Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education
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"To See a World in a Grain of Sand": Complexity Ethics and Moral Education
No full textMaking the case for the mutual relationship between ontology (what reality is like) and ethics (how we should conduct ourselves), this essay argues that the dualistic, linear, deterministic ontology of Modern Science that categorically separates perceiver and the perceived, knower and known is oppressive by virtue of objectification. Delineating a relational (that is, non-linear) ontology disclosed by New Science and Complexity Theory, this essay extrapolates to an ethical paradigm, named ‘participatory ethics’. Key to participatory ethics is perception of “patterns that connect”—which, to manifest, the moral agent needs to emergently embed itself in the pattern, in a manner analogous to fractal reiteration. Since non-linearity (complexity) manifests everywhere we turn and in everything we encounter, participatory ethics modeled after complexity is about recalling, remembering, and reminding ourselves of, our inter-beingness
Curriculum Dynamics: Recreating Heart
No full textA review of Curriculum Dynamics: Recreating Heart, by M. Jayne Fleener, 2002. New York: Peter Lang, 215pp. ISBN 0820455407. $29.95 USD
Strange Attractors and Human Interaction: Leading Complex Organizations through the Use of Metaphors
No full textThis article is intended to explore the theoretical background behind complexity science in management and leadership and provide ways to approach educational leadership research through the use of strange attractor metaphors. Historical and contemporary leadership strategies have incorporated modernistic models that sometimes perpetuate problematic aspects of educational management rather than provide progressive solutions. Several leadership researchers have shown, however, there is tremendous potential for the emergent properties of complexity theory in organizational dynamics. The recognition and utilization of strange attractors as metaphorical constructs of chaos theory also provide us with an elaboration of teaching and educational leadership theory. Strange attractors seem to exist metaphorically in many aspects of the organizational dynamics of our educational institutions. The use of metaphors in lived experience is described, the scientific background behind strange attractors is introduced, and connections are made between strange attractors and human interaction. Strange attractors are then metaphorically described in organizational settings as shared vision, team processes, and information flows used as positive feedback mechanisms
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World
No full textA review of Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World, by Kevin Kelly, 1994. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 521pp. ISBN 0201577933. $22.95 USD
Social Fuzziology: Study of Fuzziness of Social Complexity
No full textA review of Social Fuzziology: Study of Fuzziness of Social Complexity, by Vladimir Dimitrov and Bob Hodge, 2002. New York: Springer-Verlag, 188pp. ISBN 3798015063. $92.00 USD
Classrooms Can Use Therapy Too
No full textPaul Dell, a family systems therapist inspired by the systems thinking of Humberto Maturana, posits that family systems achieve pathology because of what he calls “epistemological errors”: either the refusal to acknowledge reality or the desire to control reality. Reality, in Dell’s definition, is the coupled nature of human interaction, or structure determinism. Applying Dell’s definition to classrooms, I identify two epistemological errors commonly committed by teachers: valuing content more highly than relationships in the classroom and attempting to control students through classroom management techniques. When these two practices are viewed through the systems lens rather than through the modernist, objectivist lens, the relationships that are enacted in a classroom among teacher, students, and the content under study come into focus, and pathology, or repetitive behaviors that obviate desired learning, is more easily discerned. Given the emphasis systems theory places on relationships, I claim that, as with family systems, classroom systems can benefit from the kind of analysis—or “therapy”—that exposes the “coherence,” or the tight relational couplings, within the system that, in some cases, invites non-educative interactions. Such therapy can help teachers shift their own attitudes and behaviors so as to influence those of their students
