Emergent Education

Defining Statements:

“Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.” (Obolensky, 2014)

Principles of Emergent Strategy:

• “The large is a reflection of the small.
• Change is constant. (Be like water).
• There is always enough time for the right work.
• There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.
• Never a failure, always a lesson.
• Trust the people
• Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than critical mass
• Less prep, more presence
• What you pay attention to grows.” (Brown, 2017, pp. 41-42)

Elements of Emergent Strategy:

• Fractal
• Adaptive
• Interdependence and decentralization
• Non-linear and iterative
• Resilience and transformative justice
• Creating more possibilities” (Brown, 2017, p. 50)

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These principles and elements of emergent strategy can be applied to an emergent education or curriculum when, in our engagement with The Garden Project, we teach and learn together across common and personal goals and motivational needs. Our learning goals are shaped by these values named here, and in their intersection with each member’s personal goals, and the emergent needs of the plants and more than human beings within the garden. Educational practices within the Project, whether in the Garden itself or working tangentially on necessary work outside the garden, are both gently structured and fractally evolving in relational and emergent ways. There is a learning quality of “happenings” when one arrives in the garden, seeing what needs tending attention, and effort. Members with varying levels of experience help to appropriately scaffold and support other member’s learning in practice each day at the garden, until one day “new” members are able to help scaffold and support the learning in practice of other members. Learning in practice occurs through conversations, individual and collective work, and through attentive presence. This emergent garden curriculum is generated in togetherness (human and more than human) and slips into and from previous season’s curricula. With each day, each member, each being, and each season, exciting and plentiful possibilities are created.

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Here’s how (actions) we’ve done it before:

• Seasonally shaped Community Work Days
• Moving at the rhythm of the plants
• Supporting people in following their curiosities in learning
• Responding to the immediate needs of the plants and animals
• Scaffolded, incremental and iterative learning
• Adapting to & supporting one another’s needs and lives

Here’s the ‘how’ we are interested in doing it in the upcoming season(s):
(We're in process, check back soon!)