Searching for the Pattern: Understanding, Assessing, and Transforming Social Settings

A historical analysis of systems theory ideas from the biological and physical sciences reveals their infusion into sociology and action-oriented subfields of psychology, including social, organizational, developmental, and community psychology. Constructs and processes are identified that are useful for creating a framework to understand, assess, and transform social settings. The central theoretical concept that surfaces is the emergent pattern of dynamic transactions that communicates critical information and meaning, referred to as "social regularity." This is followed by an examination of the varying definitions and frameworks of proximal social settings (e.g., classrooms, community-based organizations, workplaces) in which individuals derive the bulk of their experiences in forming their character, identity, learning, and well-being. Social regularity is at the core of an evolving social-setting model that communicates meaning through several channels-control and power, modes of expressing communication, and the flow of information-that result in corresponding distributional equity outcomes. From these communication channels, an action model for transforming social settings to create more equitable aggregate-level individual outcomes and improved setting outcomes is explicated. Corresponding methods of measurement are described. Various strategies and tactics are suggested to directly target social regularities. Relational-, norm-, and structural-focused examples are provided.