Education and complexity
Tamsin Haggis · 2017
Teachers, researchers, policy makers and educational managers are all very aware of the complexity of educational processes. From a complexity perspective, the interactions are not &s;underpinned&s; by any kind of centralised, generative force or structure which could be said to determine their nature; and the idea of emergence in particular confounds the type of deterministic thinking. Complexity, rather, opens up new questions about what can validly be compared cross-sectionally, by framing the focus of research in terms of interactions, conditions and emergent effects. If education is educational precisely because it shapes the subjectivity of those being educated, then it is impossible to distinguish this conception of education from planned enculturation or training. Thinking of people and social/institutional/cultural contexts as complex, dynamic systems allows for the separation of various distinct types of context: the context of the case; and the dynamic systems of culture and society within which the case is embedded.