Method and Complexity in Educational Sciences (original) (raw)
Related papers
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, Methodology and Method: Crafting a Critical Process of Research
Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 2013
This paper defines a theoretical framework aiming to support the actions and reflections of researchers looking for a ‘method’ in order to critically conceive the complexity of a scientific process of research. First, it starts with a brief overview of the core assumptions framing Morin’s “paradigm of complexity” and Le Moigne’s “general system theory”. Distinguishing ‘methodology’ and ‘method’, the framework is conceived based on three moments, which represent recurring stages of the spiraling development of research. The first moment focuses on the definition of the research process and its sub-systems (author, system of ideas, object of study and method) understood as a complex form of organization finalized in a specific environment. The second moment introduces a matrix aiming to model the research process and nine core methodological issues, according to a programmatic and critical approach. Using the matrix previously modeled, the third moment suggests conceiving of the research process following a strategic mindset that focuses on contingencies, in order to locate, share and communicate the path followed throughout the inquiry.
This thesis uses complexity theory to explore education in the context of a changing curriculum called ‘Opening Minds’. This new curriculum was introduced in the case study school in response to a wider curriculum change which emphasised ‘learning to learn’ and the development of ‘skills for the 21st Century’. In this study, a ‘complexity thinking’ theoretical framework was adopted, drawing especially on the work of Osberg and Biesta (Osberg et al., 2008, Osberg and Biesta, 2007, Biesta and Osberg, 2007) and Davis and Sumara (2006; 2007), paying particular attention to concepts of emergence and complexity reduction. Complexity theory, through the ‘logic of emergence’ offers a challenge to mechanistic approaches to understanding the world which, despite the work of postmodern and poststructural scholars in education, remains dominant in educational practice. The Opening Minds curriculum that is the focus of this case study demonstrated the potential to challenge this mechanistic approach, as the teachers expressed a desire to work in different, flexible and creative ways: this thesis therefore explores complexity theory’s challenge to a mechanistic approach in this particular case. It also addresses the relationship between Opening Minds and science education using complexity thinking. To facilitate exploration and analysis of the case, concepts of temporal and relational emergence and complexity reduction to develop a ‘complexity thinking’ understanding of concepts of agency/structure, power, identity and reflexivity. This entailed reconceptualisation of these ideas in a temporal-relational sense that explicitly incorporates a sensitivity to emergence. Specifically, an additional dimension to Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) construction of multidimensional agency was added: that of creative agency. The research was conducted as a case study in which a ‘bricolage’ approach to data collection and analysis was used as part of an explicitly ‘complex’ methodology, addressing questions of the challenge of complexity reduction and ethics in research drawing on complexity theory. The findings indicated a challenge for teachers in negotiating tensions as they attempted to adopt approaches that could be considered ‘emergent’ alongside other ‘mechanistic’ practices. These tensions were explored in detail in relation to the concept of ‘reflection’, and in the interaction between science and Opening Minds. Bringing together the empirical and theoretical work in this study, it is suggested that mechanistic and emergent aspects may helpfully be viewed as a ‘vital simultaneity’ within the educational 4 relationship (Davis, 2008) with the interaction between them facilitated by creative agency within a ‘pedagogy of interruption’ (Biesta, 2006). It was further argued that reflection could be used in responsive and flexible ways to support both learning and assessment as a crucial aspect of a pedagogy of interruption. Such a ‘contingently responsive and creative pedagogy’ may support the interaction between science and Opening Minds productively. It is suggested that complex approach to a pedagogy of interruption could support teachers in engaging with the creative and diverse elements of science or learning to learn curricula whilst maintaining the mechanistic aspects of teaching that support students in learning key concepts and skills.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2008
It is now widely accepted that qualitative and quantitative research traditions, rather than being seen as opposed or in competition with each other (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995; Furlong, 2004) should be used, where appropriate, in some kind of combination (Bryman & Cramer, 1999; Moore et. al. 2003). How this combining is to be understood ontologically, and therefore epistemologically, however, is not always clear. After looking briefly at the wide variety of different practices and epistemologies which are conflated in the use of qualitative/quantitative as a binary concept, the paper will explore this area of 'critical connections' in relation to the analysis of data. Complexity/dynamic systems theory will be explored as offering the basis of a different kind of ontology which might open up possibilities for creating different types of knowledge (see Byrne, 1997). HOW IS THE COMBINING OF QUALITATIVE/QUANTITATIVE METHODS TO BE UNDERSTOOD? The assumption that qualitative and quantitative traditions can be 'fused' (Bryman & Cramer, 1999), or at least combined meaningfully (for example, in mixed method approaches), raises a number of questions about how such fusion/combining is understood, in terms of the meaning and interpretation of different kinds of research results (whether these are based on realist, interpretive or other types of philosophical orientation). Although some researchers seem to suggest that the relationship between these different approaches to research is relatively unproblematic (eg. Silverman, 2001
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.
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...