COMPLEXITY-IN-EDUCATION REFERENCES

BOOKS
(Click on the highlighted blue title for an extended review.)

Cutright, March (Ed.). 2001. Chaos theory and higher education: Leadership, Planning and policy. New York: Peter Lang. (This collection of essays focuses chiefly on planning dilemmas in universities and colleges in Canada and the US. Written by faculty members, many who are practicing administrators, the collection evokes what it calls “chaos theory” in a few general terms like self-similarity, co-emergence, self-organization and nonlinearity. These tend to be translated without much analysis into simple prescriptions for administrators: in strategic planning exercises stay flexible, encourage diversity, tolerate unpredictability, and have a contingency plan. Not recommended overall, despite a few strong chapters.)

Davis, Brent. 2004. Inventions of teaching: A genealogy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. (A short account of how teaching has been conceptualized from the modern to present day. Davis builds on these modernist "inventions" to propose a complexivist approach to teaching and learning that understands education as an emergent choreography - an expansion of the space of the possible. This text not only describes complexity science perspectives as they apply to education, but it also lives out those perspectives in the very structure and layout of the text. Of particular interest will be the sophisticated clustered glossary.)

Doll, William, E., Jr. 1993. A post-modern perspective on curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press. (One of the foundational texts to the field of complexity science and education. Doll rigorously examines closed (modern) and open (postmodern) systems approaches as he proposes a bold reconceptualization of traditional curriculum frameworks.)

Doll, William, E., and Noel Gough, eds. 2002. Curriculum visions. New York: Peter Lang. (A unique and multi-layered text that includes a series of diverse and visionary perspectives, problematics, and teaching implications on contemporary issues in curriculum from a distinguished list of contributing authors, including C.A. Bowers, Deborah Britzman, and William Pinar. Significantly, several authors explore and re-conceptualize curriculum as complexity. For a lucid example, see Doll's provocative article on the five C's - Curriculum as Currere, Complexity, Cosmology, Conversation, and Community.)

Doll, William. E., M. Jayne Fleener, Donna Trueit, and John St. Julien. eds. 2005. Chaos, complexity, curriculum, and culture: A conversation. New York: Peter Lang. (This edited collection of international essays explores the importance of complexity and chaos in education. The text is described as “rich in material, recursive in its interweaving themes, conversational in its relationships, and rigorous in its analysis.)

Egan, Kieran. 1997. The educated mind: How cognitive tools shape our understanding. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. (Egan juxtaposes critically current conceptions of education to demonstrate how they are often positioned as competing discourses. Egan posits a new theory of education that draws from the fields of complexity science, cognition, and education.)

Fleener, M. Jayne. 2002. Curriculum dynamics: Recreating heart. New York: Peter Lang. (Fleener builds bridges toward a curriculum future evolving from curriculum present and past. Her text compels educators to notice, 'the world and everything in it as alive, dynamic, interdependent, interacting, and infused with moving energies: a living being, a weaving dance' (p. 194). Educators working to create learning organizations in the spirit of Senge (1990) and DuFour and Eaker (1998) will be compelled to investigate Fleener’s main thesis, which positions curriculum as the heart of the living system that is the school.)

Hoban, Gary, F. 2002. Teacher learning for educational change: A systems thinking approach. Buckingham, UK: Open University. (In this text Hogan explores the central question “What conditions will help to establish a framework for long-term teacher learning to support educational change?” To address this question, Hogan guides readers through a systems thinking approach, situated in complexity theory and nonlinear dynamics, to explore the dynamic relationship between teaching and learning that he utilizes to develop a new theoretical framework, which he situates as a Professional Learning System.)

Kincheloe, Joe and Kathleen Berry. 2004. Rigour and complexity in educational research. Buckingham, UK: Open University. 208pp (The authors investigate intensifying claims and mounting pressures for increased scientific rigour and evidence-based research practices in education. Knicheloe and Berry offer the alternative perspective of the bricolage as a new conception of rigour. Chapters include a focus on the need for interdisciplinarity, the bricolage and complexity, and feedback looping as a way of increasing complexity).

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Davis, Brent and Elaine Simmt. 2003. Understanding learning systems: Mathematics education and complexity science. Journal of Research in Mathematics Education 34(2): 137-167. (One of the first major research articles to integrate complexivist principles into the field of mathematics education. The authors have created an important and sophisticated theoretical framework from which they highlight a reconceptualization of the mathematical classroom and community.)

TEACHING RESOURCES

Engaging Minds: Learning and Teaching in a Complex World
(Brent Davis, Dennis Sumara, and Rebecca Luce-Kapler; Erlbaum, 2000;
ISBN: 0-8058-3785-X). Engaging Minds involves readers in a stimulating, informative, comprehensive exploration of teaching and learning. It prompts examinations of the complexities of learning, pedagogy, and schooling while refusing simplistic notions or irresolvable tensions that sometimes infuse popular debates. Topics include:

• the biological and social roots of perception;
• historical and contemporary perspectives on learning;
• emergent understandings of intelligence, creativity, and diversity;
• complexities and contingencies of self concept; and
• technology, its impact on cognition, and its place in schooling.

In addition to conceptual reviews of these topics, the text provides elaborated descriptions of many specific teaching events, in different subject areas and at all age levels, followed by interpretations which include suggestions for teachers.

Safe and Caring Schools in a Complex World — A Guide for Teachers (authored by the Complexity and Education Seminar Group) Safe and Caring Schools in a Complex World provides a brief introduction to some of the core principles of complexity science, framed in terms of some of the practical and everyday concerns of teachers. Click on the booklet for a PDF version of the document. This document is part of the Safe and Caring School series sponsored by the Alberta Teachers’ Association.