Making of Patterns

As Christopher Alexander discovered, patterns are powerful. By defining them, and then putting them together into Pattern Languages, we are able to replicate deep, profound experiences. Something he called QWAN.

We call this new paradigm Agile Learning, one that creates Joyful Sandboxes through iterative Learning Cycles.

We have been exploring how we might be able to use Pattern Languages for the transformation of schools from teaching institutions to learning organizations. This profound paradigm shift requires us to delve deeply into the nature of the learning experience.

Dayton's school is living in this new paradigm. As we had hoped, it has become a Positive Deviant for others. But without a framework for sharing with others, the chasm between a school's current paradigm and a desired new paradigm, can seem uncrossable.

Pattern Languages are valuable tools to help guide this process.

Patterns Languages are a collection of patterns that are linked together in a relational network. But it all begins with experiences.

When we are operating in a new paradigm, we are having experiences that are transmutational and transformational. Transmutational in the sense that something deep inside of us fundamentally shifts. Transformational in that we translate that shift into a new way of being and doing.

These experience are real. But to be shared, we need to label them and to decipher their meaning. By deciphering their meaning, we come to understand why an experience was important and key insights that it generated. Sometimes, it helps to use a 3x3 Reflection for this process.

The next step is to define its Pattern. These patterns define the meaning and suggest practices that can potentially create a similar experience for others. Experiences that might deeply touch and change us.

Patterns relate to each other. As they connect, a network of meta-meaning is created, a pattern language.

Pattern languages are powerful ways for us to communicate and replicate experiences among a vast number of people. They form the bridge over the chasm in a way that ties us all together into a new, shared understanding.