Context: Public universities in South Africa are currently facing the challenge of decolonising knowledge. This change requires a review of curriculums, as well as teaching and learning with the goal of embracing the epistemology of the learners, addressing issues such as social justice and transformation. Problem: Human communication is subject to several perceptual errors in both listening and seeing, which challenges the success of the communication in the education system. The ability of the teacher and the learners to effectively communicate with one another is a factor for the success of each reaching their goals. The teacher imparts her knowledge in the classroom, but according to von Foerster, “[i]t is the listener, not the speaker, who determines the meaning of an utterance,” for the listener contextualises this information based on her own past lived experience. Thus, the student’s epistemology and her expression of her understanding is integral in the classroom context and should be actively included into the education system. Method: I present a cybernetic approach to the teacher-learner system, challenging traditional ideas about the role of each actor within the system, with special attention given to Pask’s conversation theory. Results: Early empirical findings suggest that a conversational contextual approach results in higher student involvement and better memory retention among the learners. Conversational approaches that are epistemologically inclusive diffuse social problems where the student groups require their individual worldviews to be reflected within the curriculum. This reduces the friction of competing epistemologies within the education system, moving toward a co-created contextually-driven knowledge system. Implications: Many educators would like deeper engagement from their learners but have not found a way to successfully engage the student group. A cybernetic approach is one method that can be adopted to remedy this. This is particularly useful in contexts where there is cultural diversity and impending social change. Constructivist content: I address von Glasersfeld’s points on human cognition, linking it to Austin’s speech acts.

Key words: Contextual approach, conversation theory, decolonisation of knowledge, education, epistemology, teaching and learning.

Context: South African public universities are currently undergoing a transitional period as they traverse the sensitive road of curriculum redesign that achieves an inclusive approach to education for the goal of the decolonisation of knowledge. Problem: Many classrooms have students from several cultural backgrounds yet in these spaces there is often a single dominant discourse on offer. An ethical question is raised in terms of what content should be addressed in the classroom. Method: An approach to curricula design as a conversation is presented. The philosophical aspects underlying shifts in epistemology are presented following an eclectic approach to curricula design that embraces second-order science in achieving the ongoing goal of decolonisation. The method used to achieve this goal is conversational heterarchical curriculum design assuming non quidem tabula rasa. Students can act as reference points (Nunataks) for curricula design, thus reducing the abstraction in the syllabus. Results: A heterarchical conversational approach offers a platform whereby social justice may be addressed in the classroom by providing a means by which the students’ own epistemology is embraced within the curriculum as the students provide the trajectory for the course content based on their own epistemology. A dynamic curriculum is then available that has immediate use in the communities that the students reside in. Students demonstrate understanding of the content as it is tied to their own way of knowing. Implications: The benefits of this approach include moving away from defining science according to a realist view. Educators may accept the idea that knowledge is not impartial and that method is tied to epistemology. When the observer is included in science, an awareness arises that theories (at least in the social sciences) affect what is studied, which in turn affects society. Constructivist content: The approach builds on von Foerster’s ideas on reflexivity. Pask’s conversation theory is a vehicle for the attainment of reflexive conversational teaching and learning.

Key words: Adaptation, curriculum design, conversation theory, cybernetics, decolonisation, ethics, heterarchy, nunatak, reflexivity, second-order science, ubuntuism.

Context: Conversation theory and second order cybernetics both imply that conversation does not entail a transfer of meaning, but a construction of meaning by both of the conversation partners. Problem: This evokes the question of the conditions that may support or enable this construction of understanding. Method: Through recounting a conversation with Ernst von Glasersfeld I identify generosity and flexibility as a basic condition and format of conversational exchanges. I employ linguistic communication across language barriers as well as making music together as illustrative examples. Results: Generosity seems a key ingredient for enabling conversations as well as a personal skill or talent. Bridging the gaps in communication that result from differences in personal experiential worlds is only possible through goodwill enacted in the listener’s direction of his own imagination. This paper extends and connects radical constructivist notions of constraints and experience, as introduced by von Glasersfeld, with Glanville’s description of the role of generosity in conversation and Wittgenstein’s notion of the “Vorstellungsklavier.” Implications: Generosity can be characterized as the ability to move from communicating to appreciating and accommodating the other in conversations. The implications I draw are limited to the scope of my personal reflections and experiences.

Key words: listening, generosity, conversation, experience, constraints, Vorstellungsklavier

Open peer commentary on the article “Designing Academic Conferences in the Light of Second-Order Cybernetics” by Laurence D. Richards. Upshot: Richards’s article presents a well-argued discussion of conversational conferences, with a particular focus on the design of such conferences. Richards bases his discussion on many years of personal experience with conversational conferences, primarily those organized by and for the American Society for Cybernetics. I particularly appreciate that Richards writes not only on cybernetics, but also in a cybernetic manner. As I find the article comprehensive and thorough, I mainly add further depth and discussion to some aspects of Richards’s article in the following sections, such as Richards’s distinction between conventional academic conferences and conversational conferences, conversation theory in relation to design, and the question of how conversational conferences can be designed.

Ranulph Glanville was a prolific writer, a magic designer, an avant-garde musician, a cybernetician of the first- and of the second-order, a philosopher in disguise, to name only a few roles. His contributions to second-order cybernetics and to areas like design, philosophy, conversation theory, methodology or games, with the tools and perspectives of his version of second-order cybernetics were collected under the title “The Black B∞x” in three volumes in edition echoraum (Glanville, 2009, 2012, 2014) and were ordered and arranged by Ranulph Glanville himself so that they allow a general and systematic overview on this very large, diverse, and impressive corpus. In this short essay I will undertake a systematic attempt to make this work more easily accessible for others, including myself, and to provide a special location for Ranulph Glanville within the research program of second-order cybernetics in particular and within the research tradition of radical constructivism in general. It will become my central thesis in this article that Ranulph Glanville’s special role and function was to provide a meta-approach to all the available research programs in radical constructivism. This framework was transcendental in nature and focused on the conditions of the possibility for observation, for communication, for language, for knowledge or for learning to emerge at all. Thus, Ranulph Glanville reserved a unique place for himself that, at the same time, turned out to be magic for his explorations and very difficult to grasp for his intellectual environment.

Key words: epistemology, transcendental approaches, objects, second-order cybernetics, conversation theory, design

Approaches Pask’s conversation theory from a sociological perspective. Pask’s vision of conversation as a self-organising process can help our understanding of the emergence of social order out of social interaction. Through conversation, human beings would be able to construct a shared reality which would be the common setting of their social life. But modern societies are only partially based on conversational interaction. Many of their structural traits are not a result of conversational agreements, but of the unintended consequences of conscious (inter)actions. In these societies, the main source of social order at the macro level is not intentional action, but the dissipation of intentional action. This phenomenon generates the dissipative structures that represent the objective frame of social life. The main purpose of this paper is to review the theoretical work of Gordon Pask from a sociological point of view, in order to appraise its potential as an instrument adequate for social analysis.

In this paper, the author revisits his excitement in learning Pask’s conversation theory that gave immediate prescriptions for the construction of training systems and adaptive, personalized information browsers. Named after Pask’s first implementation of an interactive knowledge structuring tool, the THOUGHTSTICKER system described here came to maturity in 1986, some ten years before the Web’s wide acceptance, yet it had all the components of modern Web browsers plus an organising principle for the hyperlinks – something the Web still needs. THOUGHTSTICKER’s techniques for modelling each user’s unique experiences and conceptual learning style embodied the concept of “personal computer” still unattained in other commercial software products. Over a 15-year period, many software prototypes were constructed and gave proof to the applicability of Pask’s theory. It remains to be seen if these and other aspects of his theory will rise to the consciousness of the marketplace, becoming popular and, afterwards, irremovable and “obvious.”

Key words: cybernetics, training, learning, learning styles, education, technology.

Purpose: In an ideal situation, the author would like to answer each of the following questions: What is Conversation? What is Theory? What is Conversation Theory, anyhow? How did it arise? Who participated? How is it a theory? Where did it end up? Is it interesting? How might it be useful? Where has it been applied? Why should you care? What does it offer the practice of education? Of design? Of ethics? Where is it headed? (Sorry, steering joke, since Conversation Theory is situated in cybernetics, the art of steering). The purpose of this paper is to answer as many of these questions as practical. Design/methodology/approach The seeds of Conversation Theory lie in Gordon Pask’s instincts and in his “making.” This paper begins by describing some of the machinery he constructed to explore human interaction. Next, a skeletal model of conversation is offered, and connections to Pask’s own diagrams are drawn. Complementary to these models of the structure of conversations are their consequences, which are described in broad terms rather than given in detail. Lastly, Pask’s approach to proposing a scientific theory, and his means of achieving it, are explained. Originality/value Conversation Theory is a thoroughly original body of work, unmatched by its range and specificity. It is little known and yet potentially profound, with a scope that has already influenced educational psychology, second-order cybernetics, knowledge modeling and software design. By describing its origins, models and implications, the author hopes its value can be extended to new generations and to new domains.

Key words: cybernetics, interaction design, second-order cybernetics, conversation, conversation theory, gordon pask

This paper comes to grips with the perplexing but important issue of consciousness as manifest in human beings and other organisms; in social organizations and, seemingly without degrading the idea, in other-than-biological systems. The possibility of taking such a radical step as to speak of consciousness within a theoretical frame, and without resorting to the expedient of relegating consciousness to a metatheory about science, arises from combining various developments in Cybernetics or General System Theory, which, though superficially disparate, have a great deal in common; for example, Goguen’s work in category theory (1969, 1975) and the work of Gergely and Nemeti (1977) in nonclassical model theory, the representation, in several different ways, of concurrent (in contrast to serial, or strictly parallel) computation, the work of Varela (1975, 1976), Maturana (1969, 1975), and Von Foerster (1960, 1978), upon organizational closure, Glanville’s (1975) notion of objects and self reference and the work done on conversation theory by my own group. This background is assumed to be familiar since an account appeared in Pask (1975a).

Over more than three decades Heinz von Foerster and I have collaborated and worked together as well as in separate laboratories. This contribution gives a terse account of work which we have done together and which is relevant to Heinz’ prescient notion of self organization and its many arborizations. In the course of doing so it spells out some of the history associated with cybernetics to which both Heinz and I adhere.

Key words: concept, conversation (theory), interaction (of actors theory), observer, P-individual, self-organization, spin.