Thoughts on a Pedagogy OF Complexity
david byrneComplicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
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...
Related papers
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.
A review of "Complexity and Education: Inquiries into Learning, Teaching, and Research" by Brent Davis and Dennis Sumara, 2006
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...
Using Complexity Theory to Support Curricular, Pedagogical and Professional Developments in Scottish Physical Education
2008
This paper describes how complexity theory principles relating to self-emergence and connectivity have been employed to inform our recent developmental work in Scottish physical education. We suggest that these complexity principles have purchase in postmodern times characterised by uncertainty, multiplicity, and contradiction (Fernandez-Balboa, 1997). We cite examples from the development and delivery of a Developmental Physical Education Programme in Scotland to assert that complex learning principles can be employed to structure curriculum and pedagogy endeavours. These examples from practice highlight the ways in which a complexity-oriented learning approach provides a challenge to hierarchical, reductionist, and behaviourist notions of learning which have long held a strong foothold in the field of physical education . At the same time, we pay attention to critical questions which have been raised regarding the practicality of structuring educational practice with emerging theories such as complexity theory .
Complexity theory: supporting curriculum and pedagogy developments in Scottish physical education
Sport, Education and Society, 2011
This paper describes how complexity theory principles relating to self-emergence and connectivity have been employed to inform our recent developmental work in Scottish physical education. We suggest that these complexity principles have purchase in postmodern times characterised by uncertainty, multiplicity, and contradiction (Fernandez-Balboa, 1997). We cite examples from the development and delivery of a Developmental Physical Education Programme in Scotland to assert that complex learning principles can be employed to structure curriculum and pedagogy endeavours. These examples from practice highlight the ways in which a complexity-oriented learning approach provides a challenge to hierarchical, reductionist, and behaviourist notions of learning which have long held a strong foothold in the field of physical education . At the same time, we pay attention to critical questions which have been raised regarding the practicality of structuring educational practice with emerging theories such as complexity theory .
Complexity and Health Professions Education: a Basic Glossary
Journal of evaluation in clinical practice, 2010
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.
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
Emergence: Complexity Pedagogy in Action
Nursing Research and Practice, 2015
Many educators are looking for new ways to engage students and each other in order to enrich curriculum and the teachinglearning process. We describe an example of how we enacted teaching-learning approaches through the insights of complexity thinking, an approach that supports the emergence of new possibilities for teaching-learning in the classroom and online. Our story begins with an occasion to meet with 10 nursing colleagues in a three-hour workshop using four activities that engaged learning about complexity thinking and pedagogy. Guiding concepts for the collaborative workshop were nonlinearity, distributed decision-making, divergent thinking, self-organization, emergence, and creative exploration. The workshop approach considered critical questions to spark our collective inquiry. We asked, "What is emergent learning?" and "How do we, as educators and learners, engage a community so that new learning surfaces?" We integrated the arts, creative play, and perturbations within a complexity approach.
" Walking the Line Between Structure and Freedom " A Case Study of Teachers' Responses to Curriculum Change using Complexity
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.
Related topics
Related papers
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.
AARE 2008 Complex curriculum and pedagogy 1 Complexity Theory: Supporting Curriculum & Pedagogy Developments in Scottish Physical Education
2013
This paper describes how complexity theory principles relating to self-emergence and connectivity have been employed to inform our recent developmental work in Scottish physical education. We suggest that these complexity principles have purchase in postmodern times characterised by uncertainty, multiplicity, and contradiction (Fernandez-Balboa, 1997). We cite examples from the development and delivery of a Developmental Physical Education Programme in Scotland to assert that complex learning principles (Light, 2008; Morrison, 2008) can be employed to structure curriculum and pedagogy endeavours. These examples from practice highlight the ways in which a complexity-oriented learning approach provides a challenge to hierarchical, reductionist, and behaviourist notions of learning which have long held a strong foothold in the field of physical education (Light, 2008). At the same time, we pay attention to critical questions which have been raised regarding the practicality of structur...
Complexity and health professions education
Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 2010
Thinking in complexity about learning and education: A programmatic view
… Journal of Complexity and Education, 2009
In this contribution the focus is on sketching a programmatic view of thinking in complexity about learning and development. This kind of thinking goes beyond linear thinking. The new thinking in complexity about a dynamic complex reality may enable us to build a new science of learning and education, which does not take the nonlinear complex reality for granted but regards it as "real": a science with a framework that does not exist yet. A new vision on learning is presented which takes the concept of interaction as a key concept, which may be linked with the notion of dynamic complexity. Thinking in complexity has its focus on "that which is interwoven". Learning and development through interaction may thus be viewed as a way of co-creating ourselves within a web of reciprocal relationships with the other. This co-creation may be described as a complex of self-generative, self-sustaining processes of mutual "bootstrapping" with potentially nonlinear effects over time. Modelling learning this way, may show learning to be a potentially nonlinear phenomenon within a new reality as the domain of possibilities and potentialities of learning. The modelling of such learning as "bootstrapping," and the concomitant effects on both partners in the interaction, shows these very possibilities and potentialities of learning in their humanly connected spaces of possibility. It demonstrates the very truth of Vygotsky's adage that "it is through others that we develop into ourselves." Based on his thoughts, we are able to develop a new view of the complex nonlinear reality of learning and education, with learners as potentially nonlinear human beings.
Complexity and Education: Inquiries into Learning, Teaching and Research
International Journal of Consumer Studies, 2009
Integrating complexity thinking with teacher education practices: a collective yet unpredictable endeavour in physical education?
Sport, Education and Society, 2016
While complexity thinking features increasingly in the education and physical education literature, there remains a paucity of research presenting evidence of the influence that complexity principles have on learning. We further advocate that more work with complexity thinking is required to investigate how teacher educators engage with key complexity principles in their work with students and teachers. Accordingly, in this paper we investigate how one group of teacher educators, the Developmental Physical Education Group (DPEG), have grappled to develop their own knowledge of complexity thinking while concurrently attempting to support students and teachers in their efforts to apply these principles within local schools. Employing methodology from self-study, the paper provides data from two focus group interviews carried out in 2012 and 2014 in which six members of the DPEG discuss how they wrestled to understand, share and support the application of complexity thinking in practical contexts. In particular, the paper explores how the group members worked with complexity principles such as self-organisation, emergence, and 'the edge of chaos' to develop innovative pedagogical strategies with children, students and teachers. Findings from the study reveal how all members of the DPEG, in their initial engagement with complexity principles, raised questions about their personal approaches to the teaching and learning process but also struggled to use the principles to inform their practice. Two years later, however, as the group's confidence with complexity thinking grew, the members had created a shared understanding and language around complexity thinking, were more comfortable debating issues around complexity and also describing how key principles had impacted upon their pedagogical strategies in practical settings.
Complexity science and education: Reconceptualizing the teacher's role in learning
Interchange, 2007
This writing is structured around the question, "What is teaching?" Drawing on complexity science, we first seek to demonstrate the tremendously conflicted character of contemporary discussions of teaching. Then we offer two examples of teaching that we use to illustrate the assertion that what teaching is can never be reduced to or understood in terms of what the teacher does or intends. Rather, teaching must be understood in terms of its complex contributions to new, as-yet-unimaginable collective possibilities.
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 ...
About the outdated Newtonian paradigm in education and complexity and a complexity science of learning: How far are we from a paradigm shift?
Educational Research Review, 2008
Our call for comments on the Jörg et al. Paper on complexity science has led to the submission of many reactions from all over the world. Hoping to feed a real discussion on this important issue, we present the most solid reactions: Kumpulainen (Finland), Lovat (Australia), Alexander and Loyens (USA), Daly (UK), Pnevmatikos (Greece), Mayer (USA), Laevers and Heylen (Belgium), Leydesdorff (The Netherlands) and Human-Vögel (South Africa). Jörg et al. will be invited to continue this valuable discussion.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.