Conceptualizing Debates in Learning and Educational Research: Toward a Complex Systems Conceptual Framework of Learning

Abstract

This article proposes a conceptual framework of learning based on perspectives and methodologies being employed in the study of complex physical and social systems to inform educational research. We argue that the contexts in which learning occurs are complex systems with elements or agents at different levels—including neuronal, cognitive, intrapersonal, interpersonal, cultural—in which there are feedback interactions within and across levels of the systems so that collective properties arise (i.e., emerge) from the behaviors of the parts, often with properties that are not individually exhibited by those parts. We analyze the long-running cognitive versus situative learning debate and propose that a complex systems conceptual framework of learning (CSCFL) provides a principled way to achieve a theoretical rapprochement. We conclude with a consideration of more general implications of the CSCFL for educational research.

Notes

¹ Readers interested in further information about the field of complex systems should consult Mitchell (2009) for a general discussion and Bar-Yam (2003) for a more technically oriented treatment of major constructs and conceptual perspectives.

² As we discuss further next, the construct of emergence is a central one in the study of complex systems (Bar-Yam, 2003; Gell-Mann, 1994; Holland, 1995; Kauffman, 1995; Mitchell, 2009). Briefly, emergence may be defined as interactions of elements or agents at a microlevel of a system that lead to the formation of patterns or properties at a macrolevel of the system that differ in key ways from those at the microsystem level.

³ In the literature, a distinction is often made between complex adaptive systems, in which adaptation at the level of system components occurs over time such as changes in the genetic information in living organisms, and nonadaptive complex systems such as tornados or stars where individual atoms do not change. Given our interests in learning and educational systems, we do not make this distinction, and simply refer to complex systems.

⁴ According to Simon (1999), most complex systems in biology and human organizations have a hierarchical structure of “boxes-within-boxes arrangement of subsystems and sub-subsystems” that a “much higher frequency and intensity of interaction takes place between components belonging to a single sub-system than between components belonging to different sub-systems; and this principle holds for all levels of the hierarchy” (p. 8). Simon refers to this property as “near-decomposability”; however, we prefer the term “near-independence of levels.”