Learning Exchange 04

This is the fourth post in a series that introduces the notion of learning exchanges as one possible institutional form for learning in the future.

The commons is a core component of learning exchanges. Members treat their combined learning as a resource for the common benefit of all members. And the credit clearing system used to finance learning transactions also serves the common benefit of all members.

But huge questions remain about how a learning exchange might actually function. I cannot answer those questions here, because there is no one answer. However, I will draw parallels to the work of Elinor Ostrom on the design principles found in successful examples of self-governed common-pool resource systems. These principles provide helpful guidance for thinking about how a learning exchange might be implemented.

First, however, a word of caution. There are significant differences between a learning commons and the common-pool resource systems that Ostrom and other researchers study. These include:

• Common-pool goods are what economists call rivalrous (one person’s use prevents use by others) and non-excludable (it’s difficult to exclude a person who has not paid for the good from using it). Examples of common-pool goods are fisheries, forests, and groundwater basins. Learning doesn’t fit these characteristics [1].
• Many of the common-pool research studies were conducted among indigenous peoples of the world. Learning exchanges would likely include greater diversity, not necessarily within a single exchange but certainly across exchanges.
• Internet technologies seem to play only a marginal role in self-organized common-pool systems studied. That would likely not be the case for learning exchanges.

Please keep these points of departures in mind as I go through several areas where research on common-pool resource systems does have something quite valuable to say about learning exchanges.

Let’s start with an admonition from Ostrom that permeates her work:

The design principles are not blueprints, however! They describe the broad structural similarities among those self-organized systems that have been able to adapt and learn so as to be robust to the many social, economic, and ecological disturbances that occur over time. Threats always challenge the robustness of any system – no matter how well it fits the best design principles known for a particular problem. [2]

In what follows I’ll highlight several points that Ostrom makes that seem most relevant to learning exchanges. She uses eight design principles (see my earlier post), but the list below does not categorize the ideas by principle. Ostrom’s work is most accessible and powerful when she uses general language instead of scholarly precision (eg, uses the word fairness instead of the equivalence between benefits and costs). I wanted the power of her ideas to appear in this list. Some of the items in the list are quotes or near quotes; others are lightly edited; still others are paraphrased. Any mis-statements of Ostrom’s actual meaning is solely my responsibility.

• Social norms such as trust, reciprocity, and fairness are critical for cooperative behavior, but they are not sufficient. Rules that complement and encourage these social norms are also essential.
• Rules are the shared understandings by participants about enforced prescriptions concerning what actions or outcomes are required, prohibited, or permitted.
• Rules that are fair and effective help build trust among participants.
• The cost of devising and sustaining effective rules increase substantially if participants come from many different cultures, speak different languages, and are distrustful of one another.
• Institutional learning through constant monitoring and adaptation are needed to sustain self-organized resource governance systems.
• It’s important that users define the boundaries of a self-organized resource system, especially what’s included and who’s included, rather than have those boundaries externally imposed. Increasing the authority of participants to devise their own rules may allow social norms to evolve and better sustain the resource system.
• Most users are authorized to participate in making and modifying rules. Problems often erupt when local elites make the rules.
• Rules must be enforced in some manner to achieve robust governance. In most cases users select their own monitors, who are either themselves users or responsible to users.
• Self-organized resource systems rely more on quasi-voluntary cooperation achieved through graduated sanctions for infractions rather than either strictly voluntary or coerced cooperation.
• When conflict does arise, minimizing the conflict requires access to rapid, low-cost, and local arenas of resolution.
• Autonomous self-organized resource systems usually require at least nominal recognition by a governmental unit.
• Learning the specifics of a particular setting and enabling participants to experiment and learn from their own experience and that of others is more likely to create long-enduring resource systems compared with formulaic or blueprint thinking imposed by policymakers and donors.
• Polycentric systems where citizens are able to organize not just one but multiple governing authorities at differing scales provide significant advantages, by nestling smaller self-organized systems into a larger federated arrangement where costly services like information gathering and conflict resolution can be shared.

One final note about learning exchanges. The idea is not new. Writing 40 years ago, Ivan Illich suggested the creation of a “bank for skill exchange”:

Each citizen would be given a basic credit with which to acquire fundamental skills. Beyond that minimum, further credits would go to those who earned them by teaching, whether they served as models in organized skill centers or did so privately at home or on the playground. Only those who taught others for an equivalent amount of time would have a claim on the time of more advanced teachers. An entirely new elite would be promoted, an elite of those who earned their education by sharing it. [3]

In the next and final post in this series, I’ll reflect briefly on learning exchanges as a viable institutional form.

Notes:
[1] Something about the classification of goods by subtractability (rivalrousness) and excludability strikes me as awkward and incomplete. Classifications of goods seem to change according to context, as described in this Classification Table for Types of Goods, especially the last two paragraphs.
[2] Ostrom, Elinor. 2005. Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Note: the list of ideas that seem relevant to learning exchanges appear in Chapter 9, which is wonderfully expressive and evocative. Highly recommended.
[3] Illich, Ivan. 2002. Deschooling Society. London: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd. Note: Original publication date was 1971.