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- Vol 6 RE: Chapters 2, 3, 5, 14
complexity thinkingemergenceself-organisationenabling constraintsadaptive systemsnested learning systemsreflexive inquiryBook Evidence summaryAt a glance
Davis and Sumara explore complexity thinking as an orientation for educational research and practice. Learning systems—individuals, classrooms, schools, disciplines, and cultures—are nested, interacting, adaptive, and capable of producing patterns that cannot be reduced to the intentions or properties of separate parts.
Key ideas
Concepts such as emergence, self-organisation, feedback, diversity, redundancy, neighbour interactions, and enabling constraints challenge linear models in which a teaching input reliably causes a predetermined learning output. The authors do not offer complexity as a universal recipe or a metaphor to apply loosely. They examine its intellectual roots, methodological implications, and possibilities for understanding cognition, collective learning, curriculum, teaching, and inquiry. Educators can influence conditions for emergence without fully controlling outcomes: they can establish productive constraints, preserve diversity, connect ideas and participants, attend to multiple levels, and adapt responsively.
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Researchers are likewise participants in evolving systems, so educational inquiry must remain reflexive, situated, and attentive to relationships and change over time.
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- TE
- Teacher Edition
- PE
- Practice Edition
- RE
- Research Edition
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