Social Construct of Teams: Knowledge and Adaptive Learning Solutions

Editorial Note: This article was originally written in 2016.

The Tower of Babel rises, not as ruin, but as ambition carved in stone. Pieter Bruegel the Elder captured more than mortar and men. He gave us a vision of collective striving, a skyward hunger to reach the divine through human will alone.

They gathered from every corner, drawn together by vision, by rhythm, by belief in the blueprint. Their tools rang in harmony. The scaffolding groaned with effort. And for a moment, it seemed the tower might touch the heavens.

But then came fracture, not of brick, but of meaning.

Words that once wove unity began to unravel. Unseen at first. A hammer passed with a phrase now strange. Instructions twisted into noise. The fracture widened. The shared mind, the quiet current of mutual understanding, broke like a string drawn too tight. Each worker still skilled. Each hand still steady. Yet the center did not hold.

The tower, once a testament to collaboration, became an emblem of dissonance. Not because they lacked strength. Not because they lacked purpose. But because they no longer knew together.

Knowledge, after all, is not stored in stone or scroll. It lives in the spaces between people, in glance and gesture, in rhythm and reply. It is built, rebuilt, and borne anew each day. When this fabric frays, no scaffolding can save the structure.

Yet, the lesson is not despair.From the dust of Babel grows a different kind of learning. Adaptive, fluid, alive. A knowledge that listens as much as it leads. A team that speaks not in one voice, but in harmony. No longer reaching skyward in defiance, but outward in curiosity.

The danger is not in dreaming tall. The danger is dreaming alone.

The teams that endure are those who return to the table, not just to speak, but to understand. They learn in circles, not towers. They construct meaning, not just plans. And in doing so, they build something Babel never could. A shared future, rooted in shared meaning.

John Brown, Scottish Theologian of Haddington

The world-renowned Scottish theologian, John Brown of Haddington, was raised as an orphan and worked endless hours as a shepherd lad caring for his flock on the knolls of Scotland. At the young age of sixteen, Brown had a growing desire to learn the Koine Greek language. Having borrowed a Greek New Testament, he learned the alphabet by study of proper names in the genealogies of Scripture.[1]

Eager to have a Greek Testament of his own, he saved his meager wages until he had enough to buy an inexpensive copy. Legend has it that he walked twenty-four miles to the nearest town arriving to purchase his copy when the store opened.

After returning to his labor, he devoted his mind to mastering the ancient language eventually emerging as a respected self-taught scholar of Greek. All of this was accomplished without a grammar, tutor, or modern technology for study.

Learning, Technology, and Leadership Today

Today’s learners are aided by advancements in postmodern learning technology that surpass all previous educational resources. These technologies were created to educate the mind in the most favorable learning environment. With the advent of breakthrough technologies, the arena for knowledge acquisition is greater than ever before.

Hence, as healthcare leaders, it behooves each of us to seek knowledge for our own development and to be cognizant of the trust bestowed upon us to provide resources to those whom we shepherd in our teams. In guiding such learning and leadership, Aristotle reminds us in his Nicomachean Ethics that “with the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.”[2]

Culture and the Inner Social Environment of Teams

Émile Durkheim reasons, “The primary origin of social processes of any importance must be sought in the constitution of the inner social environment.”[3] He concludes, “since the distinct entity formed by the union of elements of all kinds which enter into the composition of a society constitutes its inner environment, in the same way as the totality of anatomical elements, together with the manner in which they are arranged in space, constitutes the inner environment of organisms.”[4]

The inner social environment of teams is a matter of culture that informs behavior, how teams are led, how they communicate, how they make decisions, and how they execute their roles individually and collectively as a team. These behavioral dimensions, whether as positive or negative influences, exist inside all teams.

Durkheim’s concept of “constitution” is pivotal to understanding the foundation of the inner social environment. The constitution is a social code for the team, utilized as the body of thought upon which the team functions. These are the unwritten rules of “how it is” on the team.

Culturally, a certain leadership philosophy, whether overtly or casually embraced, is acknowledged by team members. An established style of communication exists among the team. Decisions are made either in a healthy manner or in a form that leads to a sickly organization.

Whether teams really make things happen in an intentional manner or simply do what is necessary to get through the day is a matter of the inner social environment. All organizations have a unique cultural milieu since no two organizations are the same.

The constitution of the team dictates the inner social environment of the team and is the primary origin of the process by which the team functions.

Conversation, Change, and Self-Knowledge

In a sense, teams exist in an ongoing conversation. Martin Heidegger writes, “The ability to speak and the ability to hear are equally fundamental. We are a conversation, and that means: we can hear from one another. We are a conversation, that always means at the same time: we are a single conversation.”[5] Communication is an agent of change or stagnation.

To enact change within teams is no small feat. Durkheim’s maxim to seek the primary origin dictates intent. To become a seeking organization is a matter of decision. In fact, the decision to alter the inner social environment and cultural setting of teams is, without fail, a most arduous process. The work of change is the soul work for the team.

Affecting solid change requires a clear understanding of what ails the team. Change can only occur with an intentional decision to harmonize the facts in a historical, socio-cultural perspective geared to follow the Delphic maxim, “know thyself” (γνῶθι σεαυτόν; literally translated as “know yourself”). Organizations must get to know themselves before transformative work can be effectively implemented within the team. According to Socrates, “the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”[6] Without awareness of self and of the team, real change cannot occur.

Sociology of Knowledge and Collective Memory

Aristotle insists that “Man is by nature a political [or social] animal.”[7] Man, the social animal, lives within the tribe of teams. The political man is a social creature with reasoning power. The human stands alone in reasoning power, yet is by nature inclined toward the social setting of tribes. Thus, he is a political animal.

Aristotle’s notion of tribes can reasonably be applied to the modern organization as teams. A team is a living organism and a dynamic social environment comprised of many disparate parts, each having a unique, viable role for the ongoing sustainability or the detrimental decline of the whole. Each organization has a unique history formed out of its cultural milieu, apparent in the collective customs, behaviors, thoughts, and designated roles.

The social construct of knowledge is an agent of collective memory, residing at the heart of the team’s coherent consciousness. Leading-edge technology engaged for assessment and education is the agent to memorialize the digital, collective memory of the community. Through individual growth, the evolution of the group stimulates change in collective memory. Ideological association among the team strengthens the organization. Innovators who embrace leading-edge learning solutions act as forgers of corporate conscience and cultivators of solidarity within teams.

Education and Social Control in Teams

Peter Berger, author of Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective, sheds light on the sociology of groups by defining the concept of social control. Berger states, “Social control is one of the most generally used concepts in sociology. It refers to various means used by a society to bring its recalcitrant members back in line. No society can exist without social control.”[8]

Bergerian thought is, of course, addressing difficult, even uncooperative, members of society. However, an insightful lesson emerges about teams. No matter how small, teams “will have to develop their mechanisms of control if the group is not to dissolve in a very short time.”[9] For teams, education serves as a method of positive social control. Education founded on Aristotelian ideas of truth is defined as harmonized facts. Disharmony occurs when notes of discord reverberate among the team. Hence, education has the effect of bringing discordant team members into harmony with the standards set forth by the leadership of the organization.[5]

As a result, education is a form of social standardization. Without an active plan of education, teams cannot arrive at the destination of engaging in a highly professional nursing practice.

In his work entitled “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot wrote that tradition “cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labor.”[10] Each team continually evolves a sociology of knowledge, leading to a socio-cultural history. The term “social” originates from the idea of “friend.” Sociology is that connectivity of friends, or those with whom one has commonality. This is society.

Sociology examines the collective behavior of organized groups. Each organization possesses a living memory of the past in terms of the present. When thinking of the present, one engages the past. In a sense, thinking of the present is rethinking the past.[6]

Each individual uses knowledge of the past to improve the present. The use of one’s past knowledge is a quandary, as objectivity is often lacking and memory is too often a myth. A most difficult assumption is that objectivity is possible in this environment. In reality, objectivity is more myth than verity. Myth is unverifiable.

Knowledge, Myth, and Wisdom

Claude Lévi-Strauss observes, “a myth always refers to events alleged to have taken place long ago.”[11] Even so, leaders must use knowledge of the past to improve the present. In other words, the use of the past does, in fact, have value in improving the future performance of teams. Knowledge within teams is a sociological phenomenon. Knowledge (from the Greek, γνώση) begins with firsthand, personal experience to bind together theory and application. Knowledge is the connector of the two. Knowledge is gleaned from experience.

In knowledge, theory and application are juxtaposed. Knowledge is, then, the praxis between theory and application, serving as the transitory stage of the two.[7] Wisdom is the use of the body of knowledge gained by the individual and collectively by the team.

Mankind is by nature inherently social. The social nature of humanity underscores the importance of the collective wisdom of organizations. Collective wisdom is expressed in the corporate community when teams function at full capacity. When the storehouse of the mind is full of knowledge, the use of that knowledge forms the basis of individual and corporate wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom propagate good behaviors within the team. Collective wisdom, then, is attributed to the healthy, communal thinking of teams.

History, Objectivity, and Criticism

 John Locke, in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, hypothesized that “the mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which experience writes.”[12] As teams create their own history, daily work fills the once blank slate, becoming the life document of the organization.

The information produced through daily work is the raw material of an entity. Leaders work with available resources. Value is discerned from a historical, critical contemplation of the team. Leaders and followers are rarely cognizant that their perception, behaviors, and their practice do not reflect reality.[8]

As a result, revisionist tendencies arise when teams attempt to ignore the reality of mistaken judgment and poorly executed decisions. Leaders have the responsibility of discerning the competency of their team’s professional practice leadership, communication, decision-making, and execution often with incomplete information, thus risking subjective evaluations. The gathering of this data forms the critical history of the team.

Matthew Arnold writes in “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” “I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.”[13] An objective view of history is a significant step in the direction of building a systemically healthy organization.[9]

Learning in the Postmodern Context

I welcome the old in learning. Being trained in Humanism and the Classical Tradition, I thoroughly enjoy a leisurely reading of a printed copy of a work from the Antiquities, Plato, Aristotle, and others, in their ancient Greek form. Even so, I fully embrace the engagement of the most advanced, modern technologies available to the worldwide learning audience.

There is a viable place and time for various forms of engagement in learning, but our postmodern world demands a fast-paced, integrated style of learning. One must have the ability to process high volumes of information almost instantaneously.

Effective learning among teams requires an advanced form of delivery and adaptation by the learner.

As a result, technology is to education what the verb is to the sentence. Technology acts as the engine of the education process, geared toward a specific end. That end is a systematic approach to education.

Systems and Solutions in Learning

Two terms, “system” and “solution,” have been applied to online learning tools. Each has its rightful place in the history of learning technologies. The term “σύστημα” is of ancient Greek origin, translated into English as “system.” By definition, a system may include a set of ideas, a procedural model, or a set of principles. The idea is of connecting the independent to become interdependent. Thus, a system is an organized method. In physiology, the body has a digestive system. In geology, the earth has a major range of strata. In astronomy, the organization of celestial orbs. In education, the grouping of technology applications. All are systems.

The term “solvere” is of Latin origin, translated into English as “solve.” By definition, the term is to loosen by dissolving in a solvent. Thus, the idea is that of distilling a problem into a homogeneous solution. The engagement of technology provides advanced solutions to process data in a digital era. Advanced technology-based learning solutions are designed to loosen (solve) the problem of education formerly held back by old standards and ineffective methods.

The adaptive learning solution is the next-generation advancement beyond legacy learning management systems. An adaptive learning solution is a solution. A learning management system is a system. This raises the question of what distinguishes these tools.

The use of technology for education is the common denominator in the terminologies: learning management system and adaptive learning solution. Adaptive learning solutions harness intelligence geared by the algorithm of the technology. The adaptive learning solution assists in making the decision as to what the best tailored education resources are for each online learner. Learning management systems do not.

Those who make the claim that a learning management system has the same intelligent, data-driven education capabilities as adaptive learning solutions are often attempting to bend a system into a solution. When Tesla Motors built the automobile for battery power, the early attempt was to retrofit a gasoline-powered engine transmission into the Tesla automobile; however, it was quickly determined that the old transmission for gasoline-powered automobiles could not be retrofitted to work for the battery-powered automobile. No matter how much bending and twisting of the old form, a new delivery mechanism had to be designed and built. This is a similar situation with learning management systems and adaptive learning solutions.

One can only bend a tool so much with the unrealistic hope that the tool will do what advanced technology was made to do. The learning management system requires the student to discern, without the aid of a mentor, the best courses for their learning experience. It is likened to one walking into a large university library seeking a specific book, only to realize there is no card catalog system to guide the search.

With the adaptive learning solution, the educational catalog is delivered to one’s computer screen at the click of a key, completely customized to the learner in a tailored education environment. Learning management systems represent legacy paradigms, while adaptive learning solutions represent the best-of-breed in learning resources.

Adaptive Learning and Clarity

The Latin to English transliteration of “lucent” is defined as “shining." For a thought to be lucent is to be marked by clarity. Clement of Alexandria concludes, “Clarity contributes to the transmission of truth.”[14] A substantial problem that adaptive learning solutions shed light on is that one can see a problem that before now was not visible to the “naked eye.”

Leaders desperately need the ability to see past the subjective nature of non-data-driven decision-making. Leaders who choose to evolve the organization by educating the mind are advancing the corporate soul of their team. Adaptive learning solutions provide the blueprint, assessment and education, to move the team forward.

Competency-based education embedded in an adaptive learning model advances beyond the learning management system world of administration, documentation, tracking, and reports. Adaptive learning solutions provide technology-enhanced learning and cognitive tutoring. As an educational method, this model engages two-way, responsive teaching through devices that orchestrate the assignment of mediated resources based upon the specific learning needs of each learner. This is tailored education at its best, metamorphosing the learner from a passive receptor to an active collaborator in the educational process. Adaptive learning tools serve as innovative computer-based pedagogical agents. Adaptive learning solutions are participants in the third wave.[15] Learning management systems rest on their laurels in the second wave.

Conclusion

There was a time when education had to be done without the aid of technology, but that is not the case today. The commonality between John Brown of Haddington and the modern learner is desire. What transcends that is the advent of technological tools. The evolution of legacy learning management systems into adaptive learning solutions is the next step as the digital era flourishes in the third wave. Adaptive learning solutions engage advanced technology for the postmodern educational pursuit.

Adaptive learning solutions engage advanced technology to gather information pertaining to teams. The adaptive learning solution begins with a single datum, or a piece of information. In the aggregate, this is data which translates into information. Thus, a repository.

The term “repository” is a central location in which data is stored and managed, whether in the mind or in a database. Repository is from “reposit” (Latin) meaning “placed back.” Gathered data is placed back in a database, or repository, for future use. Information is key to the future, the tool that forms the mind, and iscrucial to the art and science of instruction.[16] Information informs. By studying the data history of the organization, the information reinforces the end goal of resemblance to ideology.

Adaptive learning solutions engage advanced technology tools to efficiently dispatch critical organizational intelligence. Intelligence provides the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. To gain intelligence is to understand. Intelligence is a matter of intellectual and reasoning capacity. In a sense, to gain intelligence is a form of reconnaissance.

As recipients of information, leaders are visionaries of the future while discerners of the past. Historical knowledge of an organization is intertwined with the societal prospects and hopes for the future. The use of data is an exploration whereby the future and the past are formed in the present.[10] 

Adaptive learning solutions engage advanced technology tools to leverage intelligent tutoring resources. The history of the organization, then, becomes a matter of choice. The way of the organization becomes clearer as leaders embrace ideological motifs. The leader is of necessity selective in resource engagement.

The belief in a fail-proof method to objectively and independently interpret the team is a preposterous fallacy. The present limits of historical objectivity forteams are lower than in the past due to the advent of data-driven resources. Data collected and astutely interpreted createa narrative or descriptive history of teams.

The leader’s professional conscience means that when a data set is examined, he will not hesitate to engage all available resources, critically weighing overall value. The idea is to discover the “truth” about an event in question. To do so, one must begin by putting aside personal bias to examine the data as carefully and accurately as possible. 

Humans cannot be totally objective in thought.