Pattern literacy in support of systems literacy: an approach from a pattern language perspective

ABSTRACTTo understand and adapt to the world around us, and to collectively make decisions that can ensure its systemic health in the long run, we must get a grasp of how the systems that our designs generate actually behave and evolve, not only in their 'mechanical' aspects, but also in their psychological, relational, political, and existential dimensions. The skills that this requires may be thought of as Systems Literacy. Systems Literacy involves a set of 'sensing' and mediating capabilities that can help us identify, interconnect and make sense of weak signals of systemic behavior in growing volumes of information. This approach includes leveraging the complementarity of perspectives, knowledges, and know-hows across disciplines and domains of action, and helping us to enter in resonance with each other and our environment, in order for systemic coherence to emerge as a whole as a result of fragmented collective change efforts. Because patterns are embedded in cognition, and are so essential for both discerning and designing form, we believe that the development of Pattern Literacy could beneficially support the enhancement of Systems Literacy. This paper explores the properties of patterns as units of systemic meaning-making and how these properties could be combined as a system to enhance pattern literacy and ultimately support the development of systems literacy.