IN-PERSON: Applying Education

Abstract

Background: Unlike the traditional positivist paradigm, complexity theory embraces organic, non-linear and holistic approaches to understanding online/blended learning. It focuses on dynamic relations within interconnected networks and the unpredictable and synergistic emergence of new properties and behaviours in such networks (Byrne, 1998; Davis & Sumara, 2014). However, such complexity has arisen doubts about the practicality of complexity theory in education (Gilbert, 2018). A common criticism is that complexity theory can only describe educational phenomena in hindsight, but not provide norms or guidance for educational practice (Morrison, 2008). Complexity theory in communities of inquiry
Our study examines how teachers in online communities of inquiry (Garrison et al., 2000) can use the affordances of digital media to capture feedback at the “emergent” system level. With a mixed methods research design, we draw on interviews with and social network analysis of teachers’ online facilitation of twelve postgraduate courses offered at a New Zealand university during the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore how complexity theory enabled us to rethink the way that the boundaries, or enabling constraints, that define complex systems can operate in such communities of inquiry. These boundaries are conceptual (teachers’ understanding of a “class”), methodological (teachers’ evaluation of student ‘classroom’ interactions) and pedagogical (teachers’ role as catalysts of student learning).