Learning Histories: Re-authoring the Future in the Mirror of the Past

In this article we discuss a special kind of storytelling known as “learning histories.” Developed in the 1990s in the wake of the theory of the learning organization invented at MIT, Boston, the theory and method of learning histories has found many applications worldwide. We focus first on the characteristics of learning histories vis-à-vis storytelling in general. Exploring its common basic assumptions, we will first explicate the implications of the crucial difference between storytelling and history telling focusing on the relationship between past, present, and future. Next, we will discuss the practice of deploying learning histories in an organizational and in an educational context. In this part we explore the moral dilemmas which confront learning historians when re-authoring the future by reflecting on the past. In particular we will discuss the problem of doing justice to multiperspectival evidence on the one hand and to writing an effective jointly told story on the other.