After a week with my new group of sixth graders, I want to get a handle on the basics of what some theorists call emergence. Teachers call it classroom management, which deceptively implies foreseeable results. Like other complex systems, the classroom is self-organizing, marked by numerous connections and unplanned interactions. These things, it seems to me, are worth taking advantage of. This is my attempt at making sense of complexity theory in education.

Davis and Sumara point out that from Day 1, teachers can see that classroom norms and social positionings are negotiated by everyone involved, and that a collective identity is inscribed on a group. This happens with or without the teacher’s consent, and it contributes to teacher obsessions with control and management. What tends to happen is that the knowledge-producing system is subjected to centralized control, and the knowledge produced is also then centralized, controlled, and managed. They say

The issue…is not whether the condition of decentralized control is present in a social collective - it is always there. Rather, the question is whether or not that condition can be meaningfully brought to bear on the development of concepts and interpretive possibilities (Davis and Sumara, 2006, p. 146).

Lena River Delta

It’s been a while since I last worked with 12 year-olds, and I’m remembering the constant give and take that goes with the territory. Trends develop as the kids and I figure out what will fly, and what won’t. I have to cut some things off, rechannel energy, fill in low areas, check the flow here and there.

In the beginning of the year the job is fairly simple, but it requires constant vigilance and creativity: I help students focus on whatever they need to do. The kids, being veterans of the game, know the rules but they must also explore the limits. That’s what they do. And even as I am testing them, they are testing me. Getting through this part of the year gracefully is at the top of my to-do list.

Lately I’ve been using the image of a river delta as a metaphor to help me understand the process of collective knowledge construction. It builds on itself indeterminantly and interminably. Yet it’s bounded and in constant flux. It’s a system that grows and changes in response to instability and opportunity. It creates new terrain even as it relentlessly carves new channels. A river delta, like the classroom, is a complex system with a form that can’t be accurately described or predicted with simple cause and effect metrics. Each river delta is uniquely different from every other. Yet they’re similarly configured, as are classrooms. They are dynamic forms that expand the limits of possibility.

Teachers, being the pragmatists they are, may want to pay attention to complexity theory since it seems to provide some guidelines for practice. Davis and Sumara offer a list of dynamic conditions that influence emergence.

Diversity and redundancy
There is a need for us to foster common knowledge (redundancy), and at the same time, to encourage creative self-interested activity (diversity). Among other things, redundancies include common language and shared responsibilities. Redundancy in a system is what makes interaction possible. It is the basis for joint activity. It also minimizes the effect of weaknesses or failures among some members. Redundancy contributes to stability in a system.

Redundancy, as in “same page,” might become repressive uniformity unless it’s balanced by the creativity that comes from diversity in a system. Diversity expands the range of responses that are available for a group. It enables novel actions. It is encouraged by making allowances for self-interested activity that may serve the needs of other members.

In the classroom, I think of diversity as the creative wiggle room that people need in order to find new solutions to problems. There has to be sufficient structure for everyone to find a point of entry and to mark progress through whatever activity we’re engaged in. But there should also be opportunity to make new and surprising discoveries.

Decentralized control and neighbor interactions
There is a difference between knowledge-producing systems and the knowledge they produce. Davis and Sumara say that, “The ideational network rides atop the social network.” The social system should be managed for idea exchange, which is not to recommend any particular social arrangement. Conversation may be as effective as presentations, multimedia, or written texts. Structure should permit a variety of interpretive possibilities, regardless of the organizational form.

Decentralized knowledge control resembles cultural knowledge, it seems to me, in that there is no single authority in charge of correct interpretations. However, the self-regulating aspect of emergence is extremely problematic for classroom management. To effectively shift control away from the teacher, a shared commitment to a common goal has to be established and maintained by the group. This kind of solidarity, in my experience, is highly unlikely in a public school classroom. Even in a relatively like-minded group, the development a common set of values for a class requires an especially skilled leader. As Davis and Sumara asked, can the decentralized control that is already operating be meaningfully brought to bear on a group of students? I wonder.

Randomness and Coherence
In We Make the Road By Walking, Friere said that freedom can only exist in conditions that are subject to authority. The student, he said, “experiences freedom in relation to the teacher’s authority.” He emphasized, though, that authority must not become authoritarianism. This is what Davis and Sumara call enabling constraints. “Complex systems are rule-bound,” they say. Rules in a complex system delineate limitations rather than setting forth a list of specifications. Rules, given the condition of decentralized control, should emerge gradually, as needed, so they’re more likely to be generally supported.

A river is defined by its banks, and similarly, the limitations of rules and boundaries provide coherence for a system. If the rules are not narrowly prescriptive, the system remains open to randomness. Rules don’t necessarily impose uniformity, and freedom isn’t always license. What is wanted is the establishment of a consensual domain which forms within a set of defining conditions, as we find in a group project. A certain amount of randomness within a system is good because it opens new possibilities that stimulate creative activity.

Davis and Sumara point out, interestingly, in light of political trends, that “Complexity can not be managed or scripted into existence. But it can sometimes be occasioned.” A big part of teaching is in arranging conditions that might trigger learning.

Source material
Davis, B. & Sumara, D. Complexity and education: inquiries into learning, teaching, and research. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum and Associates, 2006