Meaning-making in the process of participatory system dynamics - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Meaning-making in the process of participatory system dynamics research

UK SD Chapter Meeting 30/06/2015

Nici Zimmermann Laura Black Clive Shrubsole Mike Davies

Issue

• Achieving change

– people’s actions, – their decision-making, – social interactions and – cognition.

• Bounded rationality

– Represented in model structure – In modelling process

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‚Solution’: Participatory SD

• Deals with bouded rationality in modelling process

– Model quality – Changing participants’ thinking

• Scripts = best practices
• But where is the theory?

– Planned behaviour (Ajzen 1991) – Boundary objects (Black 2013)

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Mead‘s theory of socially construction meaning + Lave’s (1988) theory of situated cognition

Mead’s meaning-making Participatory process meaning-making Gesturing Expressing experiential knowledge (Relational) Naming Abstracting from experiential knowledge, generalising by vocalising concepts and dependencies (Shared) Acting Modifying shared representations, exploring consequences of proposed dependencies, testing abstractions Iterating Re-representing verbally or graphically or via simulation

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Mead‘s theory of socially construction meaning + Lave’s (1988) theory of situated cognition

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Application to an empirical case

Integrated decision-making about Housing, Energy and Wellbeing (HEW)

• We know from history that single focus policies lead to ‘unintended’

effects

1920 USA High rise housing policy Australian Energy National Prohibition

• f the 1960s

Efficient Homes Package

• What will be the overall impact of polices aimed at reducing the energy

demand and carbon emissions of dwellings?

Our starting point

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Criteria for assessing policies

1. carbon emissions from housing 2. community social connection 3. fuel poverty 4. housing adaptation to climate change 5. housing affordability 6. mental and emotional wellbeing 7. physical wellbeing / health 8. social and income equity 9. policy coherence

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Themes from the interviews

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Application to an empirical case

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Integrated decision-making about Housing, Energy and Wellbeing (HEW)

• Interviews
• CLDs
• Workshop 1 – Improve CLDs, select criteria
• Workshop 2 – Mentally simulate
• Workshop 3 – Multi-criteria decision analysis

Elicitate problem Simulate Green Deal

Gesturing, naming, acting and iterating in the project case

Mead’s meaning- making Project case Green Deal Gesturing Individual contributions in interviews Few interviews Many in-group contributions to explain the reference mode (Relational) Naming Suggesting improvements to CLDs in small groups Facilitator’s re-phrasing of contributions and unfolding model (Shared) Acting Adapting CLDs Using CLDs to estimate (mentally simulate) outcomes Simulation cockpit (not used) 3 major model runs Discussion of model boundary Iterating CLDs presented at 3 workshops Iterations in explaining the reference mode

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Conclusion

• Gesturing process is experience-broadening element in participatory

processes

• Naming not how they share exactly the same experience, but how

they or their contributions are important for one another (Black, 2013; Black et al., 2014).

• This allows them to act in a shared way and to iteratively explore the

consequences of their proposed interdependencies.

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Conclusion

Practical implications

• Story-telling
• Learning environments
• Mental model alignment  consensus, commitment and system

change (Rouwette et al., 2009) Future research

• Diverse participatory settings
• Rigorous exploration of relation to scripts
• Individual and group outcomes

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Your thoughts are welcome

n.zimmermann [at] ucl.ac.uk

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