Challenging images of knowing: complexity science and educational research

This article represents an attempt to reconcile discussions of aspects of educational research with recent developments in complexity science. It is argued that current characterizations of and distinctions among research methodologies in education are potentially counterproductive, in large part because they tend to be defined against or in terms of principles and methods that have been rendered problematic within the sciences. To develop this point, the authors draw on several contemporary discourses: poststructuralist methods are used to foreground the Euclidean (plane) geometric roots of much of the vocabulary of educational research; fractal geometry is taken as a source of images and analogies to support alternative conceptions of knowledge, learning and teaching; informed by poststructuralist and fractal geometric notions, the authors turn to complexity science and argue that it is fitted to and offers important elaborations of current discussions of educational research methodologies. In the process, they suggest that it may be time to abandon some of the prominent distinctions used to describe educational research, including ‘quantitative versus qualitative’ and ‘sciences versus humanities’.

[1]  I. Stewart,et al.  Figments of Reality: The Evolution of the Curious Mind , 1997 .

[2]  Jere Confrey,et al.  A Theory of Intellectual Development: Part 1. , 1994 .

[3]  William E. Doll,et al.  A Post-Modern Perspective on Curriculum , 1992 .

[4]  Tracy Brown,et al.  The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience , 2002, Cybern. Hum. Knowing.

[5]  W. Weaver.  Science and complexity. , 1948, American scientist.

[6]  Peter Mark Roget,et al.  Roget's International Thesaurus , 1977 .

[7]  E. Glasersfeld.  Radical Constructivism: A Way of Knowing and Learning. Studies in Mathematics Education Series: 6. , 1995 .

[8]  Patti Lather,et al.  Troubling Clarity: The Politics of Accessible Language , 1996 .

[9]  A. Borgmann.  Crossing the postmodern divide , 1992 .

[10]  E. Rosch,et al.  The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience , 1993 .

[11]  H. Maturana,et al.  The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding , 2007 .

[12]  Donald D. Hoffman,et al.  Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See , 1998 .

[13]  Ray J. Paul,et al.  Visualizing a Knowledge Domain's Intellectual Structure , 2001, Computer.

[14]  Kevin Kelly,et al.  Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World , 1992 .

[15]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , 1963 .

[16]  B. Davis,et al.  Engaging minds : learning and teaching in a complex world , 2000 .

[17]  William H. Calvin,et al.  How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now , 1997 .

[18]  F. Capra.  The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems , 1996 .

[19]  SueEllen Campbell.  The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World , 1998 .

[20]  I. Stewart,et al.  The collapse of chaos : discovering simplicity in a complex world , 1995 .

[21]  Gary James Jason,et al.  The Logic of Scientific Discovery , 1988 .

[22]  G. Lakoff,et al.  Philosophy in the flesh : the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought , 1999 .

[23]  J. Derrida.  Writing and Difference , 1967 .

[24]  James L. McClelland,et al.  Phenomenology of perception. , 1978, Science.

[25]  T. Kuhn.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago (University of Chicago Press) 1962. , 1962 .

[26]  B. Massumi,et al.  The postmodern condition : a report on knowledge , 1979 .

[27]  M. Mitchell Waldrop,et al.  Complexity : the emerging science and the edge of order and chaos , 1992 .

[28]  Roger Lewin,et al.  Weaving Complexity and Business: Engaging the Soul at Work , 2001 .

[29]  Aaron M. Pallas,et al.  Class Size and Eighth-Grade Math Achievement in the United States and Abroad , 2001 .

[30]  Benoit B. Mandelbrot,et al.  Fractal Geometry of Nature , 1984 .

[31]  Paul R. Ehrlich,et al.  Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect , 2000 .

[32]  Dennis Sumara,et al.  Cognition, Complexity, and Teacher Education , 1997 .

[33]  D. Aoki.  The Thing Never Speaks for Itself: Lacan and the Pedagogical Politics of Clarity , 2000 .

[34]  ChenChaomei,et al.  Visualizing a Knowledge Domain's Intellectual Structure , 2001 .

[35]  Paul Cobb,et al.  Constructivism in Mathematics and Science Education , 1994 .

[36]  Gunther S. Stent,et al.  Does God Play Dice , 1979 .

[37]  Steven Johnson,et al.  Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software , 2001 .

[38]  Bruce G. Charlton,et al.  A History of Surgery , 2001, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[39]  R. Rorty.  Philosophy and Social Hope , 1999 .

[40]  I. Stewart,et al.  Life's other secret : the new mathematics of the living world , 1998 .

[41]  Michael Perlman.  The Speech of the Planet David Abram .The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. New York, Pantheon, 1996. , 1998 .

[42]  B. Davis.  Teaching Mathematics: Toward a Sound Alternative , 1996 .