Processes of Learning

Learning cities need to place the principle of learning at the heart of their practice. They must become increasingly self-aware, discover and question the assumptions which underlie practices so as to improve them, and learn how to make this a matter of routine. There are three levels of learning:

• The first level of learning is about getting organised: charting purposes, clarifying roles and relationships between the partners, developing initial priorities and plans, determining budgets and setting targets for performance. This stage of learning is about learning to organise a system and to enable it to begin to work effectively.

• The second level of learning is about developing shared understanding between the partners, recognising that effective working will require more agreement about underlying values and purposes than it is reasonable to expect in the initial stage of getting organised. In these early stages of development, however, there may be problems of interaction and communication which reveal differences of values and interests that require more fundamental discussion if they are to be resolved.

• The third level of learning is about learning to learn. Communities experiencing change need a general predisposition to learn if they are to succeed. They need systematically to become creative at learning about how they have been learning; reflect on and analyse their previous styles of learning or failing to learn; clarify what enabled or blocked their learning so that they can take remedial action and develop new strategies for learning. Learning cities learn to make this critical reflection a matter of routine practice.

Awareness of the cycles of learning encourages participants to explore continually the conditions of learning - why it is that individuals and groups are open to new ideas and new ways of thinking which keep them abreast of change. Learning in this way continually extends the cycle of learning.

The framework shown below maps the three strands of development and the three levels of learning. Those working within initiatives, or contemplating a start, will need to define where they are in this map of development. Often, initiatives are further on in one area than another and progress can be quite uneven. Local pressures and organisations mean that learning city initiatives are not uniform: this is part of their particular strength.

A Framework Map for the Learning City