A Framework for Development, Collective Intelligence, and Emergence
Chapter 38 in The Palgrave Handbook of Learning for Transformation, eds. Aliki Nicolaides et al. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), pp. 677–696
Lynam, Fitch, Androsoff and Wood set out the I/We model, a framework distilled from sixteen years of practice and research in the Generating Transformative Change program. The model describes how individuals and collectives form and in-form one another through a four-phase cycle of becoming — Differentiation, Embodiment, Integration and Enactment — with each phase carrying its own characteristic transitional disorientation. Distinct from but integrating O'Fallon's STAGES model, the framework focuses on the fourth- and fifth-person perspective stages and on the development of what the authors call "subtle community": a collective capacity founded in contextual and systemic understanding, personal self-awareness, interpersonal differentiation and skill, and eventually access to transpersonal states and stages.
This chapter focuses on the relationship between individual and collective development and how to support this development in transformative learning communities. We describe a framework that arose out of 16 years of practice and research in the Generating Transformative Change (GTC) program. The framework guides the curriculum and maps the principles and practices we engage with to support participants’ and cohorts’ development. It supports the development of capacities for what we call “subtle community,” which is founded in contextual and systemic understanding, personal self-awareness, interpersonal differentiation and skills, and, eventually, access to transpersonal states and stages of consciousness.
Through our observations of the interpenetration of I and We (individuals and collectives), we began to see the implications for transformative change. Interpenetration refers to a move beyond both/and toward a recognition of “one within the other” (O’Fallon & Barta, 2018). For example, because no one is truly independent of the collectives in which they are a part, they cannot truly change without a change in their relationships; likewise, no social system can transform without a transformation of the individuals involved (Fitch & Lynam, 2019). This perspective eventually includes an understanding of unity beyond distinctions.
— From the chapter’s introduction.
I/We model; Interpenetration; Subtle community; Differentiation, Embodiment, Integration, Enactment; STAGES model; Transformative learning communities; Integral methodological pluralism
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