In this disquisition learning and professional development are interrogated from the science of complexity perspective, which includes chaos (Amagoh, 2008; Axelrod & Cohen, 2000; Ferreira Da Costa, 2007; Schwartz et al., 2005). Pascale et al. (2000, p. 5) define the complexity perspective as “[I]t is a broad-based inquiry into the common properties of all living things. Complexity is therefore an inquiry and not a theory”. The authors view chaos theory as a subset of the inquiry into complexity and view organisations as complex adaptive systems. They define a complex adaptive system as: “[A] system of independent agents that can act in parallel, develop models as to how things work in their environment, and, most importantly, refine those models through learning and adaptation” (p. 5). They declare as principle, that living systems are creative and cannot be directed along a linear path, because unforeseen consequences are inevitable due to bifurcations. In complex dynamic systems bifurcations are doubling phenomena, or phase shifts when the system is perturbed. According to Pryor and Bright (2011, p. 12) the effect of this change is to reconfigure the system. The challenge is to disturb a system in a manner that approximates the desired outcome. Individual creativity in complex dynamic systems lies at the edge of personal disintegration (McKenna, 1999) and the creativity field in a learning organisation (Amagoh, 2008; Senge, 2006) exists between the legitimate and informal structures at the edge of chaos. This can be represented by a complexity map (Pryor and Bright, 2011). The internship was a complex dynamic system in an edge of chaos state and within this state I mentally generated my reflective constructions (Schwartz et al., 2005) towards a future leadership role (Meany-Walen et al., 2013).
The professional development of the intern is defined within the career counselling scope of practice which Pryor and Bright (2011) describe as a complex dynamic system. The facilitation of my internship and improvised reflections within this system were the responsibility of the managing supervisor in her role as leader (Amagoh, 2008). Pascale et al. (2000) affirm that there exists a freedom to question the boundaries when the need to improvise, or operationalise leader’s intent, arises.
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This is because in complex dynamic environments there is a place for adversarial strategies and an increasing critical role for sustainable system inclusive solutions. Senge (2006, p. 7) describes it as: “Systems thinking is a conceptual framework ... to make full patterns clearer, and to help us see how to change them effectively”. But Pascale et al. (2000) postulate that complexity goes beyond systems, because system change is applied more linear and continuous than theory suggests. A complex dynamic system is always nonlinear and often discontinuous with emerging bifurcations (Ferreira Da Costa, 2007). In a complex dynamic context, uncertainty is embraced as the process unfolds in real time (Axelrod & Cohen, 2000; Bright & Pryor, 2011). Pascale et al. (2000) suggest a change from a path of development metaphor to a metaphor of manoeuvres across the competitive landscape. Complexity is concerned with how the landscape itself changes as the system manoeuvres across it, creating a fertile domain for revitalization. The edge of chaos where things are revitalised, is a condition, not a place, and is a precondition for transformation according to Pryor and Bright (2011). Transformation emerges because of the heat, noise, unmet needs, desires and structural incongruities in the system and emergence is the outcomes of the unfolding reality. Throughout my internship I improvised learning opportunities in line with my managing supervisor's intent and reflected on my transformations while surfing the dynamic system.
Professional development can only emerge from transformations which may emerge from heutagogic learning, provided the capacity exists in the system to first tolerate provocation and then to adapt and survive. But, survival is not good enough. The system must also have the capability to cultivate variety in its internal structure so that it can improve its fitness level and flourish. This is the figuration of requisite variety in cybernetics (Pascale et al., 2000). In heutagogic learning variety may mean there are different ways to think about the same experience (Hase & Kenyon, 2001). In professional development issues such as ethics, diversity and best practice require a capability to generate variety (Bolton, 2010). Senge (2006) describes best practice as a form of value added practice in a learning organisation ecosystem that anticipate, spot and think through counterintuitive second- and third-order effects. In economic terms variety emerging from heutagogic learning may be seen as not obeying a law of diminishing returns, but a law of plenitude (Pascale et al., 2000, p. 164). This means production returns increase with effort. Thus, the managing supervisor was directing a
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living system with strategies designed for emergence and could never assume that a particular input will produce a specific output. During my internship it gave her close on real time control through feedback as she focused on bifurcations and not on efficiencies, stacking the deck in favour of learning. The subsystem she created adapted to provocation and flourished. I was a beneficiary of this effort.
Pascale et al. (2000) describe punctuated development in a complex dynamic context in terms of various factors. In a self-organising environment the managing supervisor should resist temptation to over control, but gather real time evidence, ensure the intern understand the intent, devolve decisions to a collaborative action on the lowest possible level and cultivate discipline without excluding positive deviance. Discipline is cultivated by vigorous selection and training, and rigorous self-examination. Heutagogic learning fulfilled many of these requirements during my internship. Positive defiance is not equivalent to dissidence. It looks at what is working in the system's context even if it contradicts theories, policies and procedures (Pascale et al., 2000). When I referred to organisational citizenship (Luthans, 2008), organisational intelligence (Amagoh, 2008) and macro-ethic (Beaudoin, 2009), it was mostly about positive defiance. The factors the managing supervisor considered to cultivate transformation started with a guarantee of disequilibrium through provocation. It then moved on to amplifying and dampening feedback, driving interconnectivity between nodes, and exploring latent potential through examining fitness landscapes. Through this process she gathered information and reworked it into intelligence (Amagoh, 2008) for learning initiatives. Within the complex dynamic system in which I completed the internship, my conscious learning and my intention to grow towards a professional career counsellor relied on an equilibrium disturbed “through threat of death and the promise of sex” (Pascale et al., 2000, p. 33). In the case study evaluations can be seen as the threat and successful completion of the internship as promised promiscuous professionalism. This is a mingling of theoretical and experiential learning made possible by punctuated development opportunities.
2.3 RESEARCH
Qualitative elements of my professional development process in career counselling are traceable throughout the reflective record and are researchable (Bolton, 2010). In
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this study the inquiry is a search for professional transformation (Mezirow, 2000) during my career counselling internship. I am embarking on a journey to construct deeper appreciations for my learning experiences by interrogating my experiential reflections. Researching and retelling my professional development story direct me towards an autoethnographic design (Henning et al., 2011; Mitra, 2010). But my research story should be more than my own voice in my research; it should also continue the tradition of my reflections as vulnerable, rebellious and creative coconstructions (Ellis & Bochner, 2006; Hughes, Pennington, & Makris, 2012).
Ceglowski (2002) describes autoethnography as a personal history and cultural criticism which is what the reflective record presents. She follows Richardson in writing about the extent to which narrative genres connect to reflexive ethnography and have been blurred and enlarged into different narrative forms in the process. She calls this process “creative analytic practice” (p. 2). The global analysis suggestion of Henning et al. (2011, p. 109) is perceived as an aspect of enlarged narrative and with this autoethnographic research I will not make a distinction between the two design descriptions, because the global nature of the dataset and the global extraction of patterns are accommodated within creative analytic practice that represents a credible (Hughes et al., 2012, p. 210) alternative ethnographic self-narrative (Guzik, 2013).
Belgrave and Smith (2002) introduce alternative ethnography to resist the demand for criteria which contain freedom, limit possibilities, resist change and rest on a research community's agreement to comply with their own humanly developed conventions about evaluation standards. Within alternative ethnography investigators are liberated to shape their work in terms of its own necessities. Thus, within creative analytic practice this phenomenological disquisition will carefully choose emerging features, such as “benefits of reflective writing” and within a subjective understanding will perturb knowledge for diverse answers to emerge on the research question. The answers may reflect any of a number of knotty, emergent ethical and rhetorical dilemmas and erotic wisdom in an attempt to make sense of the intern’s ecosystem.
Henning et al. (2011) describe ways of research as story and describe global analysis as a sense devising tool. What she and her co-authors describe as a global analysis technique is also referred to as a creative analysis process (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011;
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Denzin & Lincoln, 2002). It is a generative process and features are constructed instead of themes extracted. The method may follow from a reality of critical coconstructions within some bounded community. My reflective process was a coconstructionist approach (Thrift & Amundson, 2005) for a DE community and this directs the research into a suspiciously constructed epistemology. Kelly (2007) states that explicit research questions and hypotheses are not part of the qualitative research paradigm tradition and suggests that I, as researcher, should have a guiding question which becomes more explicit throughout the iterative research process. Ratele (2007) comments on the quality of a qualitative research question from a critical social perspective, suggesting that I, as researcher, should not shy away from dark corners forbidden by unwritten rules of the research community. The coconstructed truths I am putting forward in my research story are the collection of all truths told by those who participated at any point in my professional development process. My heutagogic learning is illuminated in my research and the research methodology I shall decide to use should reflect this (Richards, 2011).
2.4 CONCLUSION
The literary search starts with contextualising my career counselling internship within IOP and my professional development as a form of adult learning. This context extends into how adult learning is conceptualised by different authors to clarify andragogy. All these authors specify reflective writing as adult learning tool. The search highlights the different perspectives which include systemic and transformational explanations. But learning by doing, as is done during an internship, remains the central theme of the literary search. All these authors want adults to discover new ways of knowing. The discovery process is captured in the concept of heutagogic learning which is promoted to the title of my dissertation. The literature search then attends to some of the features which emerged from the research as benefits of heutagogic learning to establish how the results of the analysis tie in with the existing knowledge complex. The features explored within professional development include transformative learning, ethics, diversity, wellness and how these features develop within a complex dynamic context. The chapter concluded by introducing creative analysis as research method in an autoethnographic design.
41 CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: BECOMING FAMILIAR WITH THE