#ISSS2016 Boulder

2879 This paper brings together a systems approach and an academic literacies perspective to offer a response to the problem of how to support professionals enrolled for postgraduate study in the transition to scholarly research practice. While such study presents exciting opportunities for practice-led research, there are a number of challenges for the academic staff member who supervises the research. For becoming a researcher and scholar is more than a process of bridging a gap between the world of work and academia, as these students seek to maintain their professional identities while navigating what is valued in the academy and the power relations in and between contexts. Recent approaches to research capacity development have shifted away from viewing the transition to scholarly research practice as simply a matter of transferring skills across contexts or as socialization into the valued research conventions. Rather, from an academic literacies perspective, becoming a research scholar means coming to participate in a practice characterized by particular knowledge, tools, values, behaviours, ways of using language, and power relations, some of which is tacit and some of which is explicit. From this perspective, language use such as reading and writing is central to the process of thinking, producing data, and generating new knowledge. Supporting students in this process can present a challenge to academic staff for whom, as experts, the process of doing scholarly research has become tacit. Pressure to increase graduation rates and to reduce time to completion in postgraduate programmes, has placed the role, practice and responsibility of the supervisor in facilitating the development of research practice under increased scrutiny. Many universities have intensified their efforts at supervisor and research training by creating human activity systems with purposes aligned with this goal. At the University of Cape Town where the research reported in this article is located, discipline experts have also taken the initiative to draw on language and literacy experts to support students in research writing development for the research report or dissertation. This contribution of the literacy expert has often been in the form of a course or series of lectures as a service to a programme or group of students. This paper reports on an example of the systemic collaboration, at the level of a programme, between literacy and discipline experts in the design of a dissertation process. This programme attracts students who are working full time, usually in engineering disciplines and is offered as a block release Systems Practice Masters Programme. The purpose of supervisory practice in this programme is to develop practice-led research drawing on systems theory and practice. The specific aim of the collaboration between discipline and literacy expert is to facilitate the holistic development of the reading and writing practices valued in scholarly research practice. This design incorporates the integration of activities, modelling and feedback that facilitates interaction between the conventions of the research practice, what the student brings to the practice, and the agency of the student. The systemic approach involves working together at programme level with a clear conceptual framework of academic literacies. In this paper we present the integrative design as an activity system. We present preliminary findings of our investigation of the development of students’ research writing practices and their perceptions of the dissertation preparation process. These findings are based on the analysis of student texts, focus group interviews and reflections on the impact of supervisory practice. Key words: Academic literacies; dissertation preparation; postgraduate research capacity development; practice-led research; systemic design for learning; systemic collaboration

2740 This study was commissioned by the Global Education Futures forum for presentation at its fourth International Conference in Moscow, Russia, from 29 February to 2 March 2016 (http://edu2035.org/#program). The objective was to conduct field research with a special focus on the vision of the future of education held by young people. This report presents some views and perspectives of my generation regarding what they want education to be like in the future. In northern California, my teachers Ms. B and Mr. Wahanik used the framework of questions and activities that my father and I developed to gather this kind of information by running a sort of “focus group” with my 10th Grade class and to find out what their views, perspective, opinions, ideas, hopes and concerns are regarding this theme. This group consisted of mainly 15 and 16 year olds, and there are around 40 students in my class. They had less than an hour to run the whole process, but everyone already knew each other really well so they could go quickly through the process, as described in this report. A similar process was run with a group of young people in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Here I had to work with people whom I had never met before and who also didn't know each other at all. We had exactly 12 students from a variety of public and private schools with an age range from 12 to 17 years old. However, we had a total of three hours with them, so we could do an icebreaker and take our time to move through the whole thing. In both cases (California and Argentina), the idea was to engage young people in a series of structured creative Future Thinking adventures that helped them “invent” what education (learning and teaching) should be like in the year 2035. The idea behind this is that educators and those involved in the systemic re-design of education systems might want to include this kind of data and these kind of perspectives in the work they are doing. I would like to present my findings at the ISSS and to see whether others think more of this kind of work should be done.

2752 In 1969, Erich Jantsch published his paper about the disruptive forces affecting higher education and society. He was serving as a research associate at MIT and studying the futures of MIT and the American University at the time. Jantsch (1969) said students were concerned about whether the college curriculum was relevant. Meanwhile, society was concerned about the degrading side effects of technology on the systems of human living, cities, and the natural environment. Lastly, Jantsch pointed to the rising concern about the lack of systems and futures thinking. He coined these concerns “disruptive forces” and believed that the university was well-positioned to assume a new leadership role in society in order to assist in transforming these concerns. Jantsch predicted (hoped for) five crucial institutional innovations in order to transform disruptions into “cohesive forces”. Jantsch passed away ten years after the publication of this document and didn’t have the opportunity to see if his ideas came to fruition. Using a mixed methods approach, this study explores the evolution of higher education institutions by posing questions that revolve around Jantsch’s five crucial innovations, including a new purpose for the university, socio-technological system engineering, altering the structure of the university, re-orienting the operational principles of the university, and a more active relationship between the new university and society. Five institutions highly referenced for their innovation will be invited to participate in this research. Jantsch’s “crucial innovations” frame this investigative study. The conceptual framework consists of the concepts of disruptive forces, the three functions of higher education, self-renewal, and integrative planning. This paper will present the preliminary findings to this study. Keywords- Erich Jantsch, higher education, disruptive forces, self-renewal, integrative planning, innovation.

2823 A Systemic Model for a telecommunications innovation system was designed with the proposal for technological development, to avoid situations that endanger the cancellation, by the International Union of Communications of the satellite orbits assigned to Mexico, and thus promote public and private investment through the integration of basic and applied scientific research in enterprises. The idea is to make appropriate innovations and make significant improvements to products, thus meeting the demands of domestic and international consumers. Keywords: Systemic model, innovation, and technological development.

2887 This article outlines a unified Communication Theory linking cyber-systemic, and cyber-semiotic perspectives. The objective is explaining communication as an emergent system from the interaction process between socio-ecological systems. The emergent communication system seen from a unified perspective is applied as a participative integral transformation process toward the harmonic relationship between human communities and their dynamic social and natural environment. It includes the description of an evolutionary communication process between social and environmental leaders of organizational networks under real conditions. It describes the evolutionary stages of the communication system between different social and environmental leaders who have been working in social organizational networks of Mexico in the last thirty years. The last stage of this emergent communication process among social organizational networks leaders began in 2009, is called: the Ecosystemic Dialogues, it is communication system with qualitative complexity and critical awareness. It is a social laboratory of change under real conditions, through a participative action-research cybernetic process, for a harmonic and sustainable relationship between human and natural systems, through a complex communication dynamic. It is a process toward the sustainable systemic health of the planet. Keywords: Communication, cyber-semiotic, qualitative complexity, emergent properties, ecosystemic metaphor

2778 “On each continent and in each nation one can find creative bubbling, a multitude of political initiatives in the direction of economic, social, political, cognitive, educational, ethical or existential regeneration. But everything that must be connected is yet dispersed, fragmented, separated. These initiatives are not aware of each other, no institution enumerates them, and no one is familiar with them. They are nonetheless the breeding stock for the future. It is now a matter of recognizing, aggregating, enlisting them in order to open up transformational paths. These multiple paths, jointly developing, will intermesh to form a new Path which will decompose the path we are following, and which will guide us toward the still invisible and inconceivable metamorphosis.” (Morin, 2011, p34) Working towards more sustainable systems is a critical endeavor of the 21st century requiring collaborative efforts for the broad development of systemic literacy. This paper explores the potential of patterns and pattern languages as tools for systemic change and transdisciplinary collaboration, investigation and design, and outlines the ways they could be further operationalized to develop and leverage collective intelligence and agency towards Curating the Emergence of Thrivability and Realizing Sustainable Futures in Socio-Ecological Systems. Considering patterns and pattern languages, social organization, and systemic change from a variety of perspectives, the author suggests that the concept of pattern has an unfulfilled potential as cognitive technology for meaning-making, mediation, systemic configuration and exchange of knowledge, both within and across domains of human activity. In particular, patterns have properties that could help address the unity versus diversity dilemma while dealing with complex challenges. Rather than giving a complete theoretical review of the field of transdisciplinarity and systemic change, the paper sets key elements of the context and investigates possibilities and directions for future work. Starting with an outline of the nature and dimensions of the complexity challenges the world is faced with from a systemic and cybernetic perspective, the paper explores the versatile properties and functions of patterns and shows how they could help conceive and develop a whole family of tools for systemic focus, interpretation and connectivity. Finally, it presents possibilities of applications of pattern-based approaches in transdisciplinary intervention contexts, using patterns as boundary objects to bring into focus different dimensions of complexity. Keywords: complex systems, patterns, pattern languages, systems literacy, critical systems thinking

2777 This paper introduces Positive Systems Science (PSS), which combines the strength-based lens of positive psychology with the holistic lens of system science, with the ultimate goal of bringing about desired systems change that supports the well-being of living systems. Systems science is an interdisciplinary field that studies the nature of systems—from simple to complex. Positive psychology aims to empirically understand and build wellbeing, resilience, and optimal function in individuals, organizations, and communities (Seligman & Csikzsentmihalyi, 2000). Like a pair of spectacles, each lens is valuable in and of itself, but we suggest that the synthesis of the two fields transcends the value of either one alone. Systems theory draws from diverse disciplines, including biology, sociology, ecology, engineering, computer science and philosophy. It enables interdisciplinary dialogue between autonomous areas as well as within the science itself. Although there are numerous approaches within systems science, they share three common aspects: 1)A desire to understand inter-relationships; 2)A commitment to multiple perspectives and 3)An awareness of boundaries (Williams & van’t Hof, 2014). Despite its successes and the potential of the science to address the complexity of real world problems, system science has never captured the attention of a wide audience. There is a vast literature on systems theory and methods that newcomers can feel overwhelmed, with nowhere to start. New users have to master a large number of theories, ideas and techniques and a subscription to a particular view of what system thinking is. Further, there is a lack of research on its practical application. In contrast, positive psychology has successfully engaged researchers, professionals, policy makers, and the general public, with scholarship in the field increasing by 410% of the past decade (Rusk & Waters, 2015). It provides scientific understanding of the human psyche and methods for affecting mindsets, motivations, and individual behaviors. We suggest that positive psychology adds value to systems thinking theory by emphasizing the importance of mindsets and motivations, and methods for shifting individual behaviour. Further, drawing on its strategies for connecting with various audiences, positive psychology can help make systems tools more useable, practical, and engaging. As an example, we demonstrate how a commonly used systems framework, Peter Senge’s ‘system archetypes’ can be adapted and strengthened by interpreting the archetypes from a positive lens. We will show how making tools more user friendly invites researchers from other disciplines, policy makers and practitioners to try on parts of the theory and benefit without having to master a large number of ideas and techniques before they can apply them in their work and life. Notably, the popularity of positive psychology has come at the cost of application going well beyond the science, with interventions and programs blindly implemented while ignoring the complex context in which people reside. Systems science challenges positive psychology to add sophistication to the methods and theories, which better captures real world experiences. Systems tools can take positive psychology to a deeper level that will have more sustainable impact. Thus, systems science and positive psychology both have strengths and weaknesses, and we suggest that the synthesis of the two perspectives will create frameworks, tools, and applications that are greater than either perspective alone. Such an approach does not simply identify and address existing problems, but generates pathways toward yet unimagined futures.

2921 At the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, we are developing a distance learning doctoral program in public health (DrPH) focusing on adaptive leadership. Students complete dissertations, some explicitly using action research models, but all in support of the overarching program goal of developing practice based evidence for guiding systemic change. Core principles and skills embedded in our curriculum include systems thinking and systematic reflection. Dissertation research begins with building a problem statement for a “wicked” problem the student wishes to address, with associated initial action relevant broad research questions (how do we solve this problem?). We have required students to articulate their assumptions about what the problem is or might be and critically consider alternative ways of framing their problem statements, and have drawn from soft systems, systems dynamics, and Bob Williams’ syntheses of these and other systems traditions in doing so. As a next step, we require students to develop a conceptual framework and a visual representation of it that draws both from scholarly literature and from reflection on their practice experience. Identifying alternative ways of stating the problem does itself open up the exploration of more possibilities for solutions. Since, however, the ultimate goal of student scholarship is to contribute to solving a problem, not just stating it, developing the conceptual framework or model often involves describing a current state of affairs, selecting and specifying constructs or dimensions relevant to a description of this current state, as well as envisaging a more desirable future state and a pathway(s) to get to the future state from the current state. So there is a “theory of change,” or assumptions about what gets included in a description of the system, and how to get from point A to point B, that is at least implicit in the student’s model or conceptual framework, which we want to see made explicit. Furthermore, students need to develop, and operationalize (be able to apply to data collection and analysis) specific research questions investigating those pathways for change and/or refining the description of the current state. Thus far, not surprisingly, the results of research often include a re- or amended conceptualization of the model with which the student started, which can become the basis for action recommendations for change. In the more participatory action research options taken by some of the students, the student researcher is an active agent in those pathways for change, for instance acting as a developmental evaluator or facilitating community of practice discussions. In a “theory of change” approach one of the sources we draw from is evaluation methodology: evaluators from the Aspen Institute used the term in the 1990’s to discuss a participatory approach to evaluation that directed evaluators to facilitate discussions among stakeholders about what assumptions about how change happens they were bringing to a given intervention and, ideally, come to some consensus about this before finalizing a logic model for the intervention and relevant indicators. This has been further developed in evaluation circles via increasing critical attention paid to program logic and theory and intervention models. Another, more research-based approach to developing ‘theories of change,’ however, has to do with comparing the received ideas of the students as public health practitioners with what is supported in systems and social science literature. We would like to discuss with ISSS colleagues the implications of taking a “theory of change” approach to the development of conceptual frameworks and associated research questions as applied to the “wicked problems” our students select, and to that end will present some examples from our recent work with students.

2810 This paper explores the similarities, differences and potential synergy between action research, social systems design, and design thinking. As three distinct participatory approaches to systemic change with different origins and assumptions, the authors explore ways in which these approaches can converge for maximum social impact. Kurt Lewin is often referred as the originator of action research within the field of social psychology. In the late 1930s he created the foundation for organizational behaviour and introduced an interactive cycle of reflection, discussion, decision and action which empowered people affected by a problem to cooperate in its solution. Social systems design, as developed by Bela H. Banathy in the 1980s, is a disciplined future creating inquiry that synthesizes and grows from the soft systems science tradition. Its emphasis is in designing the ideal system through a values-driven dialogic process that engages stakeholders into an exploration of “what should be” rather than trying to fix the existing problems. Design thinking is a recent articulation of a similar way of thinking but with the intention of addressing the lack of creativity and innovation capacity in business corporations. Tim Brown coined the buzzword in 2009 and his design company, IDEO, became the leader is popularizing ‘human-centered design” for creative problem solving. Although there are differences in language, assumptions, and methodological approaches, these three participatory processes share the intention of involving people in the creation of new possibilities that will directly impact them. When looking at the complexity of social problems, it is becoming clear than trying to “fix” the current social systems is not sufficient to create a peaceful and sustainable culture. A systemic, future-oriented, and ideal-informed design orientation is necessary to innovate the evolution of human institutions. Education is one of those institutions that is ripe for radical redesign. Rather than continuing to prepare our youth for a broken socio-economic system that does not produce equity and is destroying the environment, we need to empower future generations to engage in a learning process that explores the edge between the known and unknown, and in the spirit of design, involves them in the design and experimentation of new possibilities. As part of the inquiry, the authors share insights, lessons and reflections from the experience of designing an alternative high school program. A group of stakeholders from a charter school in California engaged in the redesign of single subject classes to trans-disciplinary workshops, replacing grades with competency-based assessments such as digital badging, and incorporating deeper experiential learning throughout the high school curriculum. Designing a school in collaboration with the stakeholders was enlightening beyond developing pedagogical innovations customized for the community of learners. Concepts in human-centered design were critical to assist stakeholders, especially traditionally trained teachers, in embracing the systemic changes. Emotional challenges, such as anxiety and apprehension, were addressed through design-thinking principles, such as empathy. The authors learned how elements of each of the three methodologies of action research, social systems design and design thinking each contribute critical components in the process of creating systemic change. This paper explores the similarities, differences and potential synergy between action research, social systems design, and design thinking. As three distinct participatory approaches to systemic change with different origins and assumptions, the authors explore ways in which these approaches can converge for maximum social impact. Kurt Lewin is often referred as the originator of action research within the field of social psychology. In the late 1930s he created the foundation for organizational behaviour and introduced an interactive cycle of reflection, discussion, decision and action which empowered people affected by a problem to cooperate in its solution. Social systems design, as developed by Bela H. Banathy in the 1980s, is a disciplined future creating inquiry that synthesizes and grows from the soft systems science tradition. Its emphasis is in designing the ideal system through a values-driven dialogic process that engages stakeholders into an exploration of “what should be” rather than trying to fix the existing problems. Design thinking is a recent articulation of a similar way of thinking but with the intention of addressing the lack of creativity and innovation capacity in business corporations. Tim Brown coined the buzzword in 2009 and his design company, IDEO, became the leader is popularizing ‘human-centered design” for creative problem solving. Although there are differences in language, assumptions, and methodological approaches, these three participatory processes share the intention of involving people in the creation of new possibilities that will directly impact them. When looking at the complexity of social problems, it is becoming clear than trying to “fix” the current social systems is not sufficient to create a peaceful and sustainable culture. A systemic, future-oriented, and ideal-informed design orientation is necessary to innovate the evolution of human institutions. Education is one of those institutions that is ripe for radical redesign. Rather than continuing to prepare our youth for a broken socio-economic system that does not produce equity and is destroying the environment, we need to empower future generations to engage in a learning process that explores the edge between the known and unknown, and in the spirit of design, involves them in the design and experimentation of new possibilities. As part of the inquiry, the authors share insights, lessons and reflections from the experience of designing an alternative high school program. A group of stakeholders from a charter school in California engaged in the redesign of single subject classes to trans-disciplinary workshops, replacing grades with competency-based assessments such as digital badging, and incorporating deeper experiential learning throughout the high school curriculum. Designing a school in collaboration with the stakeholders was enlightening beyond developing pedagogical innovations customized for the community of learners. Concepts in human-centered design were critical to assist stakeholders, especially traditionally trained teachers, in embracing the systemic changes. Emotional challenges, such as anxiety and apprehension, were addressed through design-thinking principles, such as empathy. The authors learned how elements of each of the three methodologies of action research, social systems design and design thinking each contribute critical components in the process of creating systemic change.

2788 The proposed presentation will present the theoretical findings of my master’s thesis, as well as their practical application to youth engagement programming around the world. The presentation will first outline a traditional rites of passage framework as it relates to community-based engagement of youth. Research from the fields of psychology, anthropology, experiential education, and systems dynamics will be presented to demonstrate the importance of such practices in healthy youth and community development. The challenges that contemporary outdoor youth engagement programs are encountering will be explored, highlighting the specific system obstacles they face in effective implementation. The presentation will progress to present a research backed, theoretical model for the development of community-based outdoor rites of passage programming. The proposed model involves active community mentorship networks, locally based preparation and reintegration of participants by community members, and self-directed adolescent design of rites of passage experiences. Lastly, I will discuss the practical application of this model in various youth engagement initiatives around the world. The audience will be engaged to both share their own outdoor rites of passage experiences, as well as contribute tangible additions to the emerging new model of community-based outdoor youth engagement. Future research on the relationship of such programming to asset building communities will be proposed and discussed at the end of the presentation.

2782 In this paper we discuss how socio-technical intervention in socio-ecological systems can increase understanding of burning issues that drives systems unstable and unbalanced. Using the challenge of drilling oil in the Yasuni National Park ecosystem in Ecuador and balancing it with the diversity of socio-cultural inhabitants in the ecosystem, we show how we can develop a space for evolution of mutual understanding of a CoI (Community of Interest) consisting of multiple system stakeholders and what mechanisms can help us in articulating concrete actions happening across different domains - ranging from scientific findings and publications all the way to artistic and emotional-engaging interventions, evolving in this way from mere transdisciplinary to rather holistic approach of solving complex socio-ecological problem. Paper presents outcomes of the pre-event, at-event, and post-event interventions at the workshop “Which data to look for? How to build thriving knowledge communities?“ related to the BunB conference. Our unique approach was to provide CollaboFramework (consisting of CollaboScience and CollaboArte socio-technical systems) that creates a dialogical space for mapping mutual fuzzy and multi-truth knowledge of known issues and guiding evolution of that initial knowledge through the set of dialogical interactions among stakeholders. CollaboFramework system is a novel approach that unites infrastructure for the collective-knowledge space with the set of socio-technical tools that incrementally evolve that collective-knowledge weaving. With CollaboFramework we recognize uniqueness and complexity of transdisciplinary dialogue of CoIs that aim solving wicked problems. We provide support for modeling personalized socio-technical processes governing each of those communities. Processes coordinate different components of CollaboFramework in the most efficient way for particular CoI and challenges it is facing at the moment. Processes guided with socio-psychological insights help CoIs to converge multidisciplinary knowledge into coherent and landscaped knowledge with the set of insights that will be capable of governing future actions and interventions in the problem-space, namely creating public media and artistic projects that will engage society and let all relevant stakeholders to be heard and recognized. In the future iterations of the CoI events, this will bring additional insights and start another iteration in the spiral of CollaboDialogue and calls for actions. In this paper we discuss how socio-technical intervention in socio-ecological systems can increase understanding of burning issues that drives systems unstable and unbalanced. Using the challenge of drilling oil in the Yasuni National Park ecosystem in Ecuador and balancing it with the diversity of socio-cultural inhabitants in the ecosystem, we show how we can develop a space for evolution of mutual understanding of a CoI (Community of Interest) consisting of multiple system stakeholders and what mechanisms can help us in articulating concrete actions happening across different domains - ranging from scientific findings and publications all the way to artistic and emotional-engaging interventions, evolving in this way from mere transdisciplinary to rather holistic approach of solving complex socio-ecological problem. Paper presents outcomes of the pre-event, at-event, and post-event interventions at the workshop “Which data to look for? How to build thriving knowledge communities?“ related to the BunB conference. Our unique approach was to provide CollaboFramework (consisting of CollaboScience and CollaboArte socio-technical systems) that creates a dialogical space for mapping mutual fuzzy and multi-truth knowledge of known issues and guiding evolution of that initial knowledge through the set of dialogical interactions among stakeholders. CollaboFramework system is a novel approach that unites infrastructure for the collective-knowledge space with the set of socio-technical tools that incrementally evolve that collective-knowledge weaving. With CollaboFramework we recognize uniqueness and complexity of transdisciplinary dialogue of CoIs that aim solving wicked problems. We provide support for modeling personalized socio-technical processes governing each of those communities. Processes coordinate different components of CollaboFramework in the most efficient way for particular CoI and challenges it is facing at the moment. Processes guided with socio-psychological insights help CoIs to converge multidisciplinary knowledge into coherent and landscaped knowledge with the set of insights that will be capable of governing future actions and interventions in the problem-space, namely creating public media and artistic projects that will engage society and let all relevant stakeholders to be heard and recognized. In the future iterations of the CoI events, this will bring additional insights and start another iteration in the spiral of CollaboDialogue and calls for actions.

2815 A sizeable body of research and literature is developing about toxic leadership and workplace bullying. Our earlier work found distinctions between tough bosses and true bullies in the workplace. A later study showed that military officers were able to clearly identify differences between hard but effective leaders and toxic leaders. That work was extended into the organizational climates which seem to promote toxic leaders and bullies. Other colleagues have explored potentials for changes in bullying behavior through executive coaching interventions, noting that some executives simply lack awareness of their behaviors, or the effects on those around them. The focus of this paper is the synthesis of earlier findings, to begin a more systemic understanding about the relationships between individual, organizational, and societal behaviors with respect to bullying and toxic leadership.

2781 Learning networks combine multistakeholder collaboration with community-spanning interaction and exchange across sites and scales. They are inter-organizational voluntary collaboratives that support innovation and social learning to promote systemic change. Learning networks are often attempted in situations where existing institutional arrangements cannot address looming challenges, and change is thwarted by a combination of lack of capacity and a powerful status quo. The four learning networks we are examining address the challenges of ecological fire restoration, urban resilience, fostering adaptive capacity to climate change and other unprecedented challenges in developing countries, and the deep cultural divide between the academy and the public (also see our team website www.brugo.org). We will consider how these LNs increase capacity to transform complex adaptive systems in which they are embedded. Our definition of resilience is grounded in how collective action can purposefully reconfigure systemic relationships to promote a new and desired state. We will explore how learning networks can balance the autonomy that individual organizations and communities require with the cohesion required to catalyze transformative change in policy and institutions operating at higher spatial/temporal/organizational scales. Different kinds of learning take place at each of different network levels – it is the effective interweaving of these heterogeneous interactions that fosters transformative capacity. Learning networks are bridging organizations: they form a bridge between different ways of knowing in communities and organizations, and they bridge to alternative futures by fostering innovation. Learning networks disrupt old habits and foster new collaborative relationships, reinforcing participants’ shared ties and purpose while providing freedom to experiment with innovative approaches. Learning networks rely on effective design and ongoing facilitation to function effectively. Network facilitators or “netweavers” may be formally identified or may emerge from among network participants. These netweavers collaborate with participants in identifying goals and an effective network topology and infrastructure. Netweavers initiate activities that build community and promote a shared identity that provides the foundation for common practice and purpose. Ties within the network deepen over time as participants identify collaborative solutions. We will explore these features by drawing insights from the origin, design and netweaving of our four learning networks. We will show how effective learning networks possess a loose, light structure that allows them to learn and adapt as their membership becomes more confident and experienced, as new needs and opportunities are recognized, and as resources and institutional support require. We will also consider how network design is cross-scalar, combining interpersonal and group collaboration with network-spanning interaction and exchange. Finally, we will reflect on how networks foster transformative capacity, an idea that is both conceptually subtle and difficult to detect over the short timescale of our fieldwork. To the extent possible, our work is conducted by our being embedded in network leadership teams and actively participating in ongoing discussion about the network design and facilitation. We will also discuss how participatory action research and developmental evaluation frameworks enable this balance between participation and analytical engagement.