Complexity Science

Zimmerman et al. (1998). A Complexity Science Primer: What is Complexity Science and Why Should I Learn About It?
https://uwaterloo.ca/waterloo-institute-for-social-innovation-and-resilience/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/4._primer_on_complexity-from_edgeware-adapted_for_website_0.pdf

^{Header image: KF in Gimp}

Complex Adaptive System (CAS)

“frustration and resonance”
- “Complexity science resonated with or articulated what they were already doing. It provided the language and models to explain their intuitive actions”
- “they felt they could get better leverage from their intuitive knowledge and use it more confidently”
Newtonian scientific principles: science is the machine: The whole of the machine is the sum of the parts.”
- “The Newtonian perspective assumes that all can be explained by the careful examination of the parts.”
- “self-organization in which outcomes emerge which are highly dependent on the relationships and context rather than merely the parts.”

“It is a curious thing… at least for me it has been. It is both mind expanding because of new notions but it also seems like it is affirming of stuff you already know. It is quite paradoxical.”
- “CAS have a number of linked attributes or properties. Because the attributes are all linked, it is impossible to identify the starting point for the list of attributes.”

“Out of nothing, nature makes something. How do you make something from nothing? Although nature knows this trick, we haven’t learned much just by watching… [Life’s] reign of constant evolution, perpetual novelty, and an agenda out of our control… is far more rewarding than a world of clocks, gears, and predictable simplicity.”

“Diversity which is the result of adaptation also becomes the source of future adaptations.”
- “In organizations, diversity [at least in terms of thinking approaches] is becoming seen as a key source of sustainability.”

Crossover of genetic material is a million times more common than mutation in nature

“In organizational terms, this suggests that it is not the individual that is most critical but the relationships between individuals.
- We see this frequently in team sports. The team with the best individual players can lose to a team of poorer players. The second team cannot rely on one or two stars but instead has to focus on creating outcomes which are beyond the talents of any one individual. They create outcomes based on the interrelationships between the players.”

CAS have distributed control rather than centralized control.

“In a school of fish, there is no ‘boss’ which directs the other fishes’ behavior”
- “The school of fish reacts to a stimulus, for example the threat of a predator, faster than any individual fish can react. The school has capacities and attributes which are not explainable by the capacities and attributes of the individual agents. There is not one fish which is smarter than the others who is directing the school. If there was a smart ‘boss’ fish, this form of”
- “centralized control would result in a school of fish reacting at least as slow as the fastest fish could respond. Centralized control would slow down the school’s capacity to react and adapt.”

the more anxious you are, the more in control you need to be…this myth of control

“CAS thrive in an area of bounded instability on the border or edge of chaos. In this region, there is not enough stability to have repetition or prediction, but not enough instability to create anarchy or to disperse the system. Life for a CAS is a dance on the border between death by equilibrium or death by dissipation. In organizational settings, this is a region of highly creative energy.”

ﻼF: borders / boundaries [Star Trek ~ Neutral Zone]

There are at least four reasons why now is the time for complexity science:

1. The limit to the machine metaphor

It is as if we have collectively learned all we can from the machine metaphor and will continue to use that knowledge where appropriate. But we have more and more instances where the machine metaphor is simply not helpful.

2. The coming together of biology and technology

“Complexity science is understandable to us now because of both the advances in technology and the increased respect for biological lessons.”

3. The connections between studies of “micro” and “macro” phenomena

“This second learning – the macro informing the micro – has been underplayed in our search for applying Newtonian scientific thinking to life. A Newtonian perspective suggests that the parts can explain the whole. Therefore, the quest is to study the parts in greater and greater detail. Complexity science suggests that the whole is not the sum of the parts. Emergent properties of the whole are inexplicable by the parts.”

4. The apparent compressions of space and time.

“Most of the models of organization, methods to improve performance, and measurement concepts which dominate the management field today were created with the implicit assumption of space and time lags. In other words, they were designed for a world which in many instances no longer exists.”
“In the past, there was an expectation of a time lag (or ‘float’) between the initiation and completion of most financial transactions.”

“Hock argues this same reduction of time lags happens with information today. We used to have the luxury of a time lag between the discovery of an idea and the application into practice. This time lag is almost non-existent in many aspects of society today. In health care, medical research is reported on (often in ‘sound bites’ on the news). The public access to medical research has often created a push to put the ideas into application immediately.”
“In terms of compression of space, we can now bypass many of the intermediaries in our society. Intermediaries play the role of a bridge between organizations or individuals. When we can access the organization or individual directly rather than through an intermediary, we are again witnessing a compression of space.”
- “If the positions are eliminated but the role of intermediation and the expectation of float still exist as old mental models, we will simply see over-worked employees trying to fulfill the same roles but with less resources and less success.”
  - ﻼF: Workday
- “Many management models, such as traditional strategic planning processes, are built on the assumptions of float, intermediaries and external designers. When these assumptions hold, the models are relevant and useful. They can improve effectiveness and efficiency in organizations. When the assumptions are invalid, these models can lead to an illusion of control but an actual loss of effectiveness and adaptability”
“Complexity science is highly paradoxical. As you study the world through a complexity lens you will be continually confronted with ‘both-‐and’ rather than ‘either-‐or’ thinking. The paradoxes of complexity are that both sides of many apparent contradictions are true.”
- “Interdependence and independence co-exist.”

Simplicity leads to complexity

Complexity is a metaphor

“all science is metaphor”
“It is metaphor which shapes our logic and perspective. Metaphor influences the questions we ask and hence the answers we find. A powerful metaphor becomes deeply rooted in our ways of understanding and is often implicit rather than explicit. In biological terms, a metaphor is the schema by which we make sense of our situation”
“the metaphor of systems as mechanical or ‘machines’ has shaped our studies in physics, biology, economics, medicine and organizations. Complexity is about reframing our understanding of many systems by using a metaphor associated with life and living systems rather than machines or mechanical systems. Viewing the world through a complexity lens means understanding the world from biological concepts”
“The inquiry continues”

Clarke, A., & Collins, S. (2007). Complexity science and student teacher supervision. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23(2), 160-172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2006.10.006

Nadine the Teacher; Eve, the Technician

“Warren Weaver (1948), one of the first to articulate the nature of complex phenomena”
- “For simple and complicated phenomena, the sum of the parts always constitutes the whole; no more, no less.”
- “Weaver uses the life insurance industry of as an example of a complicated phenomenon.”
- “Weaver believed that there was a third category of phenomena that scientists largely ignored.”
- “He called this group of phenomena ‘‘organized complexity’’ (Weaver, 1948, p. 3) or what we commonly refer to today as complex phenomena.”
- “Examples of complex phenomena include weather systems, monetary markets, and flu viruses.”
- “Each of these phenomena, unlike complicated phenomena, have an inherent unpredictability about them but at a critical point, referred to as ‘‘emergence’’ (Johnson, 2001), display a clearly discernable pattern.”

Complexity science and education

“I came across a report in which statistical methods were used to ‘‘control for’’ such ‘‘confounding variables’’ as ‘‘teachers, schools, and classrooms’’”
- “While not dismissing the value of statistical methods or their use in educational research, Davis highlights the danger of widespread and uncritical use of such methods”
“By the beginning of the new millennium it seemed to be common practice for educators of all persuasions (simple, complicated, or other) to use the modifier ‘complex’ to describe educational practices.” (Clarke and Collins, 2007, pp. -)
- ‘complex’ to signal the inadequacy and difficulty of current conceptions of educational practice to fully account for the unanticipated and unpredictable nature of teaching and learning that are an inherently a part of the daily practice of schools and schooling.”

Complex systems

1. Complex systems exhibit networked rather than hierarchical structures.”

“Stock markets, the World Wide Web, and flu viruses represent multi-branched or non-linear complex systems. This means that complex systems are difficult to control or constrain.”

2. Feedback loops

“These loops provide the opportunity for ‘learning’ at the local level, that is, new knowledge”
“returning to and being taken up at the point of origin.”

Note to myself from Dec 7, 2021: When I read about the feedback loops [point 2], I could not help but be brought back to the Möbius strip. When disequilibrium [point 4] was introduced, this supported the Möbius strip metaphor: as I pointed out in my little talk, a journey around a Möbius strip (loop) will entail disequilibrium as the journey will involve a reorientation of the self. On the journey, the wanderer will at some stage find themselves back at the other “side” of their point of origin but upside down. Also, as the loop is twisted, the wanderer will always be slightly off kilter as they progress, in a state of disequilibrium, which continues even when they find themselves back at the point of origin.

“his feedback process means that control and organization, order and direction, do not emanate from a single point or location (i.e., the sense that learning is dependent on a hierarchical structure is absent) but from many points simultaneously.”

3. The capacity for self-organization or self-regulation.

Self-organization refers to patterned behaviour arising from agents interacting locally according to their own principles, or ‘‘intention,’’ in absence of an overall blueprint for the systems
“Complex systems have the capacity to change and alter based on information sent and received at the local level independent of an authorizing or directing agent. Therefore, we can never fully know or control a complex system.” [ﻼF: Heaven is high and the emperor is far away]

4. Disequilibrium

llya Prigogine (1977) argued that while stability is important for closed systems, the generative potential of open or complex systems, is the degree of disequilibrium inherent in the systems themselves (his theory of ‘dissipative structures’ won him the Nobel Prize in 1977):”
- “Prigogine discovered that the dissipative activity of loss was necessary to create new order. Dissipation didn’t lead to the death of a system. It was part of the process by which the system let go of its present form so that it could reorganize in a form better suited to the demands of its changed environment ”

⬆ Right to be Forgotten ⬆

“Wheatley (1999), in her analysis of large institutions as complex systems, notes that organizational equilibrium is ‘‘a sure path to institutional death.’’. Optimum conditions for complex systems require that they have a capacity for change, are alert to alternatives, sensitive to difference, and open to experiment. The interplay of these factors lies somewhere between the flexibility necessary for growth and the consistency necessary for consolidation. There is always an element of disequilibrium”

Disequilibrium is regarded as a creative tension the generative capacity of the system—and not a dysfunctional characteristic that should be eliminated

5. Nested nature

“Davis and Sumara (2005) note that complex systems are systems within systems and that upon closer inspection ‘‘things do not get simpler as you zoom in or zoom out’’
“…complex phenomena is irreducible. It transcends its parts, and so cannot be studied strictly in term of a compilation of those parts. It must be studied at the level of emergence (Davis, 2003, p. 43).”

Does the practicum represent a complex system and, if so, what are the implications for student teacher supervision?

Does the practicum exhibit a network structure?

“a flowchart with the university at the top followed by (with directional arrows pointing downward) the faculty advisor, the school, the cooperating teacher, the student teacher, and if they are featured at all, the pupils at the very bottom of the diagram.”

Nadene, and her kindergarten classroom.

“While there is a structure to the day, and unquestionably Nadene is ‘in charge,’ unless one looks very closely, it is hard to discern where the authority emanates from within the classroom.”
“after the first month of school, we often have to look around the room to find Nadene because she is rarely at the front of the room directing activities.”

2. To what extent are feedback loops evident in practicum settings?”

“the information and meaning constructed, negotiated, and mediated across multiple levels within the classroom often goes unnoticed.”
“Tony ‘‘Are you going to the beach?’’”

3. Is self-organization a characteristic of the practicum setting?

“Self-organization asks us to believe that if we allow sufficient freedom for interactions among and between people then generative, fruitful, and productive outcomes will emerge.”

Eve’s classroom

“For all intents and purposes, Eve’s pupils meet or exceed the Ministry guidelines and score well on all Provincial-wide assessment tasks. Eve regards the student teacher as a component that can be slotted in (and taken out) unproblematically without altering the teaching or learning in her classroom to any significant degree.”
“In contrast, Nadene constantly seeks pupil and student teacher engagement in setting the agenda for their own learning. She encourages her pupils to think about, choose, and carry out activities they see as being related to their learning. Choice and decision-making are vital and essential components of the learning environment that is created in her classroom. As with all activities, Nadene supports the children in these process asking regularly, ‘‘Is that a good choice?’’ and ‘‘Why?’’”
“Nadene has a clear pedagogical intent for the class but the way in which that intent is fulfilled is negotiated through the interactions brought forth, acknowledged, and responded to by the various members of the classroom community throughout the day.”
“Nadene recognizes that the practicum setting is always going to be different or altered by the presence of the student teacher. The student teacher is not a cog that can be inserted and removed unproblematically,”

4. To what extent is disequilibrium a characteristic of practicum settings?

“Eve places great value on stability as a marker of success.”

“Throughout the day, one can trace the splicing and blending of the pedagogical intent that Nadene is working towards with the contributions from the various participants:”
“At times it is hard to discern what is planned and what is emerging ‘in the moment’ (Brookfield, 2000). Strict timelines, timetables, and timepieces do not bind Nadene to particular courses of action, be it for her pupils or her student teachers. There are always spaces for new directions, sudden changes, and alternative ideas to be taken up and engaged in throughout the course of the day.”

5. And finally, in what ways might the practicum be regarded as a nested phenomenon?

Redefining ‘the practicum’

“if we regard the practicum as a complex system then we are forced to shift our attention away from a focus on the individual considerations of the student teacher to the practicum as a whole.”
“Davis and Sumara (2001) remind us: ‘‘Any event of individual learning affects the collective character, and so on. There is no simple, isolated, or consequence-free event in a complex world’’
“Therefore, in making any assessment about student teacher learning, our attention should be focused on the ways in which the practicum setting has changed during the time that the student teacher has been a part of that setting.”

Surrendering certainty

Acknowledging complicity: Are you willing to share my ‘C’?

Allowing for improvisation

“A complexity science sensibility calls our attention to the need to allow for improvisation; a readiness to genuinely entertain new ideas and alternative approaches. Too often student teachers willingly submit to being told what to do. They happily forgo inquiry and mindlessly mimic their supervisors. However, this is not the sort of learning that we would expect from professionals, and should not be the sort of learning we accept from our student teachers.”

If inquiry is a defining feature of professional practice (Clarke & Erickson, 2003), then the generative space created by improvisation is essential for the emergence of complexity…

…Improvisation is a willingness to hold in abeyance patterned responses and allow for the possibility of something new to emerge.

“As Beairsto (2001) notes: A [learning] curriculum is ‘‘constructed’’ on the basis of required content and student needs, rather than simply ‘‘delivered’’ in a standard”
“From this perspective the notion of ‘‘lesson planning,’’ which either ignores or presupposes learner response, is replaced by ‘‘lesson preparation,’’ which provides a clear framework of intents but assumes that actual classroom activities must be adapted or even initiated on the fly according to student responses, both individual and collective (p. 9).”