On Learning…

When people speak about learning, they often mean things like:

gaining new knowledge
understanding something more clearly
improving practice
correcting mistakes
adapting in light of feedback

All of these are valid. Learning can indeed involve clearer thinking, better decisions, or more effective action. But this is just scratching the surface.

Learning is always happening

Even when no formal learning activity is underway, learning is ongoing.

People and organisations constantly form expectations about what will happen:

If we do this, that will follow.
If we invest here, we will see results there.
If we frame the issue this way, others will respond accordingly.

Action is taken on the basis of these expectations. Experience then confirms, complicates, or contradicts them. This movement — expectation, action, encounter — is continuous.

Learning becomes visible when expectations are disrupted. If we expect X and Y happens instead, something must shift. That shift might involve:

revising an interpretation
adjusting an action
reinterpreting the evidence
or strengthening the original expectation

Learning does not simply depend on whether we intend it. It happens whenever expectations are stabilised, revised, defended, or reinforced.

Nested levels of learning

Learning does not occur at only one level.

Individuals revise their expectations.
Teams develop shared interpretations.
Organisations stabilise routines, strategies, and indicators.
Over time, entire fields adopt assumptions about what is legitimate or realistic.

These levels are nested: what is learned at one level shapes what becomes possible at another.

Organisational routines may reflect past learning.
Shared narratives may reinforce certain expectations while marginalising others.
Structure is often accumulated learning.

Learning, therefore, is not just personal or cognitive. It is distributed and layered, and never neutral.

Learning is multiple and situated

In practice, people often talk past one another about learning — not because they disagree, but because they are working with different implicit ideas of what learning is.

Second Order does not insist on a single definition. Instead, it treats different understandings of learning as partial and situationally useful, each bringing certain things into focus while obscuring others.

Making these differences explicit can be an important part of the learning work itself.

🢖 Learning as changes in understanding

One common way of thinking about learning is as a change in how people understand a situation — their concepts, interpretations, or mental models.

This perspective is useful for:

surfacing assumptions
reflecting on sensemaking
noticing shifts in interpretation

Its limitation is that changes in understanding do not necessarily translate into changes in practice or decision-making.

🢖 Learning as changes in action

Another common framing treats learning as something that is demonstrated through changes in behaviour, strategy, or practice.

This perspective is useful for:

linking learning to action
resisting purely rhetorical learning
making learning visible to others

Its limitation is that it can collapse learning into compliance, adaptation, or performance — especially under accountability pressure.

🢖 Learning as increased capacity to notice

Learning often involves becoming able to notice things that were previously invisible, uninterpretable, or ignored.

This might include:

recognising patterns or tensions
noticing how learning itself is being shaped
becoming aware of exclusions or blind spots

This form of learning may not immediately lead to action — and that is not necessarily a failure.

In many situations, the capacity to notice differently is a critical intermediate outcome.

Ambiguity, affect, and learning

Ambiguity arises when experience does not admit a single, stable interpretation — for example: when goals are multiple, causes are intertwined, or actors disagree about what is happening.

In such contexts, disruption is harder to interpret. Prolonged exposure to high levels of ambiguity often generates anxiety or urgency.

Individuals and organisations may respond to this by narrowing interpretation, accelerating decisions, or stabilising a coherent story too quickly.

These responses are understandable. They restore a sense of control.

But they can also amplify learning in particular directions — reinforcing certain expectations while suppressing others. The more complex and fast-moving the context, the more intense this dynamic becomes.

Learning can stabilise narrow and even harmful interpretations as easily as it can open new ones.

At the individual level, a person may learn ways of coping that are harmful.
At the interpersonal level, groups may learn which questions are unsafe to raise.
At the organisational level, routines may solidify around explanations that once made sense but now limit possibility.

These patterns are not signs of an absence of learning. They are forms of learning that consolidate coherence, efficiency, or comfort — sometimes at the expense of adaptability.

Learning under ambiguity is therefore both inevitable and sensitive, creating feelings and pressures that are often very difficult to navigate under real-world pressures.

“More learning” is not automatically the goal. What matters is what kind of learning is taking hold, and how it shapes what becomes possible next.

Turning attention toward learning itself

If learning is always happening — across nested levels, through expectation and encounter, under conditions that may amplify anxiety — then a different question becomes possible.

Not only:

What are we learning?

But also:

How are expectations being formed and stabilised?
What kinds of disruption are being absorbed or amplified?
Which patterns are consolidating across levels?
How is learning shaping what becomes possible next?

Learning About Learning builds from this shift in attention.

LUCA offers a structure for examining how learning unfolds under conditions of ambiguity.