Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Thus we have to deal with complexity when systems, students, teachers, classes,
universities, and the educational system as such are regarded as unpredictable, non-
trivial systems dependent on the concrete context. That is the premise when we
are talking about designing a teaching environment for the students, so the teachers
must have the best (intended) possibilities to learn what is required in any specific
context.
Systems and Environments
System is characterized by being operationally closed, but not closed in the sense
that they function as autarchic systems. They are observing systems and get nour-
ishment from their environment. A system and its environment are, in that sense,
mutually dependent.
Hence the environment of a system is observed as potential nourishment for the
system, and the environment is system specific in the sense that each system creates
its own environment. A system observes its environment through the lens of the
system that is actualized in the concrete context.
The starting point for the framework is therefore a basic systems theory model
consisting of a system and its environment. Each system has a related environment
that is specific to the system. Furthermore, a systems environment is always more
complex than the system itself, so each system constructs, as it were, its environment
due to the system's observing ability.
Complexity and Contingency
According to the nontrivial systems approach, we are dealing with complexity and
not a cause-effect relationship. Luhmann writes, “Complexity means being forced
to select; being forced to select means contingency; and contingency means risk”
(Luhmann, 1995, p. 25). Complexity is therefore considered a surplus of possible
options:
We will call an interconnected collection of elements 'complex' when, because of immanent
constraints in the elements' connective capacity, it is no longer possible at any moment to
connect every element with every other element (Luhmann, 1995, p. 24)
Furthermore, systems observe their environment as more complex than itself, and
that has consequences for the way we will observe and consider the nexus between
learning and teaching.
...
for each system the environment is more complex than the system itself. Systems lack
the 'requisite variety' (Ashby's term) that would enable them to react to every state of the
environment, that is to say, to establish an environment exactly suited to the system. There
is, in other words, no point-for-point correspondence between system and environment [...]
(Luhmann, 1995, p. 25)
