What Is Complexity and What Is It Doing in a Nice Place Like Education?

• In Event: Back to Basics: Using Complexity Theory as a Theoretical Framework for Educational Spaces

Abstract

The classroom, the primary educational space of and for learning, is messy, complex, and highly organic. These sites are replete with individual actors known as teacher, student, and object. Each function in a distinctive manner, recursively influencing the learning and teaching process that is as unique as its actors (Burns & Knox, 2011; Davis, 2008). Within a complexity framework, researchers are able to more fully investigate the teaching and learning experiences in the classroom as a complex dynamic system. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the classroom as an organic space replete with infinite possibilities within the framework of complexity theory.
Theoretical Framework. The complexity of the classroom is what Davis and Sumara (2006) describe as ambiguously bounded: teacher and student in their interactions and exchanges create the dialogue and form the culture of the classroom in ways that are constantly changing and evolving. Both teacher and student are active participants and decision-makers in the classroom whose relational interactions co-create the meaning of the space (Semetsky, 2008).
Mode of inquiry. This conceptual paper explores the relationship between teaching learning using the concepts of initial attractors, emergence, and bounded infinity. These concepts to explore the possibilities of (re)conceiving the classroom space toward a shifting paradigm of thinking and learning as a complex dynamic system (Hardman, 2011).
Data sources. To investigate the classroom space as a bounded, the author will conceptualize the roles of the teacher, student, and classroom space as communicative agents with mutually reinforcing influence on the learning space. All actors are both participant and product of the system that they, in turn, reproduce (Rasmussen, 2006). Rasmussen (2006) argues that the classroom is an interactive system wherein modes of communication is the “crucial” element in the teaching and learning process (p. 220). The classroom operates a site for learning and teaching in terms of its relational, nonlinear interactions toward meaning-making and knowledge production.
Argument. The author argues that the classroom space is an organic, dynamic system where both the learning experiences of the individual and the collective mutually impact the meaning-making experience of the classroom. The fundamental precept of determining whether or not learning in taking place is an intangible, felt phenomenon. Other frameworks, while successful in capturing certain elements of the teaching and learning process, ultimately fail to fully explicate the multitude of interactions, communications, and emergent properties that capture the richness and complexity of these educational spaces. If the teacher is viewed as a disrupter, then (s)he becomes a provoker of learning. Similarly, the student becomes an active agent in the educative process. Thus, the classroom space becomes a living, organic dynamic system.
Significance. Futures thinking suggests that we look forward and continuously seek ways to (re)conceive educational experiences. The framework for conceptualizing educational spaces must evolve with the change over time and be in tune with the realities of its age. Complexity theory provides that structure needed for investigating the learning and teaching of the classroom.

Author

• Serina A. Cinnamon, University of North Carolina at Pembroke