Thinking in Complexity about Learning and Education: A Programmatic View (original) (raw)
Related papers
Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity in Education, 2017
Reinventing education is the ultimate aim of this contribution. The approach taken is a radical new complexity-inspired bottom-up approach which shows complexity as the fount of creativity and innovation. Organizing complexity accordingly may be the foundation for a new complexified vision of education. It all starts with new thinking in complexity about how complexity is actually generated in the real world. Such thinking offers new kinds of complexity like generative and emergent complexity. The approach taken is very much inspired by the genius of Vygotsky, as a visitor from the future. His focus was not only process-oriented, but also very much possibility-oriented. His method was bottom-up, and opened new spaces of the possible, like the Zone of Proximal Development. Yet he was not able to deal with the problem of complexity in his days. He 'simply' lacked an adequate causal framework, which showed causation as a generative bottom-up process, to be linked with potential nonlinear effects over time. He could not explain what he saw as possible: the turning points and upheavals of learning and development. In this contribution the focus will be on the link between the new thinking in complexity and the causal, generative nature of complexity in the real world. This link may show the ontological creativity of the entire world in general, and of human learning and development in particular. It may show the power of generativity to unleash this creativity by a new way of theorizing on education. The complexity-inspired theory of development as generative change, as thriving on the generative power of interaction, is fundamental and foundational for this new theorizing. The Russian scholar Lev Vygotsky has been recognized as a genius in his days (Wink & Putney, 2002, p. xvii), and later been described as "a visitor from the future" (Bruner, 1987). This is for good reasons, as will be shown below. His main focus was on learning and development of children. Yet, he has never been able to offer an adequate scientific view of the complex processes of learning and development (Vygotsky, 1978, Chapter 5). He has never been able to explain the deeply complex nature of the development he described so complexity.
Opening the Wondrous World of the Possible for Education A generative Complexity Approach
This contribution to a book, edited by M. Koopmans and D. Stamovlasis, is about rethinking the foundation of education from a new complexity perspective: that is, of new thinking in complexity about the true nature of complexity of education itself as a process (see Jorg, 2011). The focus is on generative learning through interaction within reciprocal learning relationships. This is foundational for a new generative pedagogy, with a focus on learning and development as a generative process of coming into being through generative processes of becoming. This process may show learning and development as a non-linear process, with non-linear effects over time. This is the learning envisioned already by Vygotsky in the twenties of the last century, showing leaps, upheavals, and qualitative transformation in development over time.
Complexity theory and education
… Research Association, Hong Kong Institute of …, 2006
Abstract: This paper introduces central tenets of complexity theory and current issues that they raise, including: the consequences of unpredictability for knowing, responsibility, morality and planning; the significance of networking and connectedness; non-linear learning ...
Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity in Education, 2010
Brent Davis and Dennis Sumara's Complexity and Education: Inquiries into Learning, Teaching, and Research is an insightful, clearly-written, and provocative contribution to the body of educational complexivist literature-an account we think particularly relevant for researchers and practitioners engaged in a transformative educational ethic. Evoking the phrase "more than human" (Abrams, 1996) as a sensibility where human concerns and action are nested within broader worlds of meaning, and the notion of knowing as adhering to a logic of adequacy, not optimality (a position Maturana and Varela (1998) also hold), Davis and Sumara present complexity thinking as a "pragmatics of transformation" (p. 74) offering "explicit advice on how to work with, occasion, and affect complexity unities" (p. 130). Davis and Sumara take care not to position complexity thinking as a "hybrid" seeking "common ground" (p. 4) or a "metadiscourse" (p. 7), but as a deeply complicit and participatory way of acting which might offer education itself as an "interdiscourse" (p. 159), and simultaneously as a pragmatics with which to engage in the practical educational project. Davis and Sumara see complexity thinking as irreducible participation across multiple, interrelated systems of organization. They introduce the term level-jumping to describe knowing or learning as the capacity to participate in such a multiplicity of separate, yet inseparable, systems (e.g., biological, individual, social, evolutionary). We could quibble with the authors' use of the term level, one of those linear terms so embedded in everyday language, and which may easily suggest "higher" and "lower", or leaving one level behind while moving to another. Yet the authors' point is precisely that these levels or organizational systems are embedded in the action of learningsimultaneously interconnected and inseparable. What such terms render visible is the © Copyright 2010. The authors, RANDA KHATTAR and CAROL ANNE WIEN, assign to the University of Alberta and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive license to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author also grants a non-exclusive license to the University of Alberta to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web, and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the author.
Thoughts on a Pedagogy OF Complexity
Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education
There is now a developed and extensive literature on the implications of the ‘complexity frame of reference’ (Castellani & Hafferty, 2009) for education in general and pedagogy in particular. This includes a wide range of interesting contributions which consider how complexity can inform, inter alia, research on educational systems (Cochran-Smith et al., 2014; Radford, 2008) and theories of learning (Mercer, 2011; Fromberg, 2010), as well as work dealing with specific pedagogical domains including physical education (Atencio et al., 2014, Tan et al. 2010), clinical education and in particular the learning of clinical teams (Noel et al., 2013; Bleakley, 2010; Gonnering, 2010), and learning in relation to systems engineering (Thompson et al., 2011, Foster et al., 2001). This material has contributed considerably to my thinking about the subject matter of this essay which is not the implications of complexity for pedagogy but rather how we might develop a pedagogy OF complexity and, mo...
Complexity Knowledge and Pedagogical Practices
Educação e Pesquisa, 2022
This study deals with a research conducted with Brazilian and Portuguese teachers through an online course that aimed to design a continuing education approach that integrated basic, undergraduate and graduate education teachers, based on the "Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future." To this end, it focused on the "lesson" that deals with error and illusion, from Edgar Morin's perspective. The problem that guided the investigation sought to analyze participants' perceptions about the influence of pedagogical practice, methodology and the proposed learning on a transformation in teaching. The research used a qualitative, action-research approach, and the data was submitted to content analysis using the IBMS Statistics program. Results indicated the occurrence of reflections about the need to consider a thought-reform approach to education, one that overcomes the fragmentation of knowledge. About student engagement in activities proposed by the teacher in class, participants were found to value interdisciplinarity, collaboration, collective work, and the mediation role, and to recognize the influence of psychological aspects on students' interest in and motivation for learning. Finally, the need to overcome determinist thoughts was considered, thus allowing participants to understand that knowledge is subject to errors and illusions also in education, and that expanding human thought can help in the search for solutions to educational problems.
Towards complexity thinking in education with Juri Lotman
Lexia. Rivista di semiotica, 39-40 Re-Thinking. Juri Lotman in the Twenty-First Century, 2022
This paper discusses the potential of Juri Lotman’s semiotic theory for a complexity-based understanding of learning and education. Complexity thinking as a separate approach to research and practice in education has arisen as a response to the growing need to understand how learning systems, such as individual students, schools, and whole societies, can become more adaptable in the light of the accelerating change of our environment. While the issues of learning, teaching or education are not explicitly discussed in Lotman’s semiotic works, his theoretical investigations of creativity, unpredictability and cultural dynamics can serve as suitable ground for envisioning education in ways that transgress the currently dominant paradigm of learning as a controlled linear process with predictable outcomes. We will focus on the dynamics between two different orientations of semiotic activity in Lotman’s semiosphere: on the one hand, we will view learning as non-linear meaning-making oriented towards generating new information; on the other hand, we will focus on how the process of learning is guided by various educational models that serve as stabilizing mechanisms that in turn are continuously transformed by the learners’ unpredictable choices. The tension between these two tendencies is what allows learning systems to develop while maintaining their identity. In the last part of the article, Lotman’s unique take on artistic modelling in which he sees the potential for making sense of extremely complex systems is considered as a means for addressing educational change and channelling learning towards greater adaptability.
Educational theorists are making increasing use of the metaphors and concepts of complexity thinking in their discourses. In particular, Professors Brent Davis, Elaine Simmt, and Dennis Sumara have written extensively about using complexity thinking to shift attention from the individual student as the locus of learning (cognizing agent) to the social collective-the class-as the locus of learning. In this model, the class (students and teacher) is (potentially) a complex adaptive system. The students and teacher remain complex adaptive systems in their own right, but through dynamic local interactions there is the possibility of emergent behaviours indicative of learning that transcends that of the individuals within the class. The social collective we know as a class becomes an instance of the Aristotlean adage, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." (With the coda that we cannot understand the whole by merely understanding the components.) Davis, Simmt, and Sumara have segued from complexity-informed descriptions of educational collectives to discussions about facilitating the self-organization of classes into complex adaptive systems -learning systems, in their language. In this paper, I discuss complex adaptive systems and look at how Davis, Simmt, and Sumara developed their thesis that the class collective, rather than individual student, is the appropriate level to investigate learning and teaching. We conclude by addressing some of the possibilities and challenges inherent in such a redescription of communities of learners.
Educational Change through the Lens of Complexity Science: Changing Thinking for Changed Learners
Northwest Journal of Teacher Education
As education professionals work in times of exponential change, how they think is as important as what they do. Our thought processes frame our creations-and for hundreds of years that frame has been a linear, Newtonian paradigm. Due to advances in hard sciences, we now know that there are other ways of framing our thoughts and understanding our world, and that is through complexity science. Complexity science is a powerful metaphor to use in reviewing our common understandings of school systems and how to reform them to better serve students. This paper includes a primer of complexity science terms and then uses those terms as a lens on school systems for educational professionals pursuing change to meet the needs of the Net Generation of learners as we move into the Information Age. School reform is a phrase that belies the complexity of reforming an education system. Previous ways of thinking about schools and educational design have not led to the advances educational professionals hope for in our schools. Another way to conceptualize schools and how they might embrace change is through complexity science. This shift in understanding has already happened in the hard sciences, and has catalyzed a turn away from old Newtonian conceptualizations of how systems behave. Complexity science informs around notions of complex adaptive systems, initial conditions, attractor states, and bifurcation. These ideas can be used as metaphors for understanding education systems and changes within them, as well as the consistent themes that repeatedly play out in schools. A general overview of complexity science follows which describes the terms complex adaptive systems, initial conditions, attractor states, and bifurcation through the language of complexity science. These terms will be used as a metaphor through which education systems can be understood in a new way. And finally, the reader is challenged to think on one facet of the educational system through the lens of complexity.