First Order and Second Order Change

Child and youth care practitioners may find it useful to clarify for themselves whether they deal with developmental change of first- or second-order (Maier, 1984; Watzlawick, Weakland & Rich, 1974, pp. 10-11). An analogy would be water becoming warmer or colder; this is a first-order change. Water turning into ice or steam constitutes a second-order change. First-order change is incremental, a linear progression to do more or less, better, faster, or with greater accuracy. Practice, reinforcement, and time will be the most likely approaches for facilitating sound developmental change of this kind. Activities are tangible, usually verbal interactions between the caregiver and the young person involved.

Second-order change, on the other hand, involves a nonlinear progression, a transformation from one state to another. The aim would be to enable the individual to behave, think, or feel differently. Within the second-order change approach, applicable practice tools might be modeling, confrontation, conflict work, refraining and, most important, the introduction of decisively different personal experience over time. Second-order change requires greater creativity and prolonged investment of time and contact by caregiver and receiver (Maier, 1984). A crucial task of care workers is to be clear as to which order of change they are striving to create. Typically, residential care and treatment work calls for second order change, since it demands substantial intervention and leads to transformational new learning.

Maier, H.W. (1987) Developmental group care of children and youth: Concepts and practice. New York: Haworth. p. 17