Tag Archives: learning
Are we there yet?
Six months since we launched our Community of Practice and there is a sense of movement and progress. But if my objective is for it to be a self-sustaining buzzing network of ideas and initiatives, we are probably still a long way from that. The energy mainly comes from me in the centre. But what is […]
Communication between communities: are we speaking the same language?
Let’s say I’ve just had a great idea! Even better, let’s say I have done a load of research and now I have some facts and evidence that are really useful. Doing this research has increased my knowledge and now I would like to give that knowledge to you so that you can do your things […]
The story of a Community of Practice: Baby steps towards the destination
Riding on the wave of enthusiasm of the plenary session on gender-responsive research at the beginning of Bioversity’s Science Week, after three years of scoping and defining, it was time to actually do something. For once I took my own advice! Back in 2013, writing about how to set up a community of practice for […]
Achieving change through other people: the laws of physics do not apply.
I have just been in my first days of Outcome Mapping training and very enjoyable it was too. Outcome Mapping was conceived and developed by the Canadian International Development Research Centre and it is: a participatory method for use in planning, monitoring and evaluating a framework for clarifying intent an orientation towards adaptive management and […]
why do we think what we think?
Ideas. As I was saying yesterday, what we accept as fact or evidence depends on the appreciative system we are working in. Ideas come and go. Quite a few writers have given this a lot of thought. Bateson is one: How do ideas interact? Is there some sort of natural selection which determines the survival […]
The slipperiness of evidence, knowledge and facts
Evidence, knowledge and facts. They seem so reassuringly solid. And yet we look back in time and can see that yesterday’s facts and knowledge with time start looking more and more like opinions and then are superseded. Think about a healthy diet. In Under My Skin, Doris Lessing’s autobiography, she describes eating at her neighbour’s: […]
Becoming Better 