IN-PERSON: Applying Education

Abstract

In this presentation, we propose that complexity-informed practices can be employed effectively to not only help education move beyond long dominant modernist approaches (Biesta, 2021) but also to integrate contemporary postmodern perspectives that currently seek to influence the education landscape (Cilliers, 1998). To support our argument, we suggest that four complexity commonalities (Mitchell, 2008), becoming, lived time, self-organisation and boundaries, can be used to frame education developments that are more coherent, connected and emergent. We first suggest that all education stakeholders, particularly students and teachers, are involved in a non-linear process of becoming as their past, present and future experiences constantly merge in a lived time unity. As this process of becoming unfolds, each stakeholder’s self-organising abilities are central to this non-linear process because they enable each stakeholder the opportunity to influence the nature of their becoming journeys. This self-organising process, however, is not a relativist phenomenon but is constantly taking place within boundaries, some of which may be fixed and rigid while others may be flexible, even porous. We subsequently argue that flexible boundaries have a key role in complexity-informed practice because they enable the creation of ‘boundary spaces’ in which ‘rich interactions’ can take place and support efforts to create these more coherent, connected and emergent developments. We conclude the presentation by considering how stakeholders may be supported to develop the self-organising knowledge and skills that will help them engage effectively in the ‘rich interactions’ that ‘boundary spaces’ offer.