Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education
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Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science and Everyday Life
No full textA review of Linked: How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means for Business, Science and Everyday Life, by Albert-László Barabási, 2003. New York: Plume Books, 294pp. ISBN 0452284392. $15.00 USD
Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition
No full textA review of Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition, Heinz von Foerster, 2003. New York: Springer-Verlag, 362pp. ISBN 0387953922. $64.95 USD
Not by breadth alone: Imagining a Self-Organized Classroom
No full textThis paper uses complexity theory as a means towards clarifying some of Gilles Deleuze’s conceptualisations in communication and the philosophy of language. His neologisms and post-structuralist tropes are often complicated and appear to be merely metaphorical. However their meanings may be clarified and enriched provided they are grounded in the science of complexity and self-organising dynamics. Reconceptualizing communication in a manner consistent with Deleuze’s philosophy enriches our understanding of the complexity involved in the process of learning and the whole of educational experience. The paper explores education as “becoming,” that is, a process of growth and becoming-other enabled by creative communication. While the mathematics of complexity is beyond the scope of this paper, some of its conjunctions with Deleuze’s philosophy will be examined for the purpose of addressing such problematic areas in education as, for example, specialisation and the breadth of curriculum. Finally, the paper moves to a practical level so as to construct an image of a (self-organised) classroom. Self-organising dynamics are posited as consistent with what Noddings (1993) called an excellent system of education. Education proceeds without any reference to an external aim. Rather, the “aim” is implicit in the experiential process of self-organisation and, as such, is conducive to students’ learning, creation of meanings, and eliciting broad curricula
Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition
No full textA review of Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition, by Francisco J. Varela, 1999 (L. Gius & R.B Figli, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 85pp. ISBN 0804730334. $13.95 USD
The Potential of Reflective Journals in Studying Complexity \u27In Action\u27
No full textAs educators embrace theories of complexity to inform their teaching and research practice, theoretically relevant methods will be required to appropriately conduct and study complexity-based approaches to education. Action research has been identified as offering significant potential for studying complexity, acting as a form of ‘real life modeling’ for learning and teaching. In this paper it is argued that reflection, a key aspect of action research, can be a productive method for both studying and working with complexity in educational contexts. Reflective journals, more specifically, provide scope not only for gathering research data but also for promoting learning and change. As a teaching approach, reflective journals can reduce the impact of external control while providing opportunities to promote and document instability and disequilibrium. Reflective journals allow for documentation of emergence and bifurcation and embrace participants’ involvement in interpretation of data in inherently non-linear ways. Reflective journals assist to build up an holistic picture of the interplay between individuals’ histories and their current and emergent ‘state’, thus providing insight into ‘sensitivity to initial conditions’. This paper illustrates these theoretical ideas through a case study derived from a course in information and communication technology (ICT) for practicing teachers
Exploring the Common Places of Education and Complexity: Transphenomenality, Transdisciplinarity, and Interdiscursivity
No full textSix Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age
No full textA review of Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, by Duncan Watts, 2003. New York: W.W. Norton, 374pp. ISBN 0393041425. $15.95 USD
Building Blocks and Learning
No full textUsing John Holland’s model of complex adaptive systems, this paper explores how nonnative speakers of English learned to participate and to write in a first-year university rhetoric and composition course. Of particular interest is the emergence of students’ internal models for writing and other class tasks through the reproduction and cross-over of conceptual building blocks, showing that much of learning and creativity is due to recombining what is known rather than invention de novo. The findings in this paper suggest that educators should design curricula around core conceptual building blocks that can be combined in various ways across novel situations and that can lead to an ongoing emergence of new building blocks