Three Generations of Complexity Theories: Nuances and Ambiguities (original) (raw)
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Complexity as a theory of education
Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, 2009
Educational research, as a domain of academic inquiry, is a relatively young field. Most of its major journals have been established since the 1960s, and only a few of them were in place a century ago. University-based colleges and faculties of education are similarly recent. Very few have been around for more than a half-century. For the most part, when they were first established, colleges and faculties of education drew their personnel from specialists in psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, management, and the subject matter areas. And even though the situation has changed so that a huge majority of current faculty members have been credentialed by schools of education, the derivative nature of the field continues to be manifest in the names of its subfields and departments: educational psychology, educational philosophy, educational history, mathematics education, and so on. Few branches, with the obvious exception of curriculum studies, can justly be seen as proper to e...
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.
2005
Thanks also to Professor Philip Higgs at the University of South Africa for his kindness, generous hospitality and advice during a difficult time with the research, and for introducing me to the work of Gert Biesta. I am deeply indebted to my four supervisors: Joan Solomon for having offered me an opportunity to do this work, despite a lack of theoretical background in this field. Without this initial supportive gesture this work would not have begun. Roger Harrison for his encouragement, and support throughout the process. Paul Cilliers for his patient engagements with my many, tedious emails about the paradoxes of complexity, a task he undertook with considerable good humour, and Gert Biesta, my principal supervisor, for his inspirational theoretical input and for always `complicating the scene' thereby taking me further and further out of my depth. I now know that when one is out of one's depth, it is not simply a case of learning how to swim We survive in unimaginable ways.
Revisiting Educational Research Through Morin’s Paradigm of Complexity
I was recently invited by Deborah Osberg and Wiliam E. Doll Jr., the new editors of the journal Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education to reflect on Ton Jörg’s paper “Thinking in Complexity about Learning and Education: A Programmatic View“. The reflection I developed in my paper Revisiting Educational Research Through Morin’s Paradigm of Complexity follows the epistemological and anthropological critique characterizing the “paradigm of complexity” proposed by Edgar Morin (1977/1992, 1980, 1986, 1991, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2008). It invites one to question the way one conceives changes and transformations brought by the use of the notion of complexity itself. In this perspective, instead of focusing on the content of Jörg’s theoretical propositions, my intent is to question and comment on what I interpreted as being some of the implicit assumptions which frame his reflection. The aim of this paper is therefore to question the way one conceives the use of a specific theoretical approach (i.e., theories associated with the concept of complexity) in order to promote changes in educational practices and theories. The position I am adopting in this paper translates indeed the conviction that any reform of thought has to be conceived in conjunction with a reflection about the idea of reform itself (Morin, 1999). It is therefore assumed that the use of the notion of complexity, to be critical and to bring significant changes, supposes not only to use a specific theoretical vocabulary, but also and above all to change the way scientific activity itself is conceived in order to bring about such a transformation. The reflection proposed is articulated around five axes: Morin and the Paradigm of Complexity; Program versus Strategy of Research; Prescription versus Interpretation; Monoreferentiality versus Multireferentiality; Distance and Generalization versus Contingency and Implication. Additional contributions from Deborah Osberg, Klaus Mainzer, Gert Biesta, Brent Davis, M. Jayne Fleener David Kirshner and David Kellogg, Bernard Ricca, and William E. Doll, Jr, are available at http://www.complexityandeducation.ualberta.ca/COMPLICITY6/Complicity6\_TOC.htm
COMPLEXITY. Roots and meaning of a concept that we cannot do without. A manual against clichés.
2023
The word "complexity" for many remains a terra incognita, so much so that some mistake it for "complication" while for others it is synonymous with "confusion", a way of not wanting to see reality in its clear contours. Unfortunately, for decades now it has not been possible to go beyond the cultural contrast between the use of absolute laws-values and unpredictability, which automatically leads to cultural relativism. In this book I will try to show how there is a path other than determinism and unpredictability and this path is what complexity science has been developing for at least 30 years. This path is the path of complexity. The greater complexity of individuals and societies today does not mean that simple aspects have disappeared: there are times when I must choose, either this or that and war is one of them. Complexity does not deny data, information, indeed there is no complexity without content and information. Complexity is made up of networks, hubs, links, vision, strategy, priorities and requires a new mental approach and is what people and institutions (primarily schools) are missing. This book aims to introduce elements of understanding of a reality with which we must increasingly come to terms; we are immersed in a complex world but we face it with inadequate tools because they were fine once or with fantasies without cultural foundations. Complexity is not a simple word, but a cultural universe whose characteristics we must know and recognize.
Higher Education Letter, 2019
The purpose of this study is to examine the implications, challenges and opportunities of complexity theory for the curriculum (national curriculum). In this study, "Speculative Essay" is used as research method and "Review of Documentation" is used as a tool for information gathering. The main features of complexity theory include totalism, mutual causality, mental reality, uncertainty, self-regulation, multi-sectarianism and nonlinearity. Curriculum according to the national curriculum document has seven essential elements, including student, teacher, content, teaching, learning, assessment, learning environment and school principal. The findings of the research showed that according to the complexity theory, there are some features of this theory in the seven elements of the national curriculum, but still do not cover all the implications of this theory, In addition, the findings of the paper showed that such issues as dichotomy, rule breaking, non-static, neglect of respect, and lack of linear order, multiple causality, or multiple causality can be considered challenges to curriculum and opportunities for the program. The lessons can be seen in terms of incremental, contradictory, and paradox, causal, fundamental, and gradual interaction, cooperation and communication, creative thinking, and self-study.
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 ...
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.
Complexity thinking in ALL practice
2014
Complexity Theory is a movement that has its beginnings in the physical sciences and mathematics. However, the understandings of this movement have led to recent developments in theories of learning and cognition. Learning is no longer seen as an act of capturing information or a process of meaning construction; learning is understood as a process of adaptation and evolution that emerges through the learner’s interactions with a dynamic and responsive environment (Davis, Sumara, & Luce-Kapler, 2000; Doll, 1993). It is important to assert here that this theory is not one that lends itself to prescriptive practices, but what it offers is insights into the nature of learning, and as such guides preparation in facilitating learning (Davis & Sumara, 2005). This paper will explore complexity theory and how it can be used to inform ALL practice.