Meta learning is the dynamic process whereby a system (relationship, team or organization) manages to dissolve limiting dynamics such as point attractors and limit cycles that impede effective action and evolve liberating and creative dynamics represented by complex attractors whose trajectories in phase space, by never repeating themselves, can portray creative and innovative processes (see complexor). These trajectories have a fractal nature, hence their complex order in which highly creative processes are possible. High performance teams are able to "meta learn" and this differentiates them from the inability of low performance teams to transcend their limiting behaviors that impede innovation and creativity (Losada, 1999; Losada & Heaphy, 2004; Fredrickson & Losada, 2005).
The meta learning model was derived from thousands of time series data generated at two human interaction laboratories in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. These time series portrayed the interaction dynamics of business teams doing typical business tasks such as strategic planning. These teams were classified into three performing categories: high, medium and low. Performance was evaluated by the profitability of the teams, the level of satisfaction of their clients, and 360-degree evaluations.
The meta learning model comprises three state variables and one control parameter. The control parameter is connectivity and reflects the level of attunement and responsiveness that team members have to one another. The three state variables are inquiry-advocacy, positivity-negativity, and other-self (external-internal focus). The state variables are linked by a set of nonlinear differential equations (Losada, 1999; Fredrickson & Losada, 2005; for a graphical representation of the meta learning model see Losada & Heaphy, 2004). When connectiviy is low, there is preponderance of advocacy and self orientation (internal focus) and more negativity than positivity. When connectivity is high there is a dynamical equilibrium between inquiry and advocacy as well as internal and external focus and the ratio of positivity-to-negativity is at least 2.9. This ratio is known as the Losada line, because it separates high from low performance teams as well as flourishing from languisning in individuals and relationships (Fredrickson & Losada, 2005; Waugh & Fredrickson, 2006; Fredrickson, 2009).
The Meta Learning model was developed by Marcial Losada and is now widely used by business organizations, universities and schools round the world.
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“In the world of letters, learning and knowledge are one, and books are the source of both; whereas in science, as in life, learning and knowledge are distinct, and the study of things, and not of books, is the source of the latter.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)