Life: Complexity and diversity

Evolving patterns of matter and energy gave rise to the cosmos. The earth, itself a dynamic entity, is inhabited by living organisms that have a dialectical relationship with the world around them.     

Life: Complexity and diversity

Early life on earth arose in an environment without oxygen. In an atmosphere with increasing oxygen concentrations, co-operation among teams of biomolecules led to the emergence of multicellular organisms which over time evolved to give rise to higher plants and animals.     

Life: Complexity and diversity

Living organisms continually evolve to occupy newer environmental regimes. In the process they develop more complex structures and grow to larger sizes. They also evolve more intricate ways of relating to each other. The larger, more complex organisms do not replace the simpler, smaller ones, rather they come to coexist with them in increasingly complex ecosystems. This promotes a continual increase in the diversity of life over evolutionary time.     

Life: Complexity and diversity

Diversity of life is unevenly distributed over the surface of the earth; especially rich are the tropics, mountainous regions and island archipelagos. Lying at the trijunction of Africa, temperate Eurasia and tropical Southeast Asia and enjoying a great diversity of environmental regimes, India ranks about the 10th amongst nations in terms of its diversity of species.     

Life complexity and diversity

The evolutionary history of life is one of continual expansion, of coming into being of increasingly greater diversity of more complex organisms, colonising ever newer environmental regimes. It is a cosmic drama that has become ever more elaborate, as it retires some, but inducts an even larger number of increasingly sophisticated actors into its fold. But the process has by no means been monotonic. It is as if the stage is cleared from time to time to make for fresh beginnings, with major bouts of extinction. Humans are amongst the most complex products of evolution having in turn populated the world with ever growing numbers of complex artefacts. These artefacts are now threatening to overwhelm the diversity of life. But humans may one day engineer life capable of surviving in outer space, and thereby trigger off a new phase of expansion and diversification of living organisms.     

复杂性思维视域下的课堂生活

我们的教学世界是丰富多彩的生活世界,它有别于客观标准的科学世界。科学世界是简单的线性世界,它探寻世界的规律性,具有直线性、单维性的特点;生活世界则是复杂的情境性世界,它充满了偶然性,具有非线性、多维性的特点。科学世界里倡导简单性思维,它寻求事物的确定性,而生活世界则依靠复杂性思维,它探寻对象的情境性。教学世界应是生活的世界,它应该是有血有肉、生动活泼的,单凭简单性思维不能捕捉到课堂生活中最精彩最动人心弦的地方。因此,我们主张把日常的课堂教学生活放在复杂性思维的视域下来考察,通过复杂性思维对课堂生活进行观照,重…     

Life in the Hive: Supporting Inquiry into Complexity Within the Zone of Proximal Development

Research into students’ understanding of complex systems typically ignores young children because of misinterpretations of young children’s competencies. Furthermore, studies that do recognize young children’s competencies tend to focus on what children can do in isolation. As an alternative, we propose an approach to designing for young children that is grounded in the notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky 1978) and leverages Activity Theory to design learning environments. In order to highlight the benefits of this approach, we describe our process for using Activity Theory to inform the design of new software and curricula in a way that is productive for young children to learn concepts that we might have previously considered to be “developmentally inappropriate”. As an illuminative example, we then present a discussion of the design of the BeeSign simulation software and accompanying curriculum which specifically designed from an Activity Theory perspective to engage young children in learning about complex systems (Danish 2009a, b). Furthermore, to illustrate the benefits of this approach, we will present findings from a new study where 40 first- and second-grade students participated in the BeeSign curriculum to learn about how honeybees collect nectar from a complex systems perspective. We conclude with some practical suggestions for how such an approach to using Activity Theory for research and design might be adopted by other science educators and designers.     

复杂性理论与教育的复杂性研究

作为人文社会科学之教育学研究,需要对理性主义的简单性、唯一性、单向度、线性化的思维模式进行反思,继而代之以用复杂性、开放性、多元性、发展性和非线性的观念来审视极为复杂的教育现象与教育生活,从事具有复杂性的教育学研究。在这一点上,复杂性理论的提出和复杂性研究方法的问世,为我们开启了一扇光明之门。     

Learning and gender: Complexity and possibility

Severiens and Ten Dam's efforts to link theories of learning and gender are applauded as a valuable step forward in understanding learning. Complexities of the relationships among epistemic structures, patterns within structures, and learning activities are highlighted as are dilemmas in assessing these multiple layers of learning.     

Teaching and Teacher Education: Complexity Redux

Using narrative inquiry, these authors explored the diverse types of reasoning that seem to direct stakeholders’ approaches to educational decision-making. They labeled these approaches as simple, complicated, and complex. They begin their account by explaining the attributes of narrative inquiry that guided their work. Through the scholarly space their conversations created, they charted distinctions within the field of education between simple, complicated, and complex reasonings and solutions. They then turned to a selection of anchor texts from existing scholarship that furthered their grasp of these three approaches and their application to educational challenges. As suggested by the title, their ultimate leanings favored complexity. In combination, their ideas strengthened a claim that the choice of a decision making option differentially influences policy and classroom actions.     

学校变革的复杂性探析:复杂科学的视角

复杂科学的兴起和发展,为我们认识和理解当前的学校及其变革过程提供了一个新的视角。当前,整体性的学校变革已经逐渐成为我国教育改革的一个趋势,为此,迫切需要冲破对于学校变革简单性认识的束缚,用复杂性思维去分析学校及其变革过程的复杂性,从而为进一步推进学校的深度变革奠定一个坚实的理论基础。     

Complexity and Educational Research: A critical reflection

Judgements concerning proper or appropriate educational endeavour, methods of investigation and philosophising about education necessarily implicate perspectives, values, assumptions and beliefs. In recent years ideas from the complexity sciences have been utilised in many domains including psychology, economics, architecture, social science and education. This paper addresses questions concerning the appropriateness of utilising complexity science in educational research as well as issues relating to the ways in which complexity might be engaged. I suggest that, just like all human endeavour, approaches to research emerge out of discursive communities and can be understood as self‐organising, dynamic and emergent over time. In this formulation, complexity represents one such newly emergent approach. I argue that it is important that researchers partake in critical and reflective discourse about the nature of education and conceptual frameworks, as well as about impacts and legacies of utilising complexity, so as to participate in and influence the ongoing emergence of educational endeavour. I conclude by suggesting a series of caveats for researchers considering using complexity in educational research.     

教育研究:走向复杂

教育研究通常有两种研究范式,分别称之为实证范式和理解范式。从存在哲学认识论角度看,两种范式的认识逻辑分别是"是"—"是者"与"在"—"在者"。然而,它们在"语言界限"和"逻辑界限"上都表现出了颠倒与混乱,其主要原因在于教育活动的复杂性。复杂事物只有通过复杂性理论进行研究。运用复杂性理论对教育进行再认识可以发现,这两种范式在研究中都存在着难以承受之力。鉴于当下所使用的研究方法存在不足以及教育活动自身的复杂性,教育研究应遵从复杂性研究,做到把教育的价值研究与事实研究结合起来。     

“生活”与“生活世界”:误解及其隐喻

生活世界是胡塞尔后期现象学哲学的一个重要概念,指的是人的意识世界。教育学中的生活是指事实性的、被知觉的日常生活。学术界借助现象学生活世界理论诠释教育脱离生活的种种问题,其并非在严格意义上应用生活世界概念,因为现象学中的生活世界与教育学中的生活内涵没有共通性。教育学者之所以借用胡塞尔的生活世界概念,可能并未考虑其内涵的差异,而是学术界或教育学者借物言志的一种表达方式。     

Environmental Education and Complexity

Science & Education - The purpose of this study is to identify and analyze meanings that the term complexity assumes in Brazilian theses and dissertations in the field of environmental...     

地缘政治学与复杂性科学

地缘政治学属于复杂性科学,但迄今为止主要是被帝国主义国家用于争夺和维护世界霸权。经过一百多年的发展,现在是社会主义地缘政治学建立并应用来建立新的世界地缘政治体系的时候了。