Complexity Theory and Critical Realism: A New Framework for Teacher Education Research

• In Event: The Problem of Linear Thinking in Research on Teacher Learning: Can Complexity Theories Help?

Abstract

Problem and objectives
Researchers have used multiple theoretical frameworks, including activity theory (Engstrom, 2001), structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) and complexity theory (Davis & Sumara, 2006), to avoid reducing teacher education to its pieces and to account for its multiple contexts. Paper #1 draws on empirical analyses conducted by Project RITE (Rethinking Initial Teacher Education), an international cross-disciplinary research project, to argue that a research platform based on the integration of complexity theory and critical realism (CT-CR) offers new questions and methods that can generate explanatory theories about the connections of teacher education and student learning.

Theoretical framework and related literature
A major idea that complexity theory offers teacher education research is the distinction between complicated and complex systems (Byrne, 1998; Cilliers, 1998; Davis & Sumara, 1997). Complicated systems, which are equal to the sum of their parts, can be taken apart and the pieces closely studied and improved apart from the overall system. In contrast, with complex systems, complexity is manifested at the level of the system itself as a result of the parts’ interactions and non-linear relationships and of intricate feedback loops in the system (Cilliers, 1998). The RITE group has integrated these and other key ideas from complexity theory with key ideas from critical realism, a philosophy that connects aspects of the natural and social worlds at the level of deep causal mechanisms (Bhaskar, 1987; Sayer, 1992). Here, we follow sociologists (Byrne, 1998, 2001; Reed & Harvey, 1992) who link complexity theory with critical realism to relate macro and micro issues without reductionism and to acknowledge that under some conditions, human agents can initiate particular causal sequences.

Findings and contributions
This paper argues that the CT-CR framework changes both the questions we ask about initial teacher education and how we seek answers as well as the nature of what we find. Using CT-CR as a research platform, we generated five groups of new questions: (1) questions about how programs function as systems, how participants understand system elements, and how system effects are amplified or diminished; (2) questions about programs/pathways and policy, such as how new policy creates disequilibrium and what learning opportunities emerge for teacher candidates and students; (3) questions about the ambiguous borders of complex systems, such as how program systems interact with schools as systems and how information flows between and within; (4) questions about systems’ initial conditions and limits, such as the non-linear effects of feedback and other mediators on the emergence/non-emergence of teaching practices that enhance student learning; and (5) questions about teacher education system environments, which intersect with multiple systems of social inequalities (Walby, 2007), such as how inequalities shape candidates’ learning and whether/how programs can help candidates develop critical and applied understandings of these. Drawing on the results of three empirical analyses, which address questions from groups 1 and 5 above and which use variations of system mapping as a tool for data collection and analysis, this paper examines the potential of CT-CR as a framework for teacher education research.

Authors

• Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College

• Fiona Ruth Ell, University of Auckland

• Lexie Barbara Grudnoff, The University of Auckland

• Larry H. Ludlow, Boston College

• Mavis Haigh, The University of Auckland

• Mary F. Hill, University of Auckland