Frameworks and Theory - From Homophily to Cognitive Diversity

I started thinking about next Sundays Skype discussion while driving home from my dance workshop on Monday evening. I was turning over in my mind what I understood about frameworks and theories with reference to Adesola's ideas on her blog:
That frameworks are the domed ceiling of a cathedral we work/live/think under.
The theories are the gold leaf decoration which line the dome making visible the form of the dome
The gold leaf reflects back the light making it impossible to see the dome (the framework)
You need to scratch at the gold leaf to reveal the framework underneath.

I was considering how it was easier to understand ideas of theories and frameworks when we think of extremes - For example, thinking about racism - it is easy here to see how the framework houses the theories, which in-turn sustains the framework - creating  a self-referencing truth. The framework becomes a truth not just a set of theories, something that, for people who exist conceptually  within it, they cannot step outside of to question their own understanding.

I then took this analogy and thought about the framework of this MA, the learning framework we are working within and wondered about the conflicting nature of the course itself - We are being asked to reference ourselves and our learning, in conceptual terms, set out by the framework of the course -  Paradoxically we are being asked to 'scratch at the surface of the theories to expose the framework' and maybe step outside of this.

I was wondering all this, while listening to Radio 4, when Matthew Syed started talking about his book 'Rebel; Ideas the power of divergent thinking' (2019).

Syed states that we live in a homophlic society, where we naturally gravitate towards people who have similar conceptual ideas to ours - we all like to hear something that validates our own point of view! 
His premise is that as society becomes more homophilic, ideas become concentrically smaller. If everyone in a group already understands (and believes) in the same theories, the ideas they put forward are likely to be very similar. However, by adding conceptual divergence to a group, the theories and ideas will come from many different places, contradicting and challenging each other, but all varied - as an example he states;

10 conceptually convergent people in a problem solving group, each have 10 ideas - theses ideas are all very similar, so this equals 10 new ideas.

10 conceptually divergent people, in another problem solving group, each have 10 ideas - theses ideas are all very different, so this equals 100 ideas.

So this led me back to thinking about Siemens' (2006) ideas on new technology and how it  is impacting the way we acquire knowledge -  knowledge becomes a shared matrix, a two way process or a 'mass divergent conceptual thinking'. I wondered how this process will impact our framework in the future.

Idealistically we could imagine this sharing/acquiring of knowledge breaking down frameworks, releasing theories and creating a more free-floating framework - Perhaps, a framework that has characteristics more like liquid, (going back to our analogy from our last discussion) could frameworks be like the ocean - there may still be boundaries, and the droplets within them would have form, enabling them to move and flow together, but being liquid, it might be easier to break out and flow wherever the knowledge takes you.

In reality all this freedom to acquire knowledge seems to be creating more a world with more not less polarised thinking - people are at their most homophilic when intimidated. There is nothing like a new idea or theory diametrically opposed to our own to scare us and send us running to frameworks where we feel recognised safe and significant.

So how do we solve this conundrum... how do we use divergent thinking to strengthen sharing of knowledge and not threaten the process itself? And what does it mean for us on this course and the frameworks we are learning to work within/without? 

• https://adesolamapp.blogspot.com/2017/03/ideas-theory-and-theoretical-frameworks.html -Akinleye A (2017) 
• Syed M - Rebel; ideas the power of divergent thinking - 2019

• Siemans G  - Knowing Knowledge - Lulu.com, 2006