Complexity

DAVIS, B. & SUMARA, D. 2006. Complexity and Education: Inquiries Into Learning, Teaching, and Research, London, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Ch 1

What is complexity – defined by its subject rather than methodology: a living system?

Features that define the qualities of complex systems include:

·         self-organised,

·         bottom-up emergent,

·         short-range relationships

·         nested structures

·         ambiguously bounded

·         organisationally closed

·         structure-determined

·         far-from equilibrium

Not an explanatory system or meta-discourse. 

Questions that invoke a poetic sensibility and rely on analogy, metaphor and other associative (that is non-representational) functions of language.  (Davis & Sumara 2006:7)

Rules that govern complex system are unpredictable and volatile, subject to change if systems change from one system to another.

‘a learner is a complex unity that is capable of adapting itself to the sorts of new and diverse circumstances that an active agent is likely to encounter in an dynamic world.’  (Davis & Sumara 2006:14)

This cuts across conventions that view learner as isolated & insulated individual.  More and varied entities – social & class groupings bodies of knowledge, organisations &c

Complexity thinking foregrounds the role of the observer.

Complexity thinking ‘rejects scientific objectivity, relativist subjectivity, structuralist or post-structuralist inter-subjectivity as satisfactory foundations for any truth claim’.

The knower’s knowledge necessarily affects the way phenomenon s perceived and how the knower acts in relation to that phenomenon. Complexity theories aim for an: inter-objectivity.

Complexity thinking emphasises the extent to which phenomenon is best understood as an intricate series of systems each embedded in each other and each co-relating to each other as part of a wider overall system.

Complexity thinking repositions the distinction between knowledge as process vs knowledge as product with an analysis of knowledge as stable entity as a subsystem of knowledge as a dynamic fluctuating system that underpins this stability. Knowledge – the canon of what is known & the activities through which knowledge is generated. Accommodates both subjective / objective depending upon the system each is considered part of.

Dichotomy replaced with bifurcation.

Bifurcation highlights not just difference but relationship as each has a centralising genealogy & someone is required to make the distinction.

Traces development from ècorrespondence theory to ècoherence theory to ècomplexity theory

From the separating logic of Aristotle to the evolutionary dynamic of Darwin. Language correspondence tags directly to external objects to language as constructed and inter-subjectively shared. The focus is on internal, pragmatic fit rather than external match.

Both coherence theory and complexity theory argue that the internal dynamics of an organisms are related to the contextual conditions from which it emerges. Complexity theory depart towards a distributed representation. Representations have no meaning in and of themselves, only as part of a wider system of meaning.

As such it is particularly attentive to: metaphor, analogues and images.

The social is always and already embedded in the individual: the individual is constituted by and constitutive of the social. 

learning to read

·         Literacies: this strand of reading explore varying conceptions of literacy and the various ways these dis/connect to practice. The area is vast – there are several different schemata as well as several contrasting and competing distinct constructions. The most significant of these social practices and skills is frequently written about but less often researched. I am here interested in developing visual and metaphorical representations of literacy and language. Kell – the shell & Wilson – 3^rd space. It’s important here be clear about the distinction between language and literacy.

·         Pedagogic implications: my focus is less on exploring the literacies and their pedagogic implications as such. I am more concerned with exploring how trainee teachers construct their ideas about literacy. This is part has include a view of how they construct their own professional and academic identities. I partly want to know what their ideas are, how they manage (identify) the tensions, and how these tensions shape what they do.

·         Research methodology: this is a broad strand that covers situational analysis, grounded theory, qualitative enquiry and complexity theory. Non-representational theory, actor-network-theory are part of the nexus – but what is important here is identifying strands of thought that are helpful, stimulating and help me sift through the messiness of real world research – when the main struggle is time and energy. The advantage of the methodologies I explore is that they enable to recognise myself as deeply implicated within the subject  study.

·         Quality and teacher education: I continue to frame the dilemmas that trainees have to resolve as one of different professional frames between what policy requires ‘ticking the box’ and between meeting the aspirations of their learners. In part the focus on study is on how they connect theory and practice but primarily its based on what sense they make of the terrain.

·         Policy under the coalition: I am conscious of a shifting climate that has become something of a policy vacuum and the need to re-engage with this. The commentary from RaPAL is a good starting point here – for pointers for reading as is what Hodgson and Spours are now writing.  Literacy and language in a cold, hostile climate. Fragmentation. No analysis or skills agenda.

affective or effective teaching: is there a conflict?

Crowther, J., K. Maclachlan, and L. Tett. 2010. Adult literacy, learning identities and pedagogic practice. International Journal of Lifelong Education 29 (6):651-664.

Ecclestone, K., and D. Hayes. 2008. The dangerous rise of therapeutic education: Taylor & Francis.

I recognise much of the pedagogic situation Crowther et al is analysing here.  Given the context this paper emerges from i.e. Scotland with its very different policy framing of literacy – there is a sense in this paper that the tensions that define it are centred almost exclusively around how to help learners.

I have a reluctance when reading it – this may emerge from a sense that ‘this is so familiar to my experience that it does it feel like research or even valuable knowledge’ but  it also has another source. Namely, I draw in Ecclestone’s idea critique of certain educational encounters were learners are constructed as fundamentally human beings in need of help. I suspect that she does not have this sort of encounter in mind – adults of addictions, homelessness and lives that have spiralled out of control. But while the writers evidence damaged learning identities by how learners think and feel about themselves, that lurking suspicion I have that the statement in my experience that many learners utter – ‘I want to feel more confident when reading and writing’ rather than ‘I want to improve reading and writing’, is taken at its word and too much attention is placed on the affective aspects of learning.

There is a sense that perhaps what we explore are affective pedagogies rather than effective pedagogies.

The learners in the text – which resists deficit models and recognises the inherent limitations of literacy as skills, non-the-less offer little insight into the survivalist strengths of their learners.

I am interested in this idea that low literacy does not necessarily translate into incompetence; rather a range of skills (such as social interactions) can be leveraged to meet needs competently. This is an idea of explore.

It maps on the idea if teaching literacies as an example of the role of a teacher as being more that a conveyer of curricular content.  Placing literacies and language in the context of a narrated life history, a community, a sociality changes what is expected of us. This is not to defend therapy (in place of pedagogy) – nor is it to decry therapy (it’s life saving).  It is to ask and answer the question that is raised by one interviewee in Managing Quality:  how much genuine challenge and progression an integral part of the teaching, is this more than cozy and comfortable, a great way to spend time with people. 

Glimpses

READ, B. (n.d.) Chapter Fourteen: Challenging assumptions, changing attitudes, Skills for Life Support Programme, London: Learning and Skills Improvement Service.

GREEN, A. & HOWARD, U. (2007) Insights: Skills and social practices: making common cause an NRDC policy, London: Institute of Education: National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy.



This is a very useful ‘chapter’ (Read, n.d.) that offers valuable advice about how to incorporate an awareness of literacy as social practices within the Level 5 Diploma in Initial Teacher Education. I have a mixed reaction to all of this. On one hand, as a pre-doc I used to find it reassuring when I read something that seemed to have a similar stance to the one I was developing. It gave me the confidence I was on the right track. Or at least a legitimate track. Now of course I find it a little frustrating – as it means I have to question whether and how my contribution to the debate is going to extend what has already been articulated. The more I delve even superficially, the more I realise this is a well trodden terrain.

Where I think my work sits in relation to much of the literature as exemplified by Read’s article and the NRDC’s pamphlet on Skills and Social Practices is: that it is small scale research, it is empirical or perhaps grounded rather than theoretical. I have not adopted a stance that says this is right (social practices) and this is wrong (skills), but am attempting to work out how the ideas relate to each other in practice of trainee teachers - may of whom are very experienced.

I offer (base) the paper on a series of ‘glimpses’ a pulling together a series of disparate fragments. Want I may arrive at is a series of (visual) metaphors that explore how literacy and skills interrelate.

During Skills for Life (1999 – 2010) there was a strong policy thrust that narrowed literacy & language to a series of skills, to the exclusion of all other constructions. Yet parts of that policy machinery – NRDC & LSIS where discussing literacy & language in ways that undermined this view and explored how practitioners may achieve some sort of reconciliation between what ‘is’ in policy and what ‘is’ in lived experience: the abstract and the embodied.

SfL created a detailed infrastructure involving curriculum, teaching resources, schemes of work, qualifications and pedagogic approaches that emerged from a skills based view of literacy & language: other approaches are possible, as the example of Scotland and Ireland make clear. Without the momentum created and sustained by New Labour’s crusade, how has pedagogy changed in this area – are spaces for dissent emerging more fully or does the infrastructure remain in full force?

My main query is how do practitioners – trainee teachers of language and literacy - conceptualise their subject? These thoughts are still entangled and more reading / drafting will straighten them. How do their ideas change over the course of the programme; what do they make of the competing conceptions. I am sure their pedagogic pragmatism and the irrelevance of this consideration when considering a social practices approach is a pivotal point of consideration – perhaps Mary Hamilton, The irrelevance of pedagogy is a response to this – what are their perceptions about its significance (Hamilton, 2006).

I could explore different conceptualisations of literacy with an explicit focus on visual metaphor: third space / shell / wheel / hierarchy – but would need to be clear about why this matters – as another way of exploring thinking.

I then think it might be helpful to consider Literacy as a pedagogic subject. Which then brings me to the hinted at and frustratingly esoteric / incomprehensible / pretentious Actor Network Theory: ontological politics.

Part of this is prescribed by the situation. Hence my interest in ‘situational analysis’ (Clarke, 2005) which enables me to be part of the research terrain rather than an invisible given. I am implicated even of not the focus of attention or indeed the locus of activity. In part the research approach is getting a ‘glimpse’ of ideas almost in passing.



CLARKE, A. 2005. Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the postmodern turn, Sage Publications, Inc.

HAMILTON, M. 2006. Just do it: Literacies, everyday learning and the irrelevance of pedagogy. Studies in the Education of Adults, 38, 125-140.

This paper has 2 over all purposes

Firstly, I want to explore how trainee teachers registered on a University Diploma in Literacy and ESOL course embody different conceptions of literacy.

I am conscious in this undertaking of this seemingly being an area that has been discussed in detail from within a professional community of teacher educators and while it may be recently discovered terrain for me – there is a significant body of work available to which this is a contribution. What is distinct about this discussion is I am not here driven by a desire to improve my practice as a teacher educator – as such (though that desire is always lurking). Nor am I using a social practices theoretical framework to critique a skills based approach as such.

My intention is to map trainee teachers’ changing perspective – to see if and how their view changes and if so – along what lines, and what key points in the programme and propelled by what particular engagements. Although broadly I am asking about trainees’ engagement with different conceptions of literacy, I anticipate that what will emerge are conflicting and contradictory views and it is the nature of this contestation I want to explore.  I appreciate the reflexivity that this requires as in part I am implicated in trainees developing understanding: their changing conception may be amongst other things a reflection of my professional prowess.

Given that this research stands outside of a policy infrastructure that aligns itself to the delivery of government policy – I am not a practitioner nor am I connected to any organisation with an interest in the success of policy and am able to dominate notions of both literacy or literacies – as far as this study is concerned. Literacy as social practices based on empirical research is a stark critique of a skills based approach and while they are not entirely irreconcilable, adopting a literacies approach would seem to undermine much of the infrastructure that defines the skills of life legacy that still dominates adult literacy and ESOL teaching.  

One of my current trainees quite expresses it quite well: ‘all of this is very interesting but at the end of the day, I still have to tick that box’.

What I explore with trainees are their own hybrid literacies, or hybrid literacy conceptions. Am here echoing Wilson third space literacies, Kell and the notion of literacy as shell that prohibits the formation of literacies to emerge. But my intention is to explore trainees hybrid literacies. That is the study looks at their changing ideas but in so doing I explore not their explicit answer to the question: what do you understand by the term literacy, what does it mean to be a competent literacy user. I also invite them to reflect on the implications so literacy as social practice and to annotate their own approaches to completing an assignment. I exploring their own reconciliations of literacy and literacies my focus is not restricted to an entirely academic arena but explores research participants literacies in different places and spaces.

The second exploration is methodological.

Although based largely on as aspect of my practice, I have not framed this research as action research in that I do not particularly seek to improve upon my any aspect of the programme as a result of this study. I am however conscious of being deeply implicated within the study and to ensure my altering presence part of the material under study.

The study makes use of situational analysis: grounded theory pushed around the post-modern turn.

(I will need to add to this – for now – it’s blogged , as they say – it’s late, I will return at a later stage in a different colour)

Individual Human elements / actors Literacy students: case studies Theorists – Barton, Hamilton, Un-named author Mentors John Hayes (policy Post16)	Non-human elements / actants Online spaces & electronic communications Visual representations of literacy (Curriculum documents  & statistics) ILPs / Lesson Plans / Schemes of Work / Materials Assignments
Collective Human elements / actors Students (ESOL / Literacy) Coalition Policy New Labour Policy	Implicated / silent actors / actants Race, gender and class
	Key events in situation Election Spending review and budget Events in organisations
Discursive constructions, individual or collective human actors The literacy / ESOL learner Good / Proper English Teachers metaphors for teaching	Discursive constructions of non-human actants Race / gender / class: irrelevant in official discourse & learning outcomes
Political / economic elements Work context ie teaching numeracy	Socio cultural / symbolic elements Qualification The literate adult
Temporal elements: US national historical frame Pre-Skills for Life Skills for Life Coalition	Spatial elements Training Rooms workplaces Tutorial rooms Classroom
Major issue debates (usually contested) conceptions of literacy	Related discourses (historical narrative &/or visual) changing conceptions of literacy

Thrift: non-representational theory.

Text opens with a quote from Taussig - that acknowledges race, gender and nation as constructed, invented and representational yet having the appearance of something immutable, culture appears as the nature order.

The reworked quote referenced to Taussig in 1993, hints at an excitement, an enthusiastic willingness to get involved in an analytical project.

How does some so order come to appear so obdurate.

Years later the brilliance of this revelation remain - as does the slow unpicking of the social.

Situational Map of ‘Learning to be a Literacies Teacher'

Situational analysis takes grounded theory and ‘pushes it around the postmodern turn’ (Clarke 2005:1) The commitments to representing those we study in their own terms / through their own perspectives remains, but if through the systematic collection of qualitative data GT has the tendency to smooth over and out differences, SA enables the telling complicated stories about data, representing differences, contradictions and incoherence.  

It is apparent when exploring these methodological traditions that there are strong connections within and between them. Clarkes pushing GT around the post-modern turn entails a ‘method assemblage’ and hence includes discourse analysis, grounded theory coding, actor network theories, relational materialities, symbolic interactionism and the full menu of other qualitative research methodologies.

In explicating her method, Clarke (2005) argues for reframing of the analytical unit – as it root metaphor - include not the social process / action but the social ecology / situation: she is careful to point out that the situation is other than the context of action, but is directly implicated as a constituent part of the unit of analysis.

Her methodology suggest 3 sorts of ‘maps’: situational, social / arena and positioning maps. As she points out ‘map’ may in terms of geography sound largely bounded, fixed with clearly defined boundaries and pathways. Yet this methodology implies reflexivity (the cartographer is part of the landscape), flexibility. Its roots may be grounded, but its source is uncertain and modest with the capacity to represent contradiction.  Clarke (2005) exemplifies mapping with the use of narrative, visual and historical discourse materials, and offers possibilities for more intense interrogation of data.  The map is not the analysis but a tool upon which the analysis is based.

Situational Map: doing

All the analytically pertinent human and non-human elements: individuals, groups, organisations, institutions, subcultures ...

First messy situational map

• Literacy as skills
• Literacies discourses
• Functional skills
• The ‘good / competent’ teacher
• Literacy / Language learner
• Literacy / Language learning
• Policy: language / literacy & economy
• Quality
• Further Education College
• Community Education
• Prison education
• Competent functional adult
• Academic knowledge
• Research
• Practice
• Education, training and economy
• Core-curriculum documents
• ‘Good’ English
• Training room
• Literacy / Language classroom
• Assignments
• Computers: twitter, blogging & learning software packages
• Written assignments
• Library – reading materials
• 2^nd marker & EE
• Quality in HE
• Skills for Life policy 1999 - 2010
• Coalition government
• Skills strategy updates post 2010
• Key websites: NRDC, Excellence Gateway, eBridge
• PowerPoint presentations
• Students / trainees / teachers
• Mentors
• ILPs
• Lesson plans, schemes of work
• Blog
• Class: working class vs. chav
• Immigrant, foreigner
• Multi or bilingualism
• Qualified
• North of England
• University Diploma, Level 5
• HE funding

Clarke, A. (2005). Situational analysis: Grounded theory after the postmodern turn, Sage Publications, Inc.