A Vision of a Living World by Christopher W. Alexander

About 3 weeks ago, I travelled to a snow-covered West Sussex to meet one of my heroes. I know that I have officially signed off for Christmas, but I can’t resist the temptation to post this now, think of it as my Christmas gift. The extent to which a planning decisions contributes to the wholeness of a lesson, finally determines its degree of life.Exclusive to Transition Culture! An interview with Christopher Alexander This suggests that the concept of the decision may illustrated how Alexander’s concept of the center can be applied to cognitive space. Rather, they rely on and reinforce each other, just as centers in the Alexandrian sense are strengthened by one another. However, these are not independent decisions. An analysis of existing educational models of lesson design shows that teachers need to make a variety of planning decisions.

Transferring this idea to education, in the present case, and more specifically to the problem of lesson design, initially requires a translation of these structural features from the language of physical space into that of cognitive space. In other words, the more of these fifteen properties a thing or system has, the more whole and alive it is. The life of such a thing or system depends upon the life of its component centers and their density. In his late work, Alexander presented a set of fifteen fundamental properties which, he claimed, appearing repeatedly in living things or systems.

The purpose of this paper is to rethink lesson design using Alexander’s theory of wholeness and centers.

The findings contribute to gaining a deeper understanding of These core values are linked to recurrent learning behaviors and specific artefacts that support learning in the articulation of a design pattern. This model is exemplified in a case study that links the analysis of observation in international learning environments to the articulation of design patterns by identifying culturally independent core values that constitute the foundations of a design pattern with international scope. The paper suggests a process model for developing patterns with international scope. Based on a review of the seminal design patterns literature and current practice in the area of learning design, the lack of a more specific process description for developing patterns with international scope is identified. We pay special attention to how the scope of a design pattern is identified and articulated. In this context, design patterns are referred to as structured descriptions of best practice with pre-defined sections such as problem, solution and consequences.

This paper investigates the process of identifying design patterns in international collaborative learning environments.

A Vision of a Living World by Christopher W. Alexander