Prediction,control and the challenge to complexity

The dominant discourse in research, management and teaching is one that may loosely be characterised as that of prediction and control. The objective of research is to identify causal correlations within policy, management, teaching strategies and educational outcomes that are sufficiently robust as to be able to predict outcomes and make generalisations across practice. With the construction of a cumulative bank of evidence, given clearly specified educational outcomes, we might see research as supporting the improvement of schools towards ‘effective’ or ‘best’ practice. This discourse assumes that education, though complicated, nevertheless takes place within a bounded system of relatively stable, linear and balanced causal interactions. This perspective on schooling may be understood as the ‘prediction/control’ paradigm.

This paper explores the possibility of an alternative perspective, one that is based on principles derived from complexity theory and which may be referred to as the ‘complexity’ paradigm. Under this paradigm schools are seen as open systems, subject to non‐linear and dynamic interactions among the multiple factors of which they are constituted, and often unpredictable. This paradigm, it is argued, is subversive of our ambitions to prediction and control. Researchers need to look to formal enquiry methods adopted in relation to other sites of complexity. In the meantime practitioners and researchers may benefit from various conceptualisations to which complexity theory gives rise, i.e. those of recursive symmetries, attractor states, sensitivity at bifurcation points and the phenomenon of ‘lock in’.     

Art and Lifelong Learning

It is argued, through the example of art education seen from a broad cultural perspective, that the concept of lifelong learning implies common terms of reference for learning in all contexts in which learning takes place, especially in schools, colleges and universities. This implies a common approach to standards at all levels of formal educational provision. The disparity of school art and art in other learning contexts is discussed, and concepts of standards currently in use are examined and found to be highly problematic. The idea of practitioner referenced standards is introduced in relation to standards derived from educational theory and practice. In the case of art these are considered in terms of ‘what it is that artists do; what it means to engage with a work of art at first hand; what people have to say about artists and works of art; and what it means to engage in learning’. Ways of relating these standards to each other and to lifelong learning in the context of a research rationale for an art curriculum are put forward. In conclusion, it is suggested that co-ordination of the current review of the National Curriculum and the developmental work on standards currently being undertaken by the QAA would represent a basis for the establishment of appropriate standards for lifelong learning, although this would require a new level of co-operation between the relevant educational sectors. Such standards would assist in reducing the possibility that lifelong learning could develop as a further isolated and self-justifying educational sector in a divided national educational system. They would also provide an opportunity for post-modern thinking to make a worthwhile contribution to educational debate.     

Educational practice in India and its foundations in Indian heritage: a synthesis of the East and West?

The paper examines education practice in India in terms of the division between indigenous cultures on the one hand, and the formal culture of learning and knowledge systems inherited from colonial times on the other. These ‘two Indias’ are still reflected in the modern educational system in India, seen in the vast differences between the formal school system, whose benefits reach only a minority of the population, and the millions of crafts-persons working in India's informal sector, many without education or training. The paper looks at reasons for these divisions within the culture and history of India's formal, non-formal and informal systems of education and training. The paper also throws light on the aspirations to unite these divided cultures of learning by looking at some of the writings of J.P. Naik, the famous educationist and secretary of the first Report of the Education Commission (1964–66) after India's independence. The analysis needs to be seen against the background of international educational thought which is improving the value, relevance and quality of non-formal and informal learning, as key pillars for building lifelong learning systems.     

Access for All? Sozialinvestitionen in der frühkindlichen Bildung und Betreuung im europäischen Vergleich

The importance of investing in early childhood is widely acknowledged in policy circles. Particularly formal Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is seen as key to creating equal opportunities and combating poverty by increasing educational achievement of children and supporting parental employment. This social investment perspective has in recent decades supported the rapid development and expansion of ECEC in most European countries. However, the international social investment discourse masks fundamental differences in European ECEC systems and detracts attention from the way ECEC is embedded in the wider welfare regime of a country. This paper critically examines the ‘social investment potential’ of ECEC systems by comparing an early social investment country, Sweden, with two ‘late movers’, the UK and Germany. It argues that investing in ECEC is not per se a panacea for social inclusion. To the contrary, if not combined with other, partly ‘traditional’ equality measures both in education and social protection, ECEC investment may have the opposite effect of increasing social inequality.     

Power,pedagogies and lifelong learning: reading between the lines

The UK English subject benchmark statements express the discipline’s commitment to contribute to an ‘ideal of lifelong learning’. In this article, I consider what this commitment may mean for practice and explore why its attainment is complex and contentious. In doing so, I examine some of the ways in which lecturers’ professional identities are experienced and enacted in educational settings where students have their first introduction to higher education English Studies. I suggest that the pedagogic principles and practices which lecturers describe need to be seen as deeply embedded within networks of social and discipline-based discourses and social and institutional relations.     

Globalisation,knowledge economy and comparative education

This paper seeks to introduce this special issue by setting out what seem to be some of the major theoretical and methodological issues raised for comparative education by the increasing prominence of the discourses of the knowledge economy, which, it is argued, represent a particularly strong version of globalisation and its possible relationships to education systems, and hence an especially acute challenge to comparative education. It focuses on the possible implications of these changes for each of the three elements of ‘national education system’. In terms of the ‘national’ it discusses the nature and consequences of methodological nationalism, and emphasises the emerging pluri‐scalar nature of the governance of education. In terms of ‘education’, it argues that education is now being asked to do different things in different ways, rather than the same things in different ways. In terms of ‘system’, it is suggested that the constitution of education sectors may be in the process of changing, with a development of parallel sectors at different scales with different responsibilities. Overall, the article suggests that we may be witnessing the development of a new functional, scalar and sectoral (non zero sum) division of the labour of educational governance. Finally, it addresses the question ‘what is now to be compared’ and considers the consequences for both ‘explaining’ and ‘learning’ through comparative education.     

Lifelong learners: in their own words

This paper draws on research that utilized principles of grounded theory to inquire into the most significant learning relationships throughout the lives of individuals. The partners in this informal learning alliance are defined as ‘learner’ and ‘mentor’. The structure of these alliances is described and the learners' perspective of the alliance is presented. Some meaningful relationships are ascribed to formal settings of schools and colleges, but most take place in social, familial, and community settings, with learning outcomes reported as important for personal development and citizenship. Traditional mentor partnerships are primarily learning relationships and as such are valuable sources of data for those interested in the process of lifelong learning, and what learners value in learning alliances. Traditional mentoring should be considered as valuable as more formal teaching, as it promotes sustainable learning by means of reflection and reflexivity, and appears to be self-perpetuating.     

Supporting teachers' professional development in a developing country through practice-based inquiry and distance learning: some key issues

Abstract

This article highlights seven issues the authors encountered when they took on a very difficult task, namely of seeking, through ‘low tech’ print-based distance learning materials, to promote the professional development of experienced but untrained teachers in Namibia. The authors attempt to do this through the advocacy of an action research approach. There has been no tradition of action research in Namibia, indeed those within the country who promote this approach (the Minister of Higher Education) prefer the term Practice-based Inquiry. Moreover, the support systems that can normally be called into service in a developed country to support teachers in a distance learning initiative of this nature are virtually absent ‘on the ground’ in Namibia. The central question is can untrained teachers, themselves with a rudimentary formal education, be encouraged through a distance learning mode, to develop professionally by critically reflecting system strongly advocates ‘social reconstruction’?     

Learning entrepreneurs as experts

This paper concerns agricultural entrepreneurs involved in organizing their learning towards developing innovative and learning enterprises. In high-tech sectors, such as Dutch agriculture, this learning and innovative capacity is particularly essential for economic survival. Reviewing the literature we concluded that innovation can be seen as informal learning processes, in which social networks play an important role. Workers learn by sharing knowledge in the working team, and employers learn by creating networks of colleagues and advisors. The results of three research projects teach us that interactive learning and innovation should be analyzed from a perspective of uncertainty. Learning skills for interactive innovation, as part of the entrepreneurial craft, should comprise the capability of selecting impulses and combining newly selected impulses with existing skills and routines. Paradoxically, entrepreneurs need new impulses from weak, unknown networks to be continuously innovative. Innovative learning involves balancing the chaos of uncertainty and the old grooves of experience. Knowing how to escape this paradox forms the core competence of innovative entrepreneurship. In short, we conclude that agricultural entrepreneurs have to develop flexible expertise, based on a complex worldview to meet the demands of innovation in a changing world. Entrepreneurs should particularly be able to detect the irregularities in the world around them and to balance stability and flexibility.     

The Pedagogy of the Body: Affect and collective individuation in the classroom and on the dancefloor

Abstract

Much recent work in the study of popular culture has emphasized the extent to which it is not only a site of signifying practices, myths, meanings and identifications, but also an arena of intensities, of affective flows and corporeal state-changes. From this perspective, many areas of popular culture (from calisthenics to social dance to video gaming) can be seen as sites at which rich and complex—if sometimes dangerous—processes of embodied learning/teaching take place. By comparison, the world of formal education can seem hopelessly clumsy in its inattention to such issues. From a personal perspective, I can attest that nothing surprises my students more than when I try to get them to think about the ergonomics of studying, or advise them that getting some exercise and cutting down on sugar will probably improve their work as much as further studying will, or when I advise graduate students that their mood and physical state will make as much difference to the quality of their lectures as will their level of formal preparation; and yet experience has convinced me of the accuracy of these assertions. I would aver that I have learned more about successful lecturing—in particular about the improvisational skill of ‘reading’ a room, and adjusting an affective–informational flow accordingly—from DJing in dance clubs than from any formal training in pedagogy that I have received. What conclusions could be drawn from these observations, and how do they relate to existing strands of pedagogic theory? These are the questions which this article will ultimately seek to address.     

Understanding teacher collaboration processes from a complexity theory perspective: a case study of a Chinese secondary school

Although research on teacher collaboration has proliferated in the last few decades, scant attention has been paid to the development of teacher collaboration in school contexts. Informed by the perspective of complexity theory, this study investigates the complex process of teacher collaboration through qualitative interviews in an English teaching research group (TRG) in a secondary school in China. The findings reveal three distinct stages in the development of teacher collaboration, labeled as ‘breaking the ice’, ‘everything is out of control’ and ‘learning how to collaborate through collaboration’. The study shows that teacher collaboration is an adaptive, complex system that evolves through internal self-organization and interaction with external stakeholders and systems, such as school management and university researchers. The study provides useful insights into the ways of facilitating and sustaining teachers’ collaborative practices to enhance school effectiveness and improvement in specific educational contexts.     

Becoming an educable lifelong learning subject: adult graduates’ transitions in education and working life

Continuous learning and updating one’s competences and abilities have become requirements for staying ‘up-to-date’ and ‘at the top of one’s game’. Lifelong learning policy has been persuasive in its emphasis on equal learning opportunities for all: everyone has endless possibilities and capabilities to learn according to her/his needs and desires throughout life. This discourse has been especially encouraging for the eight Finnish general upper secondary school adult graduates followed in this study; they had received little formal education in their youth or had been labelled as ‘poor’ students at school through the assessment criteria maintained by the schooling system’s prevailing meritocratic discourse. In order to become lifelong learning subjects, they first needed to prove their ability and competence as students and learners, that is their educability. This was also the key for their transitions in further and higher education and working life. Consequently, half of the interviewees told ‘success stories’ about these transitions. Moreover, they continued to have faith in ‘the great salvation of education’ as well as their own educability. For the other half, however, these transitions turned out to be disappointing or perceived as a broken promise. These adults also started to doubt their own abilities as students and learners.     

Open learning: Politics or pedagogy?

This paper is intended to contribute to the discussion of the meaning of open learning. The trend in higher education in Australia towards open learning is seen to be politically driven. We argue that the lack of educational debate over its meaning and implications allows us to presume that open learning is of social value, while in reality it may have the power to create anew binary divide in higher education or to re‐fashion entirely what constitutes knowledge within society. In order to ‘de‐reify’ the term we argue that a critical examination of its meaning, from a political as well as pedagogical perspective, is necessary.     

Students’ Conceptions as Dynamically Emergent Structures

There is wide consensus that learning in science must be considered a process of conceptual change rather than simply information accrual. There are three perspectives on students’ conceptions and conceptual change in science that have significant presence in the science education literature: students’ ideas as misconceptions, as coherent systems of conceptual elements, and as fragmented knowledge elements. If misconceptions, systems of elements, or fragments are viewed implicitly as “regular things”, these perspectives are in opposition. However, from a complex dynamic systems perspective, in which students’ conceptions are viewed as dynamically emergent structures, the oppositions are lessened, and the integrated view has significant implications for theory and practice.     

The role of students’ emotions in formal feedback situations

A growing, but still relatively small body of research underscores the importance of attending to students’ experiences and emotions in higher education. One specific context in which emotions have a focal role is formal feedback situations. The aim of this paper is to provide a literature overview on the role of emotions, in sociology in general and learning in particular, and to draw on this literature in order to tentatively suggest how the role of students’ emotions can increasingly be accounted for in the context of feedback situations. The claim of the paper is that emotions should not be considered as hindering learning. Rather, it underlines the focal role of emotions in learning as being a natural part of it. The paper suggests that learning activities such as ‘feedback preparation activities’ and ‘feedback-on-the-feedback’ can be helpful in order to acknowledge students’ emotions in formal feedback situations.     

Vocational lifelong learners?

The notion of lifelong learning has become a mantra within educational policies. However these have been strongly critiqued for reflecting an understanding of learning that privileges the economic benefits of participation in formal education. In UK contexts, the importance attached to widening participation in higher education is one manifestation of these policy discourses, which can be interrogated as a form of governmentality. This paper draws upon a recent small‐scale mixed‐method study of different vocational learners’ transition from Level 3 courses to consider how these policy discourses are being mediated by ‘learners’ who were qualified to enter higher education, but decided instead on alternative life courses. The analysis suggests that policy constructions of participation in higher education sit at a disjuncture with respondents’ longer‐term experiences of institutionalised education processes. In other ways, lifelong learning seemed to be willingly embraced in respondents’ different commitments to learning and self‐development, although higher education institutions were not often seen as a source of this learning. The article aims all the same to allow this interpretation of respondents’ voices to speak back and disrupt policy mantras.     

Existential being as transformative learning

In some ways, ‘a culture of the modern consulting room’ may be seen as having been initiated by Freud and followers. Here, social hierarchy, unconscious motivation and the authority of analyst may all be seen as manifestations of professional practice. With the contributions of Heidegger, Kierkegaard, May, Adler, Rogers and others of the existential and humanistic schools, it is argued that ‘transformative learning’ serves as a vehicle to ‘being’. It is not that the classroom becomes a consulting room. Rather, it is suggested that the change and transformation of ‘self’ and ‘being’ (‘Dasein’) are accompaniments of deep, relational learning. As such, they rightly occupy the activities of both classroom and consulting room. Far from being an abstract or irrelevant notion, the ‘existential classroom’ diverges radically from any lack of focus or neglect of ‘subjectivity’. Neither is it a ‘place apart’, as Freud would have it. The learning relationship itself furnishes a model of conviction for all who see; an expression of trust, symbol for community, and the way to Kierkegaard’s notion of self‐defining freedom.     

Rise and decline of education systems: a contribution to the history of the modern state

If by ‘education systems’ we understand institutional units, constituted by common legal provisions, organizational structures, curricular goals and value foundations, the current period signals their decline. This indicates the decline of the modern nation state, which has characterized the political map of Europe for 300 years and gradually expanded to the other continents. Therefore education systems in their ‘state‐bound’ constitution must be identified as a category of ‘organized space’ within a given historical period—and not as a perpetual phenomenon. This understanding of the current ‘education system’ points the way to the concept of ‘educational spaces’ in periods preceding the modern nation state. It helps to identify the current stages of transition, indicated by the emergence of regional ‘educational spaces’, the expansion of private sectors, and the invasion of the globalizing markets into the ‘knowledge society’.     

Feedback as a relational concept in the classroom

Abstract

This paper constructs a theoretical argument to frame feedback as a relational concept. It addresses contemporary concern that formative assessment, of which feedback is a part, is under theorised. The arguments presented link to existing theoretical and research evidence. The paper also challenges the dominant policy discourse in high stakes assessment contexts in which feedback is typically seen in technised ways to serve the need to raise measured pupil outcomes. Vygotsky’s notion of the zone of proximal development is explored as a relational space in which both teachers and learners understand differences between learning ‘now’ and learning ‘next’. Extending Vygotsky’s perspective, a socio-cultural perspective is offered, by considering the role of ‘others’, ‘language’, ‘activity’ and ‘identity’, as part of the process of sharing and understanding feedback in classrooms. The work of Holland et al. (1998), Bakhtin (1986) are central to the developing argument. The paper reveals feedback as a complex situated process, requiring mediated dynamic interaction, where feedback is appropriated as a cultural artefact by its participants. The implications of such an articulation demands a greater sense of understanding pupils’ roles in feedback and the importance of teachers enabling pupils to see themselves in new ways as future learners.     

‘It’s all about standardisation’ – Exploring the digital (re)configuration of school management and administration

Schools have long made use of digital technologies to support the co-ordination of management and administrative processes – not least ‘management information systems’, ‘virtual learning environments’ and other ‘institutional technologies’. The last five years have seen the convergence of these technologies into integrated rather than separate systems – thereby allowing institutionally-related data, resources and other services to be accessed and used by school leaders, administrators, teachers, students and parents. Many commentators see the supposedly ‘open’ nature of these integrated systems as somehow democratising and decentralising the organisation of schools. However, this paper offers a detailed account of how the social relations of schools and schooling shape and bound the use of institutional technologies. Drawing on interview data from twelve ‘early adopting’ schools in England, the paper discusses how the implementation of integrated institutional technology systems is shaped by a set of organisational, bureaucratic and disciplinary concerns. In particular, the paper illustrates how these technologies strengthen existing ‘top down’ patterns of social power and control through a series of data-driven processes. The paper therefore considers how the systems are used to reinforce a wider ‘conservative modernisation’ of schools – intensifying the managerial control of curricula, the standardisation of labour processes and the accountability of educational practices.