Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The chapter, through recent literature, offers analysis and implications of the
ways complexity and contingency may impact teaching and learning. In particu-
lar, we call for ongoing research in communication and the conditions for learning
in concrete educational settings, including development of learning resources and
research projects focusing on new knowledge media and their learning potential.
It is also essential, as the call for the use of ICT increases that the educational
community begins to understand the requirements placed on the educator and the
learners, as well as the interactions in which they participate. In particular, we must
consider teachers, their ICT skills, and didactical/pedagogical skills they bring to
their positions; educators must consider challenges in communication, design of
educational environments, and the interplay that the ICT imposes on these require-
ments. The chapter concludes with the proposal of a research agenda to identify and
begin to gain a conceptual understanding of learning and knowledge in this new
environment.
Theoretical Framework
Introduction to Complexity in Education
In this section we present the key concepts which provide the framework of sys-
tems and environments, complexity, and learning and teaching. The definition of
the concepts is inspired by systems theory and the concept of systems as opera-
tionally closed, self-referential, and autonomous (Luhmann, 1995). These system
characteristics have consequences for the way we define learning and teaching. As
a consequence of the above-mentioned systems' characteristics, we can infer that
systems are observed to be nontrivial systems (Foerster & Pörksen, 2006; Luhmann,
2002).
We can describe these nontrivial systems as operationally closed, self-referential,
autonomous, analytically indeterminable, unpredictable, and dependent on the pre-
vious operations and the concrete context. In principle, we can reject the idea of
causality. In other words we cannot predict the outcome of a defined input. We do
not know what happens in the system that is how the specific system operates in its
self-referential mode. For example, when a student has listened to a lecture you can-
not tell what the outcome is. While teachers' intentions about students' knowledge
construction is one thing, the students' own construction of knowledge is another.
This approach to systems has consequences for the way we consider the possi-
bility of the fulfillment of the required purposes of the educational system. Foerster
concretizes this idea in by saying that nobody has the possibility to know what the
students know, and because the student is regarded as a nontrivial system, the student
is analytically inaccessible (Foerster & Pörksen, 2006, p. 67). Foerster proclaims in
a polemic way that, for example, a test in schools does not really test the students'
knowledge but actually tests the test. He offers the following theorem: “test test test”
(Foerster & Pörksen, 2006, p. 67).
