Pre-Season Prep for the Wicked Learning Environment

We’ve been thinking a lot recently about the uncanny nature of human behavior. We are fickle. And we get accustomed to routines, and damn, do we love positive feedback loops.

Many of us have heard experts and laypeople alike refer to the learning environments as either “wicked” or “kind.” As far as I can tell, the concept of a wicked learning environment was coined by psychologist Robin Hogarth, who specialized in judgment and decision-making. (Credit where credit is due.) For clarity, let’s get a baseline for both the wicked and kind learning environments, respectively. Journalist David Epstein’s Substack, Range Widely, offers clear definitions, which I have cited below.