Patterns of Social Practice: A Psychological Perspective

From Design Pattern to Patterns of Social Practice

But in non-technical domains, patterns have also been discovered as a powerful method: Manns and Rising (2005) describe a pattern to introduce new ideas into organisations. Coplien and Harrison (2005) address the human and organizational dimensions of software development, and provide organizational patterns of agile software development. Mader (2008) offers a toolbook of patterns and anti-patterns for the adaptation of a wiki. Patterns have also found their way into education and e-learning: To name only a few, Schümmer and Lukosch (2007) have written a book about patterns for computer-mediated interaction, Kohls and Wedekind (2008) describe how patterns can be used for documenting successful e-learning arrangements, and Derntl and Motschnig-Pitrik (2004) focus on successful blended learning processes. Eckstein (2000) has described five connected patterns that portray the process from starting a course to re-running it. Abreu (1996) has introduced two patterns to support the “learning from others’ experiences” effect and to connect academia with the rest of the world. On the Pedagogical Pattern Project (http://www.pedagogicalpatterns.org/) platform, many designers from higher education and industry collect and present their well-tested patterns (Bergin, Eckstein, Manns & Wallingford, 2001).

A similarity between all of these non-technical applications is that they assume that patterns may be used to share procedural knowledge about social practice as well. But there is a big difference between design patterns and patterns of social practice. In the following paragraph, we will highlight this problem by pointing out what we mean by social practice.