of thinking integrate the imaginative and the propositional, the critical and the analytical, and are creative insofar as they lead to connections that have not previously been identified. From such connections new ways forward - both personal and societal - can emerge (Jackson 2016). Here opens a conception of learning, development and achievement that is epistemologically generous, lifelong, lifewide and ecological and that works to integrate being as such - and not only human being but the being of the whole world.

Biological origins of the idea of ecology and ecosystemsThe idea of ecology formally emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries as a way of comprehending the world through the study of plants and animals in their natural environment. Natural scientists, like Alexander Humboldt (polymath, geographer, explorer), James Hutton (geologist) and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (biologist/ zoologist) laid the foundations of the ecological sciences (McIntosh 1985).

The word ‘ecology’ was coined by the German zoologist, Ernst Haeckel, in 1866 (Stauffer 1957) to describe the ‘economies’ of living forms. The term was derived from Greek: οἶκος, ‘house’ or ‘environment’; and -λογία, ‘study of’ By ‘ecology’ we mean the whole science of the relations of the organism to the environment including, in the broad sense, all the “conditions of existence”.’ (Ernst Haeckel, Generelle Morphologie 2: 286; translation from Stauffer 1957, p 140.) While this statement clearly defines the field, it was for others to develop ecological theory, for example Eugenius Warming with the writing of Oecology of Plants: An Introduction to the Study of Plant Communities (1895), and Carl Linnaeus' principles on the economy of nature (Egerton 2007).

Ludwig Bertalanffy, an Austrian biologist, proposed that ‘the basic trait of the living is the organisation of substances’ (Bertalanffy, 1934a:346), and concluded that ‘wholeness … is the primary attribute of life’ (Bertalanffy, 1928:225). Bertalanffy formulated general organizational biological


‘principles’ (Bertalanffy 1932:331, the main one of which is that an organism is an open system which maintains itself through a continuous flux of matter and energy.

The notion of ecosystems was first mentioned in 1930 by the British botanist Arthur Roy Clapham (Willis, 1994) but its first use in the scientific literature was by Sir Arthur Tansley, “the biome considered together with all the effective inorganic factors of its environment is the ecosystem” (Tansley 1935: 306). He considered that organisms… cannot be separated from “the environment of the biome – the habitat factors in the widest sense … with which they form one physical system’ (ibid 299). Although the meaning of ‘ecosystem’ remains controversial, Ostroumov (2001) offers a synthesis definition:

‘Ecosystem is the complex of interconnected living organisms inhabiting a particular area or unit of space, together with their environment and all their interrelationships and relationships with the environment.” (Ostroumov 2001:141)

Tansley’s ecosystem idea drew attention to the idea of ‘biological systems’, but the theoretical basis for ‘systems thinking’ was developed by Bertalanffy, whose most significant contribution to science was his general systems theory (GST):

‘Any living entity, be it cell, organ, organism, individual, group of individuals or social organization, regardless of size or type, must be seen as a dynamic unit (system) which interacts with other systems in a common framework which constitute themselves a larger system (supra-systems).’ (Ghinea 2015: 253)

These ways of thinking about systems laid the foundation for complexity theory and complexity science, “the study of the phenomena that emerge from a collection of interacting objects” (Johnson 2009: 3-4) or complex adaptive systems (CAS). These are systems in which a perfect understanding of the individual parts does not automatically convey a perfect understanding of the whole system's behavior (Miller and Page 2007). Living organisms and biological ecosystems are complex adaptive systems (Marten 2001). They are complex because they have many parts


and many connections between the parts; adaptive because their feedback structure gives them the ability to change in ways that promote survival, evolutionary development and flourishing in a changing environment.

CASs have a number of properties, the first being ‘emergence’. Each level of biological organization from molecules to whole ecosystems has characteristic behaviours that emerge at that level (Marten ibid). These emergent properties function synergistically at each level of organization to give that level a life of its own which is greater than the sum of its parts.

A second important feature of CASs is that they are self-organising. Ecosystems organize themselves by means of a process resembling the process of natural selection in biological evolution (Marten ibid). All the plants, animals and microorganisms in an ecosystem have evolved to form a community assemblage.

A third feature of CAS is their capacity to go on regulating themselves in order to persist within their physical environment. Self-regulation involves balancing the forces that resist change (negative feedback) and forces that promote change (positive feedback) (Marten ibid). Ecosystems change in two ways: through 1) progressive (or incremental) change due to internal self-regulating processes and 2) sudden change from one form to another due to external disturbance. An ecosystem that survives profound change in its environment is resilient.

For our purposes here, key ideas of this brief overview are that individuals and communities are immersed in energetic emergent ecosystems, capable to some degree of adaptation and continuing reorganization that not only enable resilience but that foster learning and life itself.

The ecology of human beingsThe ecological paradigm emphasizes interconnectedness, interdependence and interrelatedness, emergence and adaptation in response to an organism’s will to live (Schopenhauer, 1859). Drawing on


the ideas of quantum physicist David Bohm, Selby (2004) argues for a ‘deeper level of ecological presence’, one of ‘radical interconnectedness’ and ‘unbroken wholeness’. Everything is in a state of process or becoming and wholeness and so presents as a dynamic interconnected process (Bohm, 1980, 1990). When viewed from this ecological perspective, our thinking, learning, development, creativity and achievement are emergent properties as we are enfolded into our ecological universe, being and becoming a different whole – a process of undergoing:

“every experience enacted and undergone modifies the one who acts and undergoes, while this modification affects, whether we wish it or not, the quality of subsequent experiences. For it is a somewhat different person who enters into them” (Dewey 2015).

“Active undergoing continually digests the ends of doing and extrudes them into pure beginning.” (Ingold 2018:22)

The concepts of ecology and ecosystem, grounded in the biological sciences and natural world, open fruitful perspectives for many fields and practices. Some examples include: philosophy, politics, sociology (social ecology), anthropology (cultural ecology), psychology (ecological psychology), education, social work, medicine and health, design/architecture & engineering (the design of ecosystems for the mutual benefit of humans and nature), business (business/organisational ecosystems).

The ecosystem concept is well suited to describing the dynamics of human activities, situations and relationships but there are features that are particular to human ecosocial systems compared to non-human ecosystems.

‘We cultivate some species and exterminate others, mine some ores and ignore others, dam some rivers in some places, produce goods of certain kinds in certain quantities, consume, wage war… because of the all the other cultural meanings and values things have for us.’ (Lemke 1997:35)


The human eco-social systems view of learning sees people living in their physical, social/cultural and virtual environments engaged in particular purposes, contexts and situations, consuming, recycling and producing resources, including information and knowledge, and changing (learning, developing, growing) through their interactions with the things that matter to a particular society (Germain and Gitterman 1994). Like any other ecosystem, eco-social systems are complex, dynamic, self-organising entities whose patterns are emergent rather than prescribed or predetermined. In an eco-social system, there are additional links based on cultural meaning. It follows that the behavior of an eco-social system cannot be fully understood through the disciplines of the hard sciences. Other vital fields include those of economics, politics and sociology as well as cultural beliefs and values and collective traditions of meanings or ‘social imaginaries’ (Taylor, xxxx).

People live and work within particular social, physical and cultural contexts, such that individuals are, in effect, participating in what Lemke calls 'micro-ecologies of situated activities'.

‘How we play our parts in these micro-ecologies depends not just on what the other parts do to us, and us to them, but on what these doings mean for us … Learning now becomes an aspect of this developmental process; it is as universal, persistent, and inevitable as change itself (our emphasis, Lemke1997:34).

Eco-social systems are also developmental systems (Lemke 1997). They have a relevant history which connects past and present and an evolutionary trajectory in which each stage of development creates the conditions for the next stage of development. Eco-social systems are constellations of activities, doings and interactions, and are contained within processes that span different time scales.

A feature of an eco-social system compared to purely the ecosystems of individuals is the way in which meaning(s) are created by participants collectively. Our ecologies for social interaction are also sites for the shared making, re-making of meanings which is itself an ecological (relational, interactional, developmental) process.


Ecologies of learning, education and practiceIt follows from this set of observations that any form of learning - of human development - has its place in ecologies. Learning is necessarily, in this sense, ecological, being but an element within multiple ecosystems. But, as we have glimpsed too, learning ecologies also contain elements of self-direction. Ecosystems insert themselves into learning; but learning can insert itself into ecosystems. Ecological learning is not simply undergone but is forged by the individual, and ultimately by communities.

The idea of applying an ecological perspective on learning, education and practice is not new. In the 1970’s, Urie Bronfenbrenner, a developmental psychologist, introduced his ecological paradigm for interpreting human development. At the core of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory are three important ideas which feature prominently in a second stage of the development of his ecological ideas, which he rebranded as bioecological theory (Bronfenbrenner 1999, 2001 and 2005):

‘First, the central force in development is the active person: shaping environments, evoking responses from them, and reacting to them. Second, a fundamental premise of ecological system theory is its phenomenological nature: “[I]f men define situations as real they are real in their consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1929: 572). Finally, because different environments will have different affordances and will be responded to in different ways by different individuals, experienced and objectively defined environments will not be randomly distributed with regard to the developmental processes and the individuals one observes within them. Rather, one will find ecological niches in which distinct processes and outcomes will be observed.’ Darling (2007:204)

Baker (1999) applied an ecological perspective to learning, and learning how to practise in a domain. Using a wonderful story about learning to fish with his father, he revealed the power of the narrative in communicating the dynamics and dimensions of an individual’s ecology for learning.

For me, learning to fish with my father and brother is a metaphor for a theory of guided participation and for a theory of ecological learning…. I learned a new skill through the expert guidance of a more accomplished practitioner…… We were “instructed” in fishing not by lectures on the shore, [or] ling expositions on


Dad’s theory of fish, bait and equipment –… but rather through participatory trial and error, emulation, and occasional advice and assistance.’ (Baker 1999:2)

Baker recognized the important role played by particular pedagogical practices, which he called ‘guided participation’, in developing and preparing undergraduate learners for practice in a professional field.

The rapid growth of the internet and the accompanying changes in how we access and use information in the digital age provided a catalyst for new ways of thinking about learning and learning ecosystems. Brown (2000) likened the way people were using the worldwide web to a ‘new ecology of learning’, which he characterised as:

‘an open, complex, adaptive system comprising elements that are dynamic and interdependent - a collection of overlapping communities of interest (virtual), cross-pollinating with each other, constantly evolving and largely self-organising.’ (Brown 2000:19)

A second strand of inquiry into the ecology of learning emerged through concerns for the environment and sustainable development. Hill et al (2004) describe “forms of learning that will contribute to sustainable futures for our planet, its environments, and its people (learning for sustainable futures).” (ibid 53). Blewit (2006) developed a learning ecology theme in his book of education for sustainability and Judson has developed ideas on how learners’ ecological awareness can be encouraged through an education that engages learners’ imaginations and encourages them to participate in the world outside the classroom (Judson 2010, 2015, 2018).

A third strand of inquiry has developed in the last decade as policy makers and their advisors have begun to appreciate and develop ideas around educational ecosystems. Luksha et al (2018) provide an analysis of the challenges and changes confronting global society and arguments for why current systems of education need to change. Their argue for a radically new form of ‘educational ecosystem’ which they define as, “a dynamically evolving and interconnected ….. network of educational / learning spaces, with individual and institutional learning providers, that offer a variety of


learning experiences to individual and collective learners across the learning lifecycle” (Luksha et al 2018:109). We have also participated in the search for educational meaning by developing ecological models for learning, creativity and practice (Jackson 2013, 2016, 2017) and exploring the idea of the ecological university (Barnett 2018).

The ecological paradigm - meaning, model and metaphorThree linked, yet different, ways that the concept of the ecosystem can be used in any context have been identified namely, meaning, model and metaphor (Pickett and Cadenasso 2002:1-2). Tacitly, at least, all ecological approaches contain these three dimensions—a core definition that is neutral in scale and constraint, the capacity of the model to be adaptable to different cases, and a metaphoric aspect that stimulates ecological thinking (Pickett and others 1994, Pickett and Cadenasso 2002).

The first dimension, that of ‘meaning’, comes into play in relation to a question such as: ‘What is [the] ecosystem?’ However, for the definition to be used in a given situation, a domain and a variety of features must be specified (Jax 1998). 'Learning', ‘development,’ ‘education’, and ‘practice’ are the most important domains being explored in this book.

The value in ecological / ecosystem ideas is that they are applicable to any case where organisms and environments interact in some spatial /temporal arena. However, the power of general definitions can only be used effectively if there is a framework or way to organize cases and approaches. Therefore, that second dimension of the ecological/ecosystem concept is required - namely, a model to specify how the abstract definition is being used in a specific case or range of cases (Jax 1998). Models are necessary to translate any general definition into usable tools (Pickett and others 1994) so that the parts, interactions, activities and scope of the system of interest can be specified and understood. Contributors to this volume are encouraged to offer their own concepts and models of a learning ecology which may be textual, graphical, diagrammatic, physical, or quantitative.


The third dimension of the ecological/ecosystem ideas is the informal and symbolic use as a metaphor for a type of structure or behaviour. Structural metaphors include the ecosystem as an organism stimulating and sustaining growth, or competing for and consuming resources, while behavioral metaphors include ecosystems as resilient, adapting or fragile entities (Cronon 1995). Ideas that might be associated with the ecological metaphor in the context of learning, personal and professional development, education and practice include: organic, natural, growth, development, creating, becoming, flourishing, nurturing, cultivating, connecting, reacting-interacting, adapting, evolving, emerging, collaborating, co-operating, resilience, persistence, environment, resources, processes, energy, culture, forces and flows.

Meaning, model and metaphor can be considered as separate but related dimensions of the ecological/ecosystem concept and they combine in complementary and synergistic ways. The task for authors throughout this book is to utilize the affordance in the ecological paradigm and explain these dimensions in the contexts of the particular ecological ideas, cases and situations they are exploring.

ConclusionThe idea of learning ecologies carries within it hope, hope that through persons and communities and, indeed, societies learning about themselves, the world might at least sustain itself. But the idea has its feet on the ground, too. Precisely because of the interconnectedness embedded within the idea, it is also a wary idea. The very interconnectedness of the world contains potential for powerful forces to exert a malign influence. Human and social learning might not be an absolute good. The smartphone can aid interaction and gains in understanding but it also presents a space in which powerful corporations and agencies - unbeknown to the user - can manipulate human and societal perceptions and responses. They can and do interfere with and distort the ecological process of learning in ways that may inhibit our flourishing.


The idea of learning as ecological acknowledges all of this. An ecology, after all, is far from being marked by harmony. Ecologies in nature exhibit competition and even mortal conflict: the survival of one organism at the expense of another. Ecosystems are characteristically impaired in some ways. But, in the human realm at least, the idea of an ecology is fact, value and imagination intertwined. The world is interconnected in dynamic and unequal sets of relationships and learning is liable to be distorted in such milieu. However, that factual context is merely that. Human beings, both individually and collectively in societies, have powers - however limited - of sustaining themselves through their own learning projects and identities, reflecting their mix of values and which may even put virtues to work in the world.

And so opens all manner of issues as to the paths that the framing of learning ecologies might follow, whether at the personal or social level, and whether in formal educational institutions or far beyond. Issues come thick and fast. What are the significant features of the world in which learning ecologies have to be worked out? Are learning ecologies better viewed from the inside, so to speak, looking out to the world, as personal and social projects, or from the outside, as just parts of still wider - and probably dysfunctioning - ecosystems? What room might there be for imagination in shaping learning ecologies? Or are these sophisticated orchestrations fundamentally dependent on and inspired by human imagination? Tensions, irradicable complexity (which, once disturbed, builds upon itself to yield ever greater complexity), and matters of significance and new meaning: all these are present in learning ecologies. And it is matters such as these that this volume seeks to address.

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